Short Story - The Statue

[SliceOfDog]

I've been writing a few short stories, most or all of which I intend to put up on here when they're finished. This is the first that I've finished and typed up. It's not my usual style, but I'm all about practising at the moment. Any con/crit would be appreciated.

------------------------------------------------------

Stone fingers twitched. Stone lips parted. Stone lungs expanded in a solid stone chest as the Statue took its first deep, cold breath. Sightless eyes began to see as it considered one side, and then the other. At its feet, stretched far in every direction, a great multitude of small creatures stood watching in silence as the Statue raised a heavy hand, clenched it into a fist, and released.
The Statue lived.
A ripple of excitement ran through the sea of creatures as they fell to their knees in praise and prayer. A thousand voices cried out in a strange tongue, and yet as the unknown sounds fell upon stone ears, so long unhearing, this language became the Statue’s own.
“Who am I?” it asked.
The First of the creatures stepped forward as the rest were awed into silence.
“You are the greatest of our leaders,” it said “long dead but still remembered. Your works outlasted generations, your laws brought us peace and prosperity, and your wisdom guides us still, more valued than any gold or precious stones”
“And I am this leader?” the Statue replied “Born again?”
A Second stood forth
“Not born,” it said “but built. You are our leader not in flesh, but in stone and in spirit. Our people have many needs, and we look to you, great leader, as our salvation”
They knelt before the Statue once more in prayer.
“Will you help us?” cried the First.
Though the Statue had lived for mere minutes, its paternal love for the creatures was already fully formed, and only strengthened by their pleas. It sat tall and spoke in a powerful tone.
“I will”

With the First as its guide, the Statue was shown the lands and towns of the creatures. They were an innocent and hardworking people, but they indeed suffered many problems. In summer, rival princes would march to war, and if ever the creatures, who had no warriors of their own, were to side with one prince, they were immediately attacked by the other. The creatures begged the Statue to create a peaceful solution.
“We will side with neither prince,” declared the Statue “and yet as a show of good faith, we will pay each a sum of gold and grain”
The creatures readily obliged, both collecting and delivering their payments with haste. The offerings were greedily accepted, and the creatures returned to their towns assured of safety in the coming months. However, the princes had been turned bitter by thoughts of betrayal and deceit, and did not trust this display of unexpected generosity. On the first day of summer, each sent many warriors to destroy the creatures’ towns, and only stopped their massacres when the opposing forces crossed paths, and battled instead with one another.
The Statue and the First watched this all from a hilltop. When the skirmish had ended, and bodies littered the streets, houses still burning, the Statue hung its head in sorrow.
The First smiled.
“Don’t worry” he said “You’ll get it right next time”

In winter, water would fill great cracks in the aging dam and freeze, widening them until they threatened the collapse of the dam and the destruction of the houses and fields below. Once again the creatures plead for the Statue to help them, and once again the Statue agreed.
“We have no workforce of our own,” the First explained “only farmers who must leave fields untilled and livestock untended. Traders who must abandon their wares and foresters removed from their forests”
“Then I will rebuild it for you” declared the Statue “This dam is like my kith and kin, fashioned in stone by your hand and many times your size. I know it as I know myself, and will gladly repair it”
The Statue set about gathering rocks from the nearby quarry, fashioning them to fit the dam. He waded through water too deep for the creatures, carrying loads too heavy for entire towns. Within three days the Statue had completed work that would have taken the creatures many years of toil. For as many days following they celebrated and praised the Statue’s labours.
However, when winter came and the waters froze, cracks reappeared. The quarry’s porous rock had weakened the dam, and the Statue’s repairs were undone. After only a few weeks, the dam burst, drowning the creatures and fields below.
The Statue and the First were watching from the high grounds as crops torn from soil floated amongst thatch torn from houses and bodies from beds. The Statue hung its head in shame.
The First looked up and smiled.
“You’ll get it right next time”

