Прохор Озорнин - On the Wings of Hope - Prose

It's a very special affliction – callousness. The absence of compassion and true love. The desire to force your child to respect you at any cost – even at the price of his self-respect and tears. The child is not your toy, and no one granted you the right to shape him according to your own image, thus breaking his soul. Who did tell you, that your image is worthy of repeating?

No matter what, but this never stopped you, for you have always, up to the last moment, considered a child just like your property, sort of a personal creation. As if it was you who created his soul and passed his personal way in his sandals! As if you have been borning and dying instead of him over and over again… And how delighted you were at times to laugh at your recently acquired slave!

Here you came from work in a bad mood? No need to worry, for you always have a small child at your disposal, at whom you can always shout, or even beat him, or even hammer to semi-death. After all, he is so small and young – how can he answer you?

Normal relations just aren't glued with your own wife – the woman, to whom you still recently made a declaration of love and promised to be with till the end of the days? Your small child is an excellent tool for your big revenge! Certainly, this new enlisted hostage of your quarrels is still too silly to understand all your genius and all nonsenses of your so-to-call-darling – but after all his opinion and personal feeling bother no one from both of you, right? So what with his almost on lap begging for you to stop quarreling with each other, what with his saying that he doesn't want to see you as such?! Probably, due to this reason, he started losing his sight so fast recently – only not to see you not in yourself? And whether you truly own yourself during these instants of time, or is there is someone another who is playing you like a rag doll?

Feeling yourself a complete nonentity and loser, but trying to make your grieving conscience shut up? Defame your child, crush him, morally humiliate him so that he remembers for the rest of his life who is the true house owner! Having pushed his face into the dirt you will, by all means, feel yourself like on a horse before him, humiliated and offended. So caracole, don't hesitate, what's the big deal?! Eggs don't teach chicken, and apple doesn't fall far from the tree!

Your child dares to object you, and even to be insolent? That means that he must have forgotten of what a real flogging is! Take a belt and beat him so great that his back becomes covered by blisters, like from burns! And let him get out and think out a justification at school for himself of what has recently occurred to his weak body.

Your child fails to achieve something? Abuse him immensely for his impassable laziness and dullness, for at least that way he will learn to be afraid of you – and thus respect. Let all in the neighborhood, both old and young, know how bad is your child – and with what a great force you, his careful father, tries to make at least a small resemblance of a man out of him. It's such a wonderful way to make others start respecting you for your tremendous patience and an enormous amount of educational work!

You knew no such thing as happy childhood – so let your child doesn't experience it as well. Revenge the parents in the person of the child, state everything you think of them, and even more! After all, you are “normal” – and do normal ones can really recover?

You couldn't call your childhood rather happy. For this particular reason, you make all the efforts to make your child never feel a different way. For, after all, does anyone deserve to be happier than you?

This is a very fragile being – the child. And how easy it is at times to break and cripple his soul and ruin his fate! But let each and every one acting like that never forget that it's such a special affliction – callousness. For when you dispose of own heart by your free will – you cease to live on…

12.11.2012

One day everything has changed in the Great Desert. For many months the scorching sun was so bright and a heat so intolerable that every source of water, even the largest ones, have dried up. Animals have been confused, they were tormented by thirst. So they have gathered for the Great Desert Council, which was not gathered for almost ten years, to think up a way to rescue from the sun. And each of them came into the Council's center, and each was questioned by others of how it's possible to find a salvation, yet nobody could give the answer.

In desperation, animals have called for their last hope – they have summoned a desert Lion into the center of Council, who had a reputation of being most courageous, wise and strong from all of them and by the right was considered their tsar.

“I will find water for all of you, I swear with the honor of the tsar of animals!” the Lion has growled. “I will find it and I will show you the way.”

And, having this said, the Lion has gone on searches of a source of revival, and the rest of animals started waiting for his return.

For many days and nights, the Lion tirelessly ran and ran through the desert, driven by a sandy wind and thoughts of his dying comrades and of his debt before them. And when it seemed that his forces have completely left him, a great, boundless and endless ocean has opened before his eyes.

“At last I have found it! I have discovered water! Now we are saved!” the Lion cried, and with the last bit of strength ran downwards to a coast.

When he, at last, has managed to creep up to a coast and scooped saving water in paws, he has suddenly noticed a fish, swimming in this water. The Fish played on the sun by all colors of a rainbow and looked at him as if studying.

“Do you desire to drink from my spring?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes,” the Lion has either growled or whispered. “I have been running for many days, my powers have run out, and my comrades are dying from thirst. I have to drink to restore my strength and return to them to inform of this great source of a saving moisture.”

“But do you know about its properties?” a Fish questioned.

“Of what properties are you talking?” the Lion was surprised. “I see water, and I am going to tell about its source to others. Please, do not weary me, swim away, so I can drink this luring moisture and restore my powers!”

“The water, which you are going to drink, may kill you,” replied the Fish.

“What a strange fish,” the Lion has thought. “How can water kill somebody?”

“To kill me? Of what death are you talking about? I have already almost died from thirst,” the Lion growled. “Move aside, let me drink it!”

“If you drink from my spring, your thirst will only grow and strengthen,” Fish responded. “The more you will drink, the greater your thirst will become.”

“But how can you live in this spring of yours and drink from it without dying?” the tsar of all animals questioned.

“What is death for you, terrestrial ones, is a birth for us,” she said. “We were born in this bitter source – and are destined to spend our entire life in it. It has ceased to be deadly for us – and became our air and now we enjoy it.”

“But what am I supposed to do then?” the Lion inquired. “I must help my relatives by any means possible! I am considered as the strongest and wisest tsar of animals by right!”

“You can drink from my spring and rescue them,” the Fish replied. “There is a river in the north that runs into this sea – its water can bring you relief. Besides, you can also find my brothers in that river – for we can live even in your waters – who will aid you further. However, this river is far away, and you will hardly manage to reach it.”