A long Sigh

Intro

An empty Thought lets out a sad sigh that floats off into a fantastical world.

Enjoy!

A long Sigh

By Q Woods

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there lived a Thought. The Thought lived at the bottom of a very deep sea a long way from land and it lived all alone. It was by nature a very sad Thought because it was an empty thought, it thought of very little, and if on the rare occasion it did think something the Thought would think it for only a short while after which this think would escape, never to return, and float like a bubble to the top of the ocean and disappear with a very light puff.

The Thought would then wait a long time to think of something else and when it did have a think, the same would happen and the little thinks that the Thought had would float away forever and ever. This made the Thought very sad indeed.

On and on for a very long time little thinks drifted off until one day the Thought became so sad that, quite unexpectedly, it let out a very big, very sad sigh.

“Sighhh…” it went, and this gave the Thought quite a surprise.

Now, let me tell you something about Sighs. Sighs are very strange things, a sigh is not a thought, oh no! It isn’t an idea either. No, no, a Sigh is a feeling you can feel. Ideas and thoughts disappear, feelings don’t, and this sad feeling in the form of a sigh didn’t disappear.

So, the Thought watched the Sigh float like a bubble to the top of the ocean. When the sigh reached the surface, it didn’t disappear like lost thoughts or ideas, it just bobbed up and down on the waves quietly keeping itself to itself.

Meanwhile the Thought, thought something, and again it escaped and floated away.

Slowly this sad Sigh drifted into warm waters where the sun shone hot and made the day very quiet and peaceful. Eventually after a time it found itself at the bottom of a high cliff with lots of caves at its base. As the Sigh came closer, it was drawn into one of the caves and it became colder. It was dark there and the water was black, and the rocks were slimy and wet. Deeper and deeper went the Sigh into this quiet and dreary cave.

Much time passed and on and on the Sigh was carried along by the current of the underground stream, bouncing off rocks, tumbling over small bubbling waterfalls and generally getting very wet. The sad Sigh just heaved a little, tumbled again, and let the water fall over itself. You see the Sigh was a sad Sigh, an unhappy, downbeat, bluesy sigh of misery. It couldn’t be anything else. It was born by an unhappy Thought, and so was a blurp of melancholy, a blob of pitiful sorrow, a globule of sad emotion with nowhere to go.

As it is with underground streams, they fill with water and push themselves through rock and earth finding a way out from the dark underground and into the light. The Sigh was taken by the stream through rock and mud, over waterfalls and up spouts, dragged deep into pools and then spurted up with bubbles and froth and bounced about. All our sad Sigh could do was heave a bit and be sad.

Much time passed when finally the cave opened up and the stream was released in a great flush into the air, out the side of a cliff and down, down, down and into a wide stream where small pools had formed in grassy meadows. And it was here that the Sigh met the Mood.

*

The Mood lived here on this island, but it wasn’t alone. Now the Mood liked to sit at the edge of a deep pit. It liked it there because in the pit lived lots and lots of lost Feelings, Feelings that had nowhere to go. The Feelings all came from things that had finished with them and they were let go. When new feelings came the old Feeling left and often had nothing to do. Thousands of lonely Feelings wandered aimlessly about. So many of them came to this pit where the Mood lived because without a mood, Feelings can’t be themselves.

Now, the Mood was a funny thing, it was never known what mood the Mood was in. This was sometimes very interesting, for often lots of different Feelings would come and stay with them Mood for a short while.

When an angry Feeling was with the Mood, the Mood would be angry and if a sad Feeling was there the Mood would be sad. When two or even three Feelings were with it, it would be very strange. If an upset Feeling, a happy Feeling and a jokey Feeling were with it it could be very happy, making jokes about being very upset. Indeed, the combination of feelings was endless. There was no controlling what feeling entered the Mood. What was certain though, was that when two or three or four feelings were in the Mood, the mood would behave like all the feelings were working together. When a quarrelsome feeling, a melodramatic feeling, and a blissful feeling were all with the Mood the feelings would blend together to have the Mood happily having very melodramatic quarrels with whatever happened to be close by. If a Zany feeling, a Weepy feeling and a Bewildered feeling were with the Mood it would be quite tearful at being so confused about things while running around doing mad, crazy things like bounce on its head shouting ‘bananas’ backward. That goes ‘sananab’!

