A Metaphor for HeroQuesting.

From: Michael Cule <mikec_at_room3b.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 97 00:03:53 GMT


I was around at my mother's today and about four thirty, just before we were going to sit down to our meal, a magpie flew into the main downstairs room. It started to batter against the window, trying to fly out again. I tried to open the window, but my mother had those locks on it that require hex-keys to open so I got hold of the bird, wrapping my hands around it.

It had battered its head against the glass and there was some blood there but it wasn't otherwise injured so I took it outside muttering
"Daft bird...". Just before I released it, it pecked at my fingers and
I said "Hey, no biting!" and let it go.

As it flew off I saw a flock of the things around the house and counted (I think) four or five of them, muttering as I did so the old rhyme,
"One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy. Five
for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told."

Now consider things from the Magpie's point of view. This is how he reports his journey to the Other World.

"I flew into this great cave but there were huge un-bird like creatures
there. I tried to fly out again but the air turned to rock before me, perhaps due to an evil sorcery. I bashed my head against the hard air and a pair of pink trees reached past me and then caught me up in their branches. I was tangled up so that I couldn't move my wings and I was brought close up to the mouth of one of the un-bird monsters. It looked at me as if it was going to eat me! Then suddenly I was out in the fresh air again. I used the only part of myself that I could move, my beak, and the creature obviously frightened by my valour let me go and I rejoined my tribe."

He knows nothing of my motives or concerns and nothing of hexagonal-key window locks or the insurance companies that force people to fit them. He doesn't know how lucky he is he wasn't there when Cleo the cat was away hunting elsewhere or why a feline is named for an ancient Queen of Egypt. It knows nothing of superstitions about Magpies or the fact that some people hate them because they eat the eggs of songbirds.

Far as he's concerned he had a frightening adventure and learned you can defeat the un-bird monsters by pecking them just right.

Isn't that bird just like a human sticking his nose into the Hero Plane?

Michael Cule

Actor And Genius
AKA Theophilus Prince Archbishop Of The Far Isles Medieval Society Arms Purpure An Open Book Proper: On the Dexter Page an Alpha Or On the Sinister an Omega Or. Motto Nulla Spes Sit in Resistendo (Resistance is Useless). Ask me about the Far Isles: Better Living through Pan-Medieval Anachronisms.


Powered by hypermail