The Tale of the Watcher

The Tale of the Watcher

(or Parable of the Estate)

There is a tale as old as any of the sentient races of Bennuma, usually told as a parable or morality tale, sometimes as a fable of sorts; it has been translated into every possible manner of speech or writing and passed around in innumerable variations. Sometimes the number of principal characters in the tale are more, sometimes less; some versions are very short and simple while others are more complex and involved, including variations which have amounted to lengthy novelizations based around the basic ideas of the story yet vastly different from each other and barely recognizable as being part of the general collection of stories built upon the same moral from the same basic tale. In its earliest versions to have been recorded in writing, there were five principal characters, and the tale was somewhat simple, as was the moral. Sometimes it was called “the Tale of the Five Siblings.” It could be told something like this:

There once was a grand estate, with grounds and gardens both extensive and beautiful. Five siblings inherited it together, and since it was so large, they decided that each would look after and maintain a different part of the gardens and grounds. The eldest of the five took it upon himself to maintain the wall around the estate and guard the gates and build a watchtower from which he could look out over all the countryside surrounding the estate in order to guard against thieves or anyone else who might come to harm his siblings or any living thing within the walls, or who would damage any part of the estate.

The other four siblings divided the grounds fairly and each set about maintaining the part of the gardens and grounds which each one was best suited to care for based on the particular talents of each. They were all very skilled, but each in a different way.

As time went on, the two youngest of the five siblings began to each claim that their differences made the one superior to the other. They developed a bitter rivalry, and in their efforts to prove themselves each one better than the other, they became willing to not only harm each other, but also to sabotage or destroy parts of each other’s assigned part of the gardens and grounds of the estate.

The eldest sibling was so busy watching the surrounding countryside and trying to finish building his watchtower, that he neglected to notice what was going on inside the estate itself. Meanwhile, the other siblings were dragged into the conflict--first one, and then the other. One who had been the most peaceful of all the siblings had his part of the gardens repeatedly crossed by the two who were rivals, and their efforts to damage each other’s parts of the grounds began to spill over into the the garden area watched over by the peaceful sibling. Moreover, they often came upon each other in crossing that area, and would fight and hurt anything--living or not--that got in their way. When their pacifist brother tried to get them to see the damage they were causing and to stop fighting, they turned on him and he was hurt as well. Their fierce rivalry had become a war on each other, and the more their brother tried to get them to stop fighting, the more they fought, until he was killed for getting between them.

The other sibling with a part of the grounds to care for was the next eldest after the one building the watchtower. She had noticed what was going on, but her part of the grounds was on the other side of the estate and less affected by the fighting. She was deeply concerned, yet for quite some time had been undecided as to what to do. She did not try to involve the eldest brother because he seemed too absorbed in his tasks, and as though he was more distant, almost an outsider now. But when her younger, pacifist brother was killed, she decided to take action and end the conflict herself by whatever means she could, no matter how extreme.

She knew the strength of her siblings who were fighting, and had seen them only get stronger while they fought. Even if she might be able to be as strong as one or the other of them, she certainly could not expect to overpower them both. And the incident with the pacifist brother had convinced her that the two siblings who were fighting would not listen to anyone trying to persuade them to stop fighting, no matter the circumstances.

So, instead she planned a trap for them. She deliberately weakened parts of the manor house and dug below the foundations in certain places, then strategically caused deliberate damage to places in the grounds that would cause her two warring siblings to follow the paths of damage to see where they led. When her siblings got to where she wanted them to be, of course they began fighting each other again, causing further damage to the part of the manor house they had been led to. And, while they were thus distracting each other, the older sister set off her trap by causing part of the foundation to collapse underneath them, which was followed by a large part of the rest of the structure crashing down around and on top of them.

All three of those siblings died there, since the sister who had created and set off the trap had been too far inside the foundations of the building to be able to get out when it came down. But she had expected that, and it was a price she was willing to pay in order to stop all of the destruction that her siblings had been causing to the estate grounds, gardens, and all the living things in it.

Such a disaster was so large that the eldest brother could not fail to notice it, in spite of how absorbed he’d been in his tasks that had kept him looking away from the estate. When he investigated and learned what had happened, he mourned for a very long time. And, ever after that, as he worked hard to repair what he could on the estate, and to care for the living things there, he never forgot that danger and disaster can come from within as easily as from without.