So this is how it went on all the time, and it was content with this rather curious and interesting life.

Well the Sigh lay beside the Mood, but it was very sad as it was a sad Sigh. It was such a sad Sigh that that it made the Mood extremely sad, so sad that all the Feelings couldn’t stay and had to leave, including a very depressed Feeling which thought it might stay but became far too miserable and was the last one to go. Then the Mood was all alone with the Sigh. It didn’t feel like doing anything but get sadder and sadder. In fact the sadder it became to smaller it became. It became shriveled and wrinkly.

When all the Feeling saw this they didn’t like it. They didn’t quite feel themselves. The happy Feeling couldn’t feel happy, the funny Feeling wasn’t funny, the Feeling that felt like singing couldn’t sing and all the Feelings moped around not feeling anything at all. It was not a good time for any of them.

They all sat around this little wrinkly Mood watching it be so very sad. Like a puddle of misery.

It is the nature of moods to be changeable, moving from one mood to another, mixing and matching, experimenting with different combinations of feelings. A Mood is never happier than when there is always a cocktail of feelings moving in and out of it. It can be frustrating to talk to a Mood. Never knowing how the Mood will react to you. Shouting one minute, crying the next, laughing hysterically and looking proud or staring angrily it was just impossible to have a proper chat.

So the longer the sad Sigh sat within the mood the longer the Mood was terribly sad and blubbed sad, salty tears, surrounded by numb feelings.

For a while they all sat there in awful silence and apart from the sad sighs and moans of the Mood, it was very quiet. Usually, things can be quite boisterous around the Mood, but now it was silent. But this didn’t last too long because along came a very noisy, disruptive creature.

Like a tornado of anger, there was a huge flurry of dust and stick and leaf and stone. A roar and a bash, a crash and a crack and a raging scream filled the air. The loudest thumps rocked the ground and a long, low, loud bellowing sent everything trembling away. This was a dreadful Rage, and it bashed its way to the mood. Not much can stop a Rage. It roars its way around and everything gets out of its way. A Rage is a very angry feeling, but a Dreadful Rage is a feeling carried about by a Mood. The two carry each other, both tumbling around creating havoc and horror.

Normally other feelings didn’t like being around the Dreadful Rage and leave it alone, scuttling away to hide from the wrath. However, this time they were lucky that it came along.

The very sad Mood didn’t scuttle away with the rest of the feelings, it stayed there in its misery puddle, sad.

The Dreadful Rage flew straight for the Mood and roared so loud that rocks round it cracked, the water in a small stream was splashed into the air, the air vibrated and shook and the Mood cowed under the awful pressure of the Dreadful Rage’s roar. It sank into the ground and the sigh was left sitting facing the Rage.

The Sigh is a blob of pure sadness, and the Rage a tornado of utter anger and they faced each other with their feelings. Now the Dreadful Rage hadn’t come across this before. An intense sadness that didn’t run and hide but faced the Rage. And the Rage felt some of the sadness enter it, and its roars became tinged with sorrow, and as it bashed the ground it began to blub wet, angry and sad tears. The Dreadful Rage turned away from the Sigh and the moved off letting out great miserable roars.

The sigh was left in the Mood’s pit and the numb feelings rushed down and whooshed the Sigh into the air and into a large pot of cold porridge that was carried away by a Wanderlust that happened to be passing. The porridge fed the Wanderlust on its journey to nowhere in particular. The Wanderlust always found nowhere to be an interesting place to go, as wherever nowhere is there is always somewhere and where ever there is a somewhere is there is always a something. And a something is never nothing which makes that somewhere very interesting.

The Wanderlust carried the pot of porridge away with the Sigh, while all the other Feelings went back to the Mood. A happy feeling entered the Mood, a feeling of relief entered the Mood, and a feeling that wanted to dance entered the Mood and all the feelings and the Mood danced and sang and were cheered up and everything returned to the same as it was before.

