#226: The Troglodyte's Children's Children's Children
For Tuesday, August 13 Day 226 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge
Wishman was so called by his people because he was a dreamer. After the children were asleep and no women wanted him, his belly filled from the bounty garnered from the day's hunting-gathering, he wandered out of his clan's shelter to stare at the stars. The rest of his clan knew better than to disturb their patriarch during his meditations.
They called them his wishes; he knew them as predictions. The season had been cruel to his kind. It wasn't lost on him that they had dwindled. Yet he knew his brain differed from the aimless animals he hunted.
The gods gave me my thoughts. What I wish will happen.
These are our future, he mused to himself about the stars. They invite us. One day we'll go there. We will harness magic and the gods will bless us. We will double our knowledge of the ways of the world and the wisdom of the gods. And we will double it yet again.
And again and again, until we double our magic within days instead of generations. We men will become the gods to the gods, themselves! The stars will pay homage to us. Our children's children's children will leave the caves and reshape the land, giving us dominion over the verdant growth and the walking and swimming and flying beasts. We are destined for greatness!
I pray to the gods that we will achieve what I see in us. How we will relocate at will, eat by our whims, and have no enemies.
It was a full moon, and he regarded that, too. My friend, he thought, you are my witness. Our people will cover this flat Earth, wage peace, gather together to advance all the causes of which I dream now—oh! but will scheme in due time.
Even in the moonlight, he could make out the anemic dustdevil that spun around him. He scoffed at it. The skies and the clouds and the winds themselves will obey us. The magic we will harness is our destiny.
Our future is great and it is set!
Wishman's children's children's children were the last Neanderthals to walk the round Earth, albeit clumsily, as they fell to extinction.
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AUTHOR'S NOTES:
For Tuesday, August 13, Day 226 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge
366 WORDS (without A/N)
Accompaniment photos were AI-generated but pathos was not.
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THIS CHALLENGE GRINDS ON, 366 WORDS AT A TIME...
There are currently three surviving prolific, pretentious, promiscuous, and antediluvian Vocal cave wall artists still participating in the insane, inane, paleolithic, oligomythic 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:
• L.C. Schäfer, (challenge originator)
• Rachel Deeming (challenge participant)
• Gerard DiLeo (wishfull thinker)
Read them. Support them. And remember that 2% of your DNA which isn't what you thought it was!
About the Creator
Gerard DiLeo
Retired, not tired. Hippocampus, behave!
Make me rich! https://www.amazon.com/Gerard-DiLeo/e/B00JE6LL2W/
My substrack at https://substack.com/@drdileo
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Comments (8)
Aye, but there’s a bit o Neanderthal in us all. Clever, clever tale, Gerard!
Oooo, I loveeeeee that ending!! It was awesomeeee!
Interesting tale
Oh wow that ending! I aspire to your mastery of the Twist!
Your tale does some justice to Wishman and those like him.
It's jarring, the ending and the reveal that this Wishman was from the past and not our future. That longing and foresight and dreaming - what beautiful prose. This has left me feeling pensive and wondering about the distractions we have today, how our wishes may not always reach the stars if we're not connecting with them, barely connecting with the earth. Lovely work.
Are we going extinct do you think. The young are opting out of having wee ones. In a hundred, a thousand years. It is coming. Joining with Wishman here in his musings.
Poor old Wishman. That ending - hammer blow.