by C S » Wed Feb 16, 2011 10:34 pm
Desrium glanced from the pages to look out of the window, thinking about what he had read. He had come across a collection of short stories and legends in the book. One of them being a tale of a man who, despite being poor, had found love and happiness. He did not need much to bring him joy and was content with spending the days with his beloved. One day he found an unassuming cup, and after getting over the suprise of finding it in the street, he decided to keep it. Over time he realized the cup was enchanted and when ever he was saddened, pearls would appear in the cup. The man soon saught out to find ways to make himself sad so that his wealth would grow, discarding his happiness. He would go out into the streets and look at the world with bitter eyes, seeing all that was wrong and increasing his misery. The man's wealth grew, but as time went on, the cup would only give him pearls as he gradually became sadder and sadder. In the end, his greed and bitterness got the better of him, and he sat amongst his luxury holding the bloodied body of his wife, the cup over flowing with pearls. Desrium had read the story through, not noticing the irony of the tale, or the moral that greed leads to dispair. It took a few moments of thought for him to make the connections, resulting in a mental "Ah..." as he understood. He liked the challenge of figuring things out for himself, and was eager to read another one of Zuppoland's stories
