MOAB

Chapter 55: Dolios - Brain operating @ 5.2 times normal human speed

Chapter 55: Dolios - Brain operating @ 5.2 times normal human speed

Five years later:

Melpomene put little Dolios to sleep with a fairy tale. It was his favourite tale, a story about a prince who was locked at the top of a tower, cursed by a witch to speak too fast.

The prince had to work one night, and he didn’t have time to read all of the necessary books for his important meeting with a diplomat from another land. He complained about it out loud. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give so I could read faster!” So a witch suddenly appeared to him and said, “I can make you read faster.”

“How?” the prince asked.

“By magic, of course. Do you agree to it?”

The prince thought about it. He glanced at the pile of books beside him, then at the cuckoo clock on the wall, and said, “I agree.”

So the witch cursed the prince and he could now read very fast indeed.

The prince was delighted! He read all the books that night, and so he was prepared for the diplomat the next morning. Tired and very sleepy, but prepared.

So he welcomed the diplomat and as he spoke, his voice sounded funny. His voice was squeaky!

The diplomat laughed, and said, “What? I don’t understand, my dear prince.”

The prince spoke again, but his voice was swift once more. He tried coughing, drinking some wine, but his voice came out too swift to understand.

Nobody in the tower could understand the prince no more.

Angry and ashamed, he locked himself at the top of the tower, where he read his favourite books and studied the sciences to pass the time.

Years went by.

He was lonely. So he asked the witch to find him a princess. The witch brought him plenty of princesses to see, but none were the right one for him.

One day, he saw a normal girl from the village. He fell in love with the girl, but she couldn’t speak to the cursed prince. But the girl saw how the prince looked at her and realised that he loved her. So she asked the witch to curse her too.

And they were in love, living happily atop the tower. The girl became with child. But the girl kept worrying that her little boy would be born cursed too, and that he wouldn’t be able to live a normal life and have friends.

She worried and worried, until it finally killed her. But before her final breath, the witch appeared. So the girl asked for one wish. She wished that her son not be burdened with the curse. She would give the boy to the witch, with one condition: The witch would make the boy speak like normal people do. She made her promise thrice that the boy would never be cursed.

The witch agreed, cause she couldn’t pass on such a great offer. But after the mother died, she kept her word, by twisting her word. She cursed all of the people across all of the land and the seas and the islands, with a spell to speak slowly. That way, nothing changed in the world. They all woke up and they all spoke at the same, slow speed. Nobody realised that there was anything different.

That way, the boy was the only one in the world who spoke quickly.

And it was exactly what the girl had feared.

But the prince called for the best physician who managed to save the boy out of the bowels of his dying mother. The prince loved his son, but as soon as he stared into his eyes he cried. He thought of his wife, you see. And her worry, and their curse. So he sent the little boy away, far from the witch so that the boy wouldn’t be cursed when it finally learnt to speak.

How could he know that the devious witch had planned for this?

The prince never saw his son again. And he never left the tower. He just spent the rest of his time thinking about stuff that made the King a lot of money.

The End