Once

[micki]

Once upon a time in a faraway land a lithe young blonde boy nimbly gamboled over the fallen oak. The branches creaked in the wind in time with the swaying primrose heads. He reached out and grasped for the ...

[Newbie]

branch above his head with the bud just about to burst open into bloom. He missed the branch and his arm fell down onto his own body. But before he could utter even the slight breath of disappointment, a robin landed on the very same branch that had been his target. And not just any robin, but a great fat robin that obviously been at rest on that very branch in years before.

[kittie]

Wishing he had a camera, the little boy tried to reach for the bird instead! How many times in your life can you be that close to a robin, he had to see if he could feel the softness of the feathers, just to be sure they were as he had imagined them to be when he looked at his Christmas cards.

As he reached out, high above his head, he lost his footing and.......

[phantomguitarist]

was miraculously saved by the robin, whose wings turned out to be much stronger than one would expect on such a rotund specimen. The young boy marvelled at his stroke of good fortune, the jeans he had on were designer Armani's and his dad would kill him if he were to come home with muddy knees.

His fascination turned to horror however, as.....

[Big Tim]

A vision swept over him. He saw hundreds rows of skinny kids, about the same age as himself, all hunched over in a dimly lit barn so vast that the earth's curvature could be be percieved the roof beams. He squinted into his vision to see what it was they worked at so feverishly and to his horror he saw they were busy sewing the very jeans that he wore. How different their world was from his he thought, where he was free to play in the forest they were bound to a life of drudgery and hunger, and for what?

A big tear rolled down his cheek and he looked at the robin who gazed steadily back at him.

"Why are you showing me this?" He asked the Robin, his voice cracking as he fought the sadness that filled him.

The Robin blinked and drew breath to speak.........

[kittie]

"Sometimes" the robin said carefully "just sometimes you need to be shown that there is a whole other world to the one you know and see out there! These children are not on the poverty line that the Government speak of, they live so far below that line that it becomes necessary for children like you, who think that the world owes you everything, to find out the harsh truth about yourselves. Your task now is to live amongst them and share their sorrows so that you can better understand the way of the world and maybe become a better person from your knowledge of this!"

The boy pondered for several moments before declaring..........

[phantomguitarist]

........ "Fuck that for a game of soldiers!!!"

[kittie]

........ "Fuck that for a game of soldiers!!!"

There's always one who has to spoil it for the rest! Are you taking over from SPB whilst he's away with his missis???

[phantomguitarist]

........ "Fuck that for a game of soldiers!!!"

There's always one who has to spoil it for the rest! Are you taking over from SPB whilst he's away with his missis???

I was actually playing the game, kittie. I thought I can have 2 go's if you did. It seemed like a pretty obvious response from our protagonist if you ask me.

[kittie]

........ "Fuck that for a game of soldiers!!!"

The robin promptly picked the boy up by the scruff of his neck and carried him to the highest point of the tallest mountain and dropped him into a crevasse!

"Nobody will miss that little shit! One day I will find a child worthy of the task of saving the world, until that day I will drop as many of the little tw@s into these crevasses as possible!"

He flew on his way to find the next candidate for the saviour, or possibly murder victim!

[Big Tim]

The boy was falling and sliding. Bumping off the steep, sharp rocky walls, occasional tree roots whipped his face and shark rocks flayed away his overpriced designer clothes and scratched and grazed his skin. He held his breath, aticipated a crushing impact but it never came. Instead, far below, he saw a torquoise glow. It bloomed beneath him. He lots all sense that he was falling and breathed again. His mind unable to anticipate anything.

In an instant he found himself falling through the dome of a vast cavern toward a lake of rippling blue green. The water was illuminated from beneath by shaols of millions of neon fish that made the cavern nearly as bright as day stalagmites and stalagtites glistened with crystaline reflections across the roof and around the shores of the lake.

In the instant that he saw this he was shocked back to his senses as he plunged into the icy water. Deep down he plunged before he could start to pull himself to the surface again, his stomach stinging from the impact with the waters surface and the chill water cramping him.

Then he felt something rise beneath him, pushing him up to safety.

He broke the surface, gasping for breath to find himself astride an angler fish the size of a cow. It propelled itself gently to the waters edge and let him slide gently on to the glistening sand......