Say I Love You

The story of a people from the great mountain

Once there were a great people of the mountain, who lived in harmony with nature and each other. Everything they touched turned green and bountiful. Their eyes only fell upon beauty and everlasting joy. Animals lived in harmony with these great people, silently watching over them as they tended the fields and the terraces in the mountains. The eagles looked upon these people with great anticipation, for they were the ones who first planted the forests, the ones who first constructed the rivers, the ones who first established the mountain, indeed, rising it up from the Earth itself.

One day, a road was built to their doorstep, by a group living in the lowlands, a group who had long forgotten their blood relation to the great people of the mountain. It used to be that no roads were necessary because no machine could have done what they did on their own two feet. That was a time from long ago, cemented in the transition between peoples and lives.

With the road came many new-age affordances, some accepted and some rejected by the great people of the mountain, in due diligence. With the onset of technology, money and politics, things were not quite as green or as harmonious as they used to be because life was unnaturally accelerated with the help of machines. Village elders could see the future coming, a future they did not want, but could not stop. The seers and the sages fortified their people against the cultural onslaught, doing their best to prepare them for the days ahead, along the road that was built to the mountain.

With the road came new ideas, new religions and new ways of thinking that were previously unknown and unnecessary to the great people of the mountain. In place of religion, they simply had providence. In place of money, they simply had each other. In place of the road itself, they simply never encountered a need to leave. This was a time from long ago, cemented in the transition between peoples and lives.

As time went on, more technology from the lowlands arrived on the road to the mountain, and with it, the trials and tribulations of economies. The men of the lowlands were heard being said, "with this technology, you will no longer have to toil as hard on the terraces, you will no longer have to grow your own rice because we can bring it to you, directly to your doorstep, for a small and consistent price." The men from the lowlands recommended this development, but it just so happened that, because of the new costs being incurred by the great people of the mountain, they were eventually caused to work longer hours in the factories than they did in the fields, a stipulation in fine print that was never indicated to the great people of the mountain.

As time went on, feelings changed, what used to be a great harmony was now a dance between costs and profits, a dance between living and dying, a dance between the certainty and uncertainty incurred by injunctions of economies from the lowlands. Things were never quite as green as they used to be and the eagles and the bears were less and less interested in the goings-on amongst the great people of the mountain. Without the ga