The Lost Land of Lettered Language

Foreword: Yes I know I have used the wrong word 'site' for the correct spellng 'sight' in the first paragraph, second sentence. You may find a few other ww, sp, or grammatical errors here as well. These are actually intended and on purpose as you may come to understand at the end of the story. So please tip your Grammatical hat to the side and simply read for pleasures sake and enjoy!





The Lost Land of Lettered Language

Once upon a time there was a Great King, King Archer, and his wife, Queen Curvature. At first site, one to another, they knew just then they were drawn to be together. Wherever he would lean in, she dipped as though in a dance. As she stood, he arched back to show her beautiful curves. Together they had a courtship made in heaven and on earth were destined to a life of penmanship together.

Together they brought up many progeny Dash, Dot, Comma, Hyphen, Bracket, Space, Mark, Apostrophe, Semi, and Colon being but only their direct descendants. In time their family name would come to include many famous and well known Sir Names: Grammar, Style, Body, Theme, Punctuation, Paragraph, Fiction, Nonfiction, Essay, Poetry, and Conclusion.

Their lands were rich in many resources, natural and mystical alike. The words of King Archer’s Kingdom were not treated differently according to their length or their status in line. No matter if they normally walked at the head of the sentence or towards the tail, they were all seen as equals. The shoes of the town were all made either from the finest #2 wood uppers with graphite soles or the greatest of quills and inks. Only the best would do for those that walked the greatest papyrus streets of all the lands. King Archer’s word’s were known to commune together freely over fields of parchment and in towns built from the best of writers’ blocks. It was not uncommon for the longest of words to sit with meager ands, ors, buts, and thes to sip ink at the local draft house.

Sometimes sentences of words would get up together and leave the draft house to go on a coursing spree or expedition. Sometimes they would join up with other sentences, some simple, some compound, some complex. They may sit around the fire and share fragments, prepositional phrases, or a relative pronoun or two. It was on just one such crusade, at just such an assemblage; several days out over Poets Peaks, Proofread Tread, and through Punctuation Woods that a complex and compounded sentence group had heard about the coming of the Gate-Weigh-Eye-Beam-Dales. These were said to be awesome and powerful giants. Stories spread that they were conquering all nations and obliterating everything in the path before them. Quickly the edict of chatter grabbed all they could gather and flew with a fury back to King Archer’s Domain.

The long words to the front were strong and momentous and rode with great fervor. Warn them they had to, or all would be lost!!! But as they drove on with such fury, letters fell off and became lost. The lengthy words found themselves shortened and their stamina lacking. They took such a blow to their assemblage that they stumbled and fell to the side be fumbled, compressed, and broken. Next the middle words and common phrases flew past them, auto-piloting on. They felt as though nothing could stop them, like youth, they felt invincibly strong. They galloped forward so fast, that for a long while they did not even realized when the guillotine hit. As in contrast to the headless horsemen, they were heads without bodies. They rode on as initials without forms until humbled they finally fell in a jumble to the side of the road. In desperation they watched as the shortest of words now disjointedly trudged slowly and despondently on alone. They were the last hope for the kingdom, the final alarm bell to sound, the final address.

Little however did these wayward words know that the giant was already upon them. For the losing of letters and initialing of phrases was already a symptom that their kingdom was doomed. Soon there will be no more written language of actual words put down with pens and pencils to paper, the computers have come. Gate Way, IBM, Dell the big giants have swallowed up the worlds of the once known writer and eaten it whole. No matter how desperately we try to flee back to a quieter, slower, peaceful place and time, we find ourselves slaves to them more and more. No longer do children learn penmanship, cursive, and grammar in schools as we once did. Today those are fonts and texts and options on a toolbar to be set. Spelling is checked automatically as they go, words are counted, proper names and first letter of each sentence capitalized and even some grammar mistakes corrected. If mistakes are made, no one will ever notice, because other people count on their computer to check for their mistakes too!!! And so at last, just two little words ever did make it back to King Archer’s fading kingdom of long ago, a place of the extinction of a process called ‘Writing’. Those two little words just happened to be……..

The End





* edited only to add foreword note on Oct 29

** edited again taking into concideration the reviews and critiques. yes it is ok to make suggestions or point out a flaw or two (just not too many LOL)