*

For a long way the Wanderlust hauled the Sigh and the pot of Porridge. It wasn’t going anywhere in particular when it started to climb a high mountain. But it took a long time as the pot of porridge was heavy and the Wanderlust was becoming tired and impatient to go faster. So, it threw off the porridge pot from its back, with its spoon scooped up the Sigh and tossed it to the side, and ate all the porridge, licking the pot clean. It then left the sigh on the side of the path, on the mountain and continued along its wandering way, much relieved to be able to go a little quicker.

Thus the Sigh was left on a cold, windy mountain for a long time. It was extra sad because it didn’t like porridge, a cold, sticky mess.

*

After a long, long time in the cold and wind, perched on the side of a rocky mountain the Sigh was found.

Bouncing along the mountain path with a ravenous eye, a huge mouth and an even bigger stomach came a Terrible Hunger that saw the sigh in the pot of porridge and gobbled the Sigh with a great scoop of its tongue, leaving the empty pot to roll off down the mountain.

Now a Terrible Hunger is not a very happy thing at all because it has an enormous appetite and nothing it eats satisfies it. Its huge stomach is so full of acid that dissolves everything that goes in and becomes liquid almost instantaneously. And I mean anything, bicycles, bricks, rotten fruit, tables, mattresses, old windows, musical instruments (including once a piano which produced some interesting farting). As the Terrible Hunger was mainly eye, mouth and stomach bouncing on one large foot this was quite a precarious act. Too much roly-poly movement and it becomes dizzy.

Now this Terrible Hunger was especially unhappy because just before eating the porridge covered Sigh it had eaten a putrid little spite, a very mean little Spite indeed. So mean that it gave the Hunger an upset tummy. The putrid little Spite turned its meanness into a bile that curdled the Hunger’s stomach.

Soon after it ate the porridge and Sigh a horrible thing happened to the Hunger, something that had never happened before, it felt sick. It lumbered about all dizzy, groggy and wobbly and went back to the Rusty old gas oven where it lived, feeling very sorry for itself.

As the Sigh discovered, the insides of a Terrible Hunger are not very pleasant at all. It is incredibly wet and smelly, so smelly that no matter how hard you hold your nose the smell gets everywhere. Not just one smell, but lots of nasty stinks all around trying to get inside you. The Sigh had landed in a shallow pool of sticky, gungy, liquid, lumpy, yuck, that covered it all over and got into its mouth and tasted horrible and began to sizzle and burn it. The Sigh couldn’t see very much only lots of shadows and a grey light that came into the sickly tummy every time the Hunger breathed. However, it could hear all the slurps and burps and belches that the belly of the hunger made as it churned over all the lumpy, sticky liquid that bubbled around.

The putrid little Spite was curdling the contents of the hungers stomach. Frothy waves of fermenting thick liquid splashed about with coagulated puke swirling in circles. The Hunger was becoming sicker and sicker and the Sigh could hear a rumbling become louder and louder. Gas was swirling around the Hunger’s stomach, picking things up and throwing them about. The Hunger at any moment was going to let out a long, large sickly burp.

The burp was so big that it made the Hunger swell up and look very fat and bloated. It got so swirly and whirly that it was ready to burst. Suddenly the Hunger’s mouth opened and the thick, sickly burp was released churning up the Hunger’s insides, picking up the Sigh and the Little Spite and shooting them out its mouth, in a long rumbling burrrrrrrp that came from deep within the Hunger’s belly and spewed the bilious gas into the air.

Following the gaseous burp came a spew of the sticky, slimy, lumpy, goo from the Hunger’s belly that followed the Sigh as it flew through the air and when the Sigh landed with a bump on a hill, a large splodge of sickly goo splashed down onto the Sigh’s head, covering it and leaving the Sigh in a stinky puddle of vomit.

The Spite had landed close by also drenched in green/brown stinky, frothy, gunk and was feeling extra spiteful in that moment. It lay there, seething with hate.

Meanwhile, the Sigh had landed on a smooth slab of rock on a hill. The sticky sick was greasy and slimy and as the Sigh landed it slid down this smooth slab and slid faster down the hill, gathering speed. It was a steep hill and rocky with large boulders poking themselves up into the air and the sigh, as it hopped and bounced down the hill, ping ponged on these rocks and it was sore, but the sad Sigh felt nothing but sadness.

