WriteHook

Once upon a time, in the Land of Make Believe, there lived the Little Dilettante, who resided in a mighty tower made of finest ivory. And from his tower, the Little Dilettante looked down at the pedestrian horde below. Toiling fools who, day in, day out, go to and from their pedestrian jobs, while he passed his time reading the great and popular works of novelists who wrote about novelists who live fabulous lives.

Curiosity seduced the Little Dilettante until he one day deigned to venture into the town below, to look among the pedestrian horde for inspiration and for reasons as to why they had no towers of their own.

As the Little Dilettante wandered, smirking, into town, an old man noticed him and came to greet him.

“Pray tell, young Dilettante, but why do you smile with such satisfaction when you have no friends?”

The Little Dilettante knew not what to make of this. “Why would I need friends?” he asked the elder. “I have everything I need in my tower.”

“But, young Dilettante, do you not see that there is no tower here?”

The Little Dilettante scoffed and threw back his head, laughing. “I know there is no tower here, old fool. I live in one in a better place than this.”

The old man smiled, sage, and said, “I’m afraid, my boy, that you were living in an illusion.”

The Little Dilettante, confused by this, walked deeper into the town, the old man at his side.

“What do you see when you look here?” the old man asked him.

“I see sadness,” said the Little Dilettante. “Routine. Lack of imagination. No one here is a writer, they are all cursed with workaday lives of drudgery and toil.” The old man asked him why he saw such things and the Little Dilettante answered, “Because it’s the truth.”

“It is only your truth, my boy, not our truth.”

“Truth is truth,” the Little Dilettante said. “Complete and whole.”

The old man smiled, sage again, and asked, “But how could one so young as you know the wholeness of truth? From what source did this truth come?”

“From my books,” the Little Dilettante said. “From my books and from my tower.”

The old man’s smile crept from sage to satisfied. “I told you, my boy -- your tower is not real. And neither are your books.”

The Little Dilettante flushed with annoyance and whirled toward the direction whence he’d come. “I assure you, old fool, my tower is right over th . . .” But there was no tower where the Little Dilettante had looked. He paced and tramped as the old man stood by, sage, and watched.

“What have you done with my tower?” the little Dilettante demanded.

“I’ve done nothing, my boy, except convince you that your tower never was.”

“What about my books?” he asked.

“They too are an illusion. Your books and the novelists who live within them are illusions.”

“But they live in towers, just like mine.”

“They were towers they built, my son, not towers into which they were born.”

“So they are real!”

“They are real to they who made them so, with the sweat and blood of their own two hands.”

The old man put an arm across the Little Dilettante’s shoulders, turned him back toward the town and said to him, “Tell me again what you see.” And the Little Dilettante stood, mouth agape, confused, uncertain what to say.

“Perhaps a better thing for me to say, my son, is ‘Ask me what I see.’” And so the Little Dilettante did.

The old man grinned a prideful grin and looked among the people. “Hello, dear friends,” he called out. And all the townsfolk turned to him and smiled, waved their hands, bid him greetings, and addressed him by name. “I see my friends,” the old man finally said. “I see hardworking people who do not seek your tower, but rather seek their own happiness in this world.”

“Are they looking for towers of their own?” the Little Dilettante asked.

“A few perhaps,” the old man answered. “But most are looking for each other.”

The Little Dilettante looked back one last time toward the place he’d thought his tower used to be, then back toward the old man’s friends. His smirk deflated. The old man’s friends, he thought to himself. But not mine.

“Is there no way home for me now that I’’ve seen this place?” he asked the old man.

“I think you will find on your journey back that home will mean something new by the time you get there,” he answered.

And the Little Dilettante realized that he had to get to work. Work, like everyone else in the pedestrian hor . . . like all the other people, who had homes to which to return. And friends to invite for supper.

The old man saw that the Little Dilettante had understood, and started to walk away.

“I never wanted this,” the Little Dilettante cried out to him. “I came down from my tower merely to see what life was like in your world.”

The old man smiled one last time. “My boy,” he said. “You did not come down here on your own to see this world. The world came and took you.”