The Trail to True Treasure

The tower looks very tall and mysterious under the evening sun. The perimeter is empty and rocky and the wind blows dust around. Nobody knows what's inside...or who's inside. Is this going to be an opportunity, an adventure or just a false call of gluttony, leading to only death?

Time to climb that tower, I guess. I whipped my rope as hard as I could and let it loose on the tower above. I yanked on the rope. It caught on something. I began to climb the walls, eyes fixed on the treasure that might lie above. But then I looked down, and the world shrank.

It was literally much smaller. I stood up straight and was taller than the tower I’d been climbing. Of course the world was the same size, I’d just grown by a factor of 10.

That caterpillar had been right about the mushroom! I still had a few bites in my pocket. Should I eat one and get bigger? Or what if I ate the other bite & it made me smaller? A pigeon landed on my shoulder, thinking me a clocktower. Distracted by the bird, I lost track of which

mushroom would make my mushroom bigger. I was quite the self conscious man. Oh well, you accursed pigeon! Have a bite of my mushroom! The bird shrank to the size of an ant. Well at least I now knew what not to eat. Alright, let’s Alice in Wonderland this. Here goes nothing…

So I took the whole thing in one massive gulp, like a seagull swallows a whole fish. I mean…it was probably as elegant as that too. I didn’t feel anything straight away, I was rather disappointed. It’s not like how it is in the movies. But half an hour went by and suddenly…

I felt a tingling on my forearms, then a warmth on my scalp. I raced to a mirror to confirm what I already knew: I was a feathered being, sleek and powerful, ready to join a rarefied flock. Would leaving my nest of human connections be worth it? Only time would tell.