The hill came to an end in a rocky ravine with caves that burrowed deep into the ground. The Sigh ping ponged one last time on a big boulder, flew up into the air, landed at the mouth of one of these caves and rolled into the darkness below.

It was a steep cave. A narrow path tumbled down into the blackness and the Sigh rolled down and down into the dark.

*

But what of the little Spite that was heaved up by the Hunger. After the Spite had been thrown far off, it became really hateful. It had grown in its spite to become a Seething Spite full of nasty wishes and dreams. It watched the sad Sigh bounce off down the hill and an evil, spiteful urge came into its nasty little mind and it followed the Sigh down the hill and watched as it rolled into the cave. And the Spite stayed close behind the Sigh, watching in the grey dark of the cave.

On the Sigh rolled down into the cave until it opened into a large cavern that was warm and soft underneath. This was no ordinary cavern, this cavern was home to the Comfort, a large creature with big sleepy eyes and gigantic hands that are furry and soft. The Sigh fell into these hands and lay there very still while the Comfort closed them slowly about it.

A comfort is a lovely creature. It is big and it cuddles you. You lie in its arms and forget all your troubles and worries. Its big droopy eyes stare lovingly at you while you sleep and dream. Then you wake up all warm and fuzzy and happy and you give the Comfort a long cuddle in return and then you go on your way.

And the Sigh lay in the Comforts arms and the Comfort was gentle, softly stroking and holding the Sigh quietly. But because the Sigh was a sad Sigh nothing can be done to cheer it up. No matter how hard the Comfort tried it couldn’t change the Sigh. It gazed with its large brown eyes, caressed the Sigh with its soft furry hands, gently rocked back and forth and hummed a beautiful tune but nothing happened. The Sigh was sad and it couldn’t change.

It was the first time this had ever happened to the Comfort when it wasn’t able to comfort something. Gradually the Sigh’s sadness moved into it and a tear began to form in the Comfort’s eye. It tried and tried to cheer up the Sigh but more tears formed until the Comfort was sobbing loudly and large, wet tears flowed down its face.

It cried so much that it took its hands from the Sigh and wailed out, rubbing its eyes ‘Whaaaaaaaa….snortt…whaaaaaaa…blub…whaaaaaaaaaa!’ it went, echoing around the cavern. When a Comfort starts to cry, and let me tell you now that a Comfort rarely cries, if ever, but when a comfort starts to cry it doesn’t stop, not until it runs out of tears.

Th Sigh was becoming awfully wet from the fat drops of tears plopping on its head. The tears flowed and they became a salty stream that tumbled away and swept the Sigh off the Comforts lap and down further into the cave.

All the way down, deeper into the cave the Sigh floated on the salty, teary stream and the loud ‘Whaaaaas and booo hoooos’ of the very sad Comfort could be heard, echoing off the walls until they became a dim wail in the grey dark. The Sigh just sighed to itself and bobbed away.

Meanwhile, high above and watching was the seething Spite, with its little beady eye and its nasty, toothy smile.

On the Sigh was brought until the stream flowed off a ledge and fell into an underground lake.

Down fell the Sigh landing in the lake with a splash. The lake was still and after the Sigh stopped bobbing up and down it lay there on the lake surface barely moving at all. There wasn’t a ripple nor a quiver of movement. The lake was a sheet of clear glass, dimpled once by the little Sigh. And it was dark. No light came into the lake cave. The dark sucked any light that might creep into the cave and no light whatsoever reached the lake surface.

The stillness was pleasant. Floating, weightless, nothingness. The dark silence in that huge cavern was, for the Sigh, a relief. Since leaving the sad thought at the bottom of the sea the Sigh hadn’t stopped. Its troubles had been lots and with no aim or direction or plan, the Sigh followed the paths that came before it. The Mood, the Hunger, the Comfort all met the Sigh and not much good came of it. All that tumbling over, falling, swishing around in streams, bouncing off rocks, slopping trough sticky goo and the sad Sigh was now still and it was still sad. The emptiness of the dark made the Sigh forget about itself and it became a tiny dot of sadness on a big still lake. The occasional ‘drollop’ and ‘plop’ of loose drips of water broke the silence brought the Sigh back to itself and it would wait for the next ‘galloup’ to echo through the dark.

