Negat the Tall
From Rice Boy Wiki
| Negat the Tall | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Told by | Koark |
| Additional Script | Seen-Script |
| Page | p057 |
Negat the Tall is the second story told by Koark. It is told in Olo's bar to The One Electronic in exchange for information.
Negat the Tall
Before trees, there
was a gray-stone
village in the land
of Dorl, pale and
greenless. There
lived Negat, brown-
skinned and tall.
Daily she worked
long at planting and
reaping fruits in the
earth, and at evening
she always faced the
setting sun, always
beautiful but never
the same. She slept
in a stone house with
her husband and
son, and as the sky
went dark she
thought of the sun,
that she only saw as
it set. One day she
stopped working to
see the sun all day.
She left the village
and climbed up a
hill, to be as high as
could be. She looked
up to the sky, and
reached up as far as
she could, but she
could not reach the
sun. Night came, and
she wept; the sun
came back, and she
reached. Many
days and sad nights
passed, and she came
ever closer to the
sun, but never close
enough. Her skin
became hard, and
leaves grew from
her fingers to be
closer to the sun.
She sand love-songs
to it in day, and
crying-songs after it
in night. As her eyes
became knots of
wood, she sang, in a
green tree-voice.
She grew a wide
canopy of leaves,
and the days and
nights became so
brief that she
hardly wept at all.
Children began to
play under her in
the day-time, and
one of them she
knew. But she did
not know if he was
her own son, or his
son. She spoke to him
in a whispery tree-
voice. She asked
that he take her
seeds, which had
grown in her
branches, and that
he plant them far
and wide. So he
took Negat's seeds
and planted them
as far away as he
could walk, and
trees began to
grow. These trees
formed the border
of a vast forest,
which the boy filled
with many more
trees, all beautiful.
But none the same.
The people of the
stone village left
their houses to
live in trees, and
instead of picking
fruits solemnly
from the ground,
they picked them
from the trees,
looking up into the
sky. When the boy
was very old, he
returned to Negat
to tell her that the
forest was finished.
But she no longer
spoke: she had
become wood all
through. So the
boy found another
to take his place
keeping the trees,
and he went off
into the depths
of the wood and
never returned.
Negat's name was
forgotten, and her
forest grew ever
wider and more
beautiful. But the
Mother Tree was
never close
enough to the sun,
and kept reaching.
Seen Script
The Seen script on the story's pages read as follows:
Page 57: "(at) story of the Dorlish Wood and the First Tree"
Page 58: "Recorded by Teller (Spenek?) in the Blue Age"
External Links
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