The Pigmy Proles Go To War
THE PIGMY PROLES GO TO WAR
Contara d'Arc of the Pigmy Proles had been pushed too far for too long. "This is what pain looks like," she wrote on the walls of the village in polypigma slime. Her messages had grown more complex. As the words came to her, they began to build and connect with all the thoughts she had ever had. The enslavement of the Proles by the Land Lords was obvious now that truth could be measured by words.
And it could also be shared. She may not have been wise, for she hadn't learned questions, but her statements were clear and contagious. The other Proles had stopped humming their songs while they worked and had started whispering instead. Dangerous thoughts spread quickly.
For more than five years, every time it rained and washed her message away, Contara gathered more ultra violet paint from the polypigma snails at her job in the ryeberry orchards. When evening came and the village dried out, she'd set to work writing.
"This is my best one yet," she thought and stepped back to admire it.
Suddenly, there was a voice behind her! "It's you!"
Startled, and caught purple-handed with her paint brush, she spun around. She was ready to run.
But of course the Land Lords couldn't read her messages because of their simpler three cone color vision, so they didn't know to look for anyone in the first place, and they hardly noticed that their workers were acting at all dissatisfied. Their heads were in the clouds. They had grown so big from so much wealth, nutrition, and slack. And while it was certainly true that many Proles were complacent in their fear of the Land Lords, willing to have peace at any price and not daring to break curfew, the ones out looking for her were supporters. All of them rebels. They were looking for a leader and they had finally found her.
It would turn out that there were thousands of them.
Everything happened quickly after that. There were enough of them on each of the Giant Land Lords' house staffs that access wasn't an obstacle. The only debate was how. After all, the Pigmies were very small and the giants were very big. The only weapons they had were tiny knives for cutting meat into tiny bites, some construction tools, and little slingshots that they used to chase birds away from eating the polypigma snails. They were very good at fixing things and breaking fixen things, humming, and getting into small spaces, but not known for their prowess on the battlefield. Not to be deterred, Contara d'Arc gave a moving speech with statements of firm belief and total confidence and the rebels cheered her on. She told them that their freedom was "in their hands," and "within their reach," and "close enough to grasp," and that they were "hand in hand," and other sensational idioms about hands. The speech was handily delivered.
"It would be the Night of a Thousand Cuts," concluded Contara to switch it up and be very literal.
The rebels organized into teams of assassins. Each group consisted of 100+ Pigmy Proles and would fall on the Land Lords as they slept, stabbing the wicked rulers in chorus, giving them no chance to fight back or run. Their goal was total annihilation. One thousand brave Pigmy Proles gathered around their leader in a secret grotto concealed by the roots of a pinyon pine. They chose the night of the next new moon.
The giants, with their heads so high above the ground, ignored the smaller things and dreamt of things larger than themselves. In the darkest hour of sleep, the Proles climbed their beds - too softly to disturb the giants' slumber - and made sure that they never awoke.
Only the giants that were light sleepers made it out alive. They awoke to the first poke and jumped up, alert. They flailed their arms madly and scattered the little assassins off their beds, but hundreds of the Proles were on them like a swarm, climbing their bodies with blades. Of those that managed to survive the initial attack, even fewer left with their lives. They fled into the forest to regroup. While swearing revenge, they were too terrified to return right away. How had they not seen this coming? How could the Proles, whom they had ruled over for so long, have done this? They were so small!
The giants went where they could hide. Somewhere that was even bigger than them. They followed the river for days until it reached its source in the Catledge mountains, towering above them. It was the living earth that married the sky, a powerful and constant presence that casted a shadow over all that lived there. But the Land Lords were vainglorious by nature and they began to dig, seeking the very heart of the mountain. They would become something else entirely over time.
As for the Pigmy Proles? They were finally free! Many had fought and a few had died. There was a celebration without joy, mourning the brave that were lost. Fires were lit and stories were made out of the phantom smoke. It was also time to govern themselves. And for that, they needed new words.
They split into two factions - those that fought and those that did not . The first group used statements, war forever in their stories, raising their children on words like "bravery" and "sacrifice." The latter had only questions and sought truth and beauty through poetry. They rarely used words without adorning them with adjectives and making whole puzzles out of phrases. The factions didn't always like or understand each other because they used different definitions. The peaceful felt and the warriors knew. In this, they recognized wholeness and stayed together, even when it was frustrating to communicate.