However, the Sigh was not alone for if the Sigh could see through the deep darkness it would see a beady little eye watching and waiting, a nasty little eye with badness in mind.

It the dark there is no time. You are, you were and you will be all at the same moment. The Sigh is there, was there and will be there forever and for never. In that dark silence the Sigh didn’t, wouldn’t and couldn’t feel or be. It bobbed in the dark nothingness where there was no time or place.

The Sigh was almost content and sad sighs can be but this would not last. All of a sudden a net dropped through the cavern, floated through the dark and onto the Sigh, curling around it, and hauling the it up and up. The Sigh was caught by a pack of Spites that tied the Sigh up and let out excited ‘Weeeeesss..’ and squeals of delight.

That nasty little Spite had brought back other Spites and they carried the Sigh to the top of a mountain where all the other little spites lived.

*

It’s not a good thing to be caught by a Spite, let alone a pack of nasty little Spites. All Spites want to do is be horrible and nasty just because that’s what they do. Awful little creatures with sharp pin teeth, bad breath, tiny, yellow eyes, round prickly bodies and a habit of letting out foul smelling gasses when they want to. Their body hair can form arms or legs, pinchers or pokers or grabbers to pull, poke, pinch, grab or punch whatever they want to be nasty to.

The more the poor creature suffers small humiliations and discomforts the more vile they feel and feeling vile was the best feeling of them all for Spites. Like a warm wave through their bodies, feeling vile, a dirty grotty feeling, is the greatest feeling Spites can have. They sleep well under a shroud of vile, they are calm with vile in their hearts and they are at peace with the flavour of vile on their tongues.

They used to stay on the top of the mountain and be horrible and nasty to each other but they didn’t like this and they found that if they helped each other there were so many things they could be nasty and spiteful to. They left the top of the mountain and sometimes alone and sometimes in small groups to hunt down and bring back to the mountain poor creatures to be horrible to.

There was no particular time for the Spites to be nasty to their captives. Before breakfast setting them up for the day, before lunch to give them an appetite was a favourite and a little after dinner spite to help them digest. After dinner nasties were a real favourite, a sweet type of horrible like the nostril tickle or the smelly gas puff or itchy back powder. For other more serious nasties there would be the pooh dunk, the sick drink or the Spite rhymes which were so awful and badly rhymed that they felt like hot oily sand pulled through the ears. Spites would spend a long time composing these nasty rhymes which they would read to each other, squealing with delight at how awful they were. Well to them they sounded beautiful, but to all other creatures, plants, insects, mushrooms, fungus, ghosts and things that didn’t exist yet, the poems were harrowing. A white horror overcomes the listener, a fearful dread enters the body and the creature listening starts to wail and screech loudly.

Aside from well-thought out nasties there were the casual acts of horribleness. Hiding false teeth, spitting into food, letting off a nasty gas at dinner, a spontaneous bogy flick, an itch at the wrong time in the wrong place, and a real favourite was the rotten toilet water splash. All in all a nasty bunch of creatures.

The sad sigh was captured by the Spites and they did some terrible nasty things to it which made the Sigh look very small and silly and look particularly pathetic. But the Sigh couldn’t feel anything but sadness. No matter what they did, how horrible they were, they couldn’t make the Sigh anything else but sad.

They poked, puked on, pinched and pulled the poor Sigh. They licked the Sigh with their awful soggy tongues, they dunked the Sigh in pooh, puke and puddles of pee. They laughed as the Sigh was held up and spat at and flicked at, but the Sigh stayed sad, and the Spites just could not get that intense feeling of vile and they got bored. Slowly they moved off in search of another little creature to torment. A couple of Spites brought the Sigh deeper into the mountain and threw it into a dungeon and locked the door shut.

A narrow beam of light shone in from a window high up. The air was damp and thick with a musty smell of fungus and mold, and the ground was sticky with a cold mud. Here the Sigh lay. A grey light brought a chill through the window and the damp air pulled all warmth out of the Sigh that slid into a dark corner, feeling sad.

*

Why had the Sigh ended up here? The sad Sigh was sad and feelings like sadness don’t evaporate and leave, but often become stronger and unless a change happens these feelings can become quite thick and move into other creatures nearby. Other creatures that are able to absorb these feelings and take them on and feel them, and understand them like a Memory. A Memory is a creature that absorbs all the things around it and keeps it safe for later. Things like knowledge, experiences, information, and feelings. It is very useful because it can have adventures by learning and remembering from the long distant past. Remembering the past tells a story and lets you paint a picture of who you are and where you come from. Sometimes memories are not always a true picture and deep remembering of events and feelings is important to see how things are right now.

The Sigh lay in this dank dungeon giving off sadness. Like a gas, the sadness took over the whole cell, moving into every corner and cranny and stuck to the walls like a slime. Because the Sigh was such a sad Sigh it wasn’t aware of anything else but its own sadness and it didn’t see an empty Memory slumped in the corner.

This empty Memory was hushed and blank. It had no memories, no pictures in its head, no sounds or smells or any ideas or inkling of where it came from or how long it had been there. It was a Memory that had been captured by the Spites and emptied. The Spites had been terrible to this Memory. After emptying it of all memories they jumped into it and gave the Memory all their own nasty memories, all the awful, rotten things they had done, all the filthy deeds of the Spites were inserted into the Memory and the Memory was forced to remember these horrid moments. Of course the Spites had great joy in the Memories horrors and each of the Spites poured in their noxious acts so the Memory could remember them. Then they left the Memory and emptied it completely till it was a vacuum, an empty space, an empty Memory.

The Memory and the Sigh lay in two corners of the dungeon, oblivious of each other, the Memory empty, the Sigh sad. As it is with the Sigh’s sadness, it gassed out and like a thick gas and filled the whole cell with a heavy misery.

The Memory, for so long empty, now began to soak up this sadness. It dissolved into it and filled the Memory with this feeling. Along with the feeling came memories. Memories of being lost, memories of loneliness, of wanting to be elsewhere. As these memories grew stronger the Memory moved toward the Sigh and when they touched the Sigh felt itself move into the Memory. Like merging bubbles, the Sigh and Memory became like one creature.

The Memory had discovered the Sigh, or the Sigh discovered the Memory, or they both discovered each other, and it was a very special moment. The Memory had been in the dungeon for a very long time, it couldn’t remember how long, but it was longer than the longest thing ever. All this time it was unhappy because it had nothing to remember, a blank emptiness, like a deflated balloon, but filled with nothingness. Now the Sigh had come into the Memory it had something to remember. It remembered a deep sadness, it remembered the journey the Sigh that took the Sigh to the dungeon and to the Memory.

Most of all it remembered where the Sigh had come from. It had come from the Thought, a sad, empty Thought, a Thought that needed a Memory, a Memory just like this one. A new feeling came into the Memory, a feeling of need, a feeling of wanting, a feeling that there was something, somewhere it had to be.

The Memory stirred and knew it had to be elsewhere and started to climb the walls. The slippery walls didn’t give much grip for the Memory but slowly, and with great effort, the Memory clasped at the nooks and crannies until it reached the open window and squeezed out to find itself halfway up the side of a mountain. Both Sigh and Memory looked out over a vast, green hilly landscape with rivers, and streams, and forests of trees quivering in the light breeze.

In one moment they let go and tumbled down the hill to the bottom of the mountain and lay there feeling the fresh air flow over them. Then like jelly they wobbled forward not knowing where or in which direction they should go. They came to a narrow path and rested and waited.

*

It wasn’t long before they heard a low rumbling, a grumbling voice, muttering stuff nothing understood. Non-sensical murmurs with the occasional babble of rumbling words getting louder as it bumbled along the path.

“Slammeryblouchdramudlebyplochiglodumicslet…” it went, over and over again.

This was a Mumble, sometimes called a Grumbly Mumble due to the mumbly grumbles the Mumble tumbled out of its rumbly mouth. It was a stumpy creature with large rubbery lips that flopped and flapped as it mumbled. It had a small body and one round ball of a leg that rolled it along. Its large eyes looked always down and a hood shielded its head and face from view. The hood trailed down to a cloak that was pulled along behind as the Mumble bumbled along, bumping over stones and branches onward to some unknown destination.

Now Mumbles are the sort of creatures that don’t know what’s going on around them. They trundle along, hopping over things looking only at the ground before them. Their heads are down and they let out loud long mumbles. Six hundred years is how long they live, an awful long time grumbling about who knows what. A very long time ago there lived a large old mountain that became so grumpy because of the rotten gasses produced in its belly, possibly due to some nasty spites, and it let out a huge and loud grumble and to its surprise hundreds of millions of Mumbles poured out and went off mumbling and grumbling in all directions. That was the first and last big grumble the mountain let out and it promised never to let out another. It did occasionally, however, grumble and some mumbles tumbled out and it did try hard not to let out any more.

As the Mumble passed the Memory and Sigh, they rolled onto its long cloak and were pulled along down the path and all the way they heard the grumbling mumbles of the Mumble.

*

But what of our empty Thought at the bottom of the sea. Dear reader, we’ve been telling the very eventful story of the sad Sigh and quite forgotten about the Thought. Let’s go back to the deep ocean where the Thought lay, still sad and still lonely. Its thoughts still vanishing away. Thoughts should be saved and shared together with other thoughts and with other creatures whose think lots of good things. A thought gone to waste is lost to nothingness. Thoughts should be shared and more thoughts created by thinking bigger thoughts. To have thoughts drift off into nothingness is a sad thing, leaving an empty space that grows larger and sadder and fills more emptiness. As it was with the Thought. It slowly swelled becoming bigger, covering more space and inside the vacuum of nothingness grew larger.

The Thought lay at the bottom of the ocean and anything could happen to it because it just lay there doing very little but let out empty thoughts that vanished. It was at the mercy of the sea which sometimes became very stormy.

Up o the surface of the ocean the sea was becoming very angry. A storm was brewing, clouds were racing across the sky, dark, rumbling clouds of thunder, lightning and black rain waiting to crash down into the sea. A strong wind whirled around picking up mountains of water and splashing them down again. Waves smashed about as a dark grey pressed down on the sea. The air was in torment, whizzing around until a massive whirlwind emerged out of the sea. Its wide top stretched up into the clouds and the pointed base reached deep into the water pulling up huge amounts of water and spun it around its core as it dragged along the bottom of the ocean. This was a waterspout, a huge funnel of water rising out of the sea, spinning around pulling everything it comes close to into its chaotic whirl.

As the point of the whirlwind dragged along to bottom of the ocean it pulled the Thought up and up into its twisting pandemonium.

The Thought could do nothing but be dragged away and up into the waterspouts crazy whirling. But the Thought, sad and swollen though nothing about this and if an empty thought emerged it would disappear, whisked away, lost forever.

For days the waterspout whirled across the sea until finally it found land and it lost all its power and melted onto the ground in a great big puddle. All the things it picked up were scattered around and the Thought was flung over a small hill where it landed in the roots of a tree beside a tinkling stream. The sky was blue, long green grass swayed their heads in the gentle breeze and tall flowers lifted their blossoms to the warm sun. Insects and birds went about their business and small fish swam in the stream below the Thought.

All the while this was happening to the Thought, the Memory and Sigh were still with the mumble. They had also been in the storm and had sheltered under an overhanging rock, listening to the Mumble grumbling away.

Before we go on let’s talk about a mysterious thing that can’t be explained by science or logic or any manner of deep thinking. It happens when you least expect it and it is usually a good thing that happens. This is a Coincidence, a chance happening, meeting or fortuitous event that brings good luck. Living is like a web of paths that we travel on. This web is created by our own actions and choices and as paths cross, we can choose to take them or not. We walk, or run, down our lifepath, making it as we go, not fully sure where it takes us. Many paths cross by chance or because others travel a similar route, or we bump into others by accident with no plan. This is how the Memory and Sigh met the Thought. A pure and happy coincidence when the Mumble and Sigh were caught in the same roots as the Thought.

The Mumble was stumbling along, mumbling loudly when it toppled over and down the banks of the stream and the Memory and Sigh slipped off the cloak and into the water with a splash and flowed away. The poor Mumble was mucky and wet, picked itself up, grumbled loudly and it made its way off in the other direction.

The Memory and Sigh were carried away by the very same stream that the Thought was lying beside. This is the moment the three met when the Memory and Sigh were snarled in the same roots as the Thought. No more adventures, or chance meetings with strange creatures, a very quick end to this story brought about by a wonderful coincidence. Who would have imagined the Thought and its sad Sigh would be reunited. But this is not quite the end because something beautiful started to happen with the Memory and Thought.

The Thought didn’t know what happened when it felt a bump, but a warm feeling came all over it. It just stayed as it was, but now the Thought wasn’t empty.

‘How sad I am!’ it thought to itself.

Then it thought again. ‘I do feel sad!’

A strange feeling grew inside it.

‘Sadness, I remember sadness.’

The Thought lay very still, not thinking for a moment. Then It thought again:

‘It is warm! The sun is warm!’ It thought. And a little later it thought, ‘I remember warmth!’ it happily thought.

Th Thought could remember. When the Memory and the Sigh landed in the roots of the tree they were drawn to the Thought had dissolved into it. They all became one: the Thought, the Sigh, finally back with the Thought, and the Memory. The Thought now had a memory. This meant it could remember. Thoughts that occurred weren’t lost but were kept and stored.

The Memory now had a home in the Thought, keeping thoughts and feelings stored away, sorting, filing, finding, and sometimes forgetting. The Memory became a part of the Thought, like the petal on a flower, or the keys of a piano, it played a vital part in how the Thought was.

The Thought now had a memory. The thoughts and feelings it had stayed with it and it could think many things and learn many things because these ‘thinks’ stayed and with each thought came another thought that created a very intelligent, thinking Thought.

For a long time the Thought went on thinking many great things and after a while it thought:

‘How happy I am!’ and it let out a very long, very happy Sigh.

‘Sighhhhh….!’ It went and a very long, happy Sigh popped out and wondered off. The Sigh was now a happy Sigh. Everywhere the Sigh went, warm feelings of happiness followed.

The Thought now lives in the roots of a fine tree, by the stream. Tree grew around and over it, forming a cavern of branches and leaf keeping it warm and protected from the cold and rain. Over time the Thought came up with many very deep and meaningful thoughts and many creatures would come to it and ask questions. The thought would think about these questions and come up with many wise answers, and it would remember the questions and answers because it had a Memory.

The Thought became very wise and full of wisdom and it lived under the tree, beside the stream, well known and well respected.

Epilogue

The nasty little Spite had followed the Memory and Sigh all the way on their journey, waiting for a moment to leap out and be horribly nasty to them. It had some opportunities but missed every time making it more and more enraged and determined to be so nasty. It was full of horrid rage. When the Thought let out the long and happy Sigh, the Spite followed the Sigh waiting for a chance to leap. Behind a rock it spied the Sigh lolloping happily and it leapt, jumping into the Sigh and started to be nasty and spiteful as best it could.

But this was a happy Sigh. And when the Spite leapt into it the Sigh felt a jolt, like a burp going down the wrong way. Inside the Sigh the Spite tried so hard to be awful, tried to be horrid but because the Sigh was a happy Sigh, all the effort of the Spite had no effect. In fact, the Sigh started to change the Spite. Slowly a happy feeling came over the Spite. Warm feelings of contentment, of connecting happily with all the other creatures in the world filled the Spite and the Spite was turned into a Little Wonderful.

This Little Wonderful popped out on the Sigh and skipped off and began to do wonderful things for creatures, helping them, making them happy, telling jokes, cooking dinners, baking lovely cakes. It even met some rotten Spites and turned them into Little Wonderfuls too.

Even nasty Little Spites can be turned into something good…sometimes!

END