With fields washed away, farmers killed and towns under siege, the Statue urged the creatures to leave their homes to find a more prosperous land. It told them of a place it had seen beyond the quarry, green, fertile and high in the mountains away from the wars of others. The creatures needed no encouragement, leaving all they knew behind to follow the Statue to this new land.
The journey was long and the path treacherous. Through the mountains many froze or fell to their deaths. Others collapsed from exertion or hunger, but the rest persevered, drawn by the promises of a new home and better lives. After months of travel, the Statue saw once again this great new land. Yet only now did it see what lay in its path.
An impassable canyon stretched between the Statue, the creatures and their desired home. All could see that climbing was not an option. It would be difficult enough to reach the bottom, yet even for the Statue the opposing ascent would be strenuous. For the small, tired creatures it was near enough impossible. The only solution, without turning back and repeating the terrible journey, was to create a bridge between the two sides. As the creatures were surrounded by rock, finding the materials needed was simple, and work soon began.
The creatures remained in high spirits, but towering over them, directing their toil, the Statue was morose. It saw at its feet a people who had looked to it for guidance, built it to lead them to a better time, or a better place. All that resulted had been failure, death and sorrow. The Statue could not lead, yet still they followed. Could not teach, yet still they listened.
It turned from the industrious creatures and strode until it was standing on the canyon edge, looking to the lush, green fields beyond. At its back the creatures worked on, carving the bridge to their new world without direction or guidance. On the horizon, the sun was setting, casting a bright golden hue across all that the Statue’s empty stone eyes could see. It took a deep, cold breath. Its lips parted. Its fingers twitched.
It jumped.

At the bottom of the canyon the creatures gathered. They considered the scene before them. Fragments of stone littered the ground, some still recognisable; half an ear, a chunk of lip. The First stepped forward, cradling in his arms a fingertip. The creatures watched in silence as the First held the fragment close, and then released it, issuing a command.
“We will rebuild it”
“Again?”
“Again”
Silence. The Second stood forth.
“When will we get it right?” it asked.
The First looked up to the top of the canyon, and smiled.
“Next time”

[BIos_Reaper]

This is such a sad story... A good story, but a sad one. I cannot help but feel for the statue. Albiet I'd have simple walked over to the enemy princes and demanded they leave, or be destroyed for foolish, greedy men must be through force and blood kept from any position of power. But still... This is such a sad story Z.z I'm a little sad I read it, now I feel a little empty. Good work, but still.

[SliceOfDog]

Thank you very much BIos! I'm so glad I'm managing to create emotion through my stories, and that is almost exactly what I'm going for, although I apologise if it's got you down a bit too much. Someone on FA said "Let's say I found it moody in a good way - sad but hopeful." which I think is the right balance.

And as for what the Statue should have done, that is definitely something I wanted people to disagree on (as in to disagree with the way it dealt with things). The idea I wanted to convey was that it was naive and no better at knowing what to do than the creatures that built it.

Thanks for reading, sorry it made you sad!

[BIos_Reaper]

Not sad as in depressed ^^. It's very well written and does show that the statue is naive, you cannot after all expect someone to lead you when they don't know the first thing about leadership, even though the decision to ally with no one made sense. I hope I see some more happy-noted stories from you though! You're a good writer ^^

[Terrapun]

I know that opinions from total strangers are not worth all that much, especially on the net, where talk is cheaper than dirt, nevertheless I would like to say that I enjoyed the story. It has this nice “round” feel to it, no useless padding, and, as far as I can tell, no “rough edges” that many stories found around the net seem to have in bundles. In short, it is a complete polar opposite of something I would have written, which is good. I couldn't write a short story to save my life, and my longer ones are... well... unpolished (no pun intended, really). I would be happy to read more of your stories. Even though this one left me saddened. Do you really think that we cannot live for ourselves and are so desperate for guidance that when no leader is in sight we would fashion one on a whim? Or maybe I missed the point, it happens to me all the time.

[SliceOfDog]

I hope I see some more happy-noted stories from you though! You're a good writer ^^

Thank you very much BIos!
Although I'm afraid that my interests do tend towards the depressing, what with my love of post-apocalypses and dystopias. There might be one or two happy endings though, and most shouldn't be quite as sad as this.

I know that opinions from total strangers are not worth all that much

Absolutely not, I really value feedback from anyone! And strangers are more likely to be brutally honest than friends or relatives, who might not want to hurt your feelings. So thank you very much for the comment!

I'm glad that you'd like to read more of my work, and hopefully soon you'll be able to (I have 4 in the works as of typing this). I also completely get where you're coming from with finding short stories difficult to write. I actually started writing in different styles (such as this story, which is very different to what I normally write) to improve my ability at them. My first few attempts suffered very much from "useless padding" and “rough edges”.

Finally;

Do you really think that we cannot live for ourselves and are so desperate for guidance that when no leader is in sight we would fashion one on a whim? Or maybe I missed the point, it happens to me all the time.

You definitely haven't missed the point, although I should mention that I purposely intended for the 'moral' of this story to be open-ended. Another nasty habit I had in previous short stories was being overly didactic; preaching an idea that I believe in the hope that other people would accept it. I find this quite annoying as a reader, so want to avoid it as a writer. There is of course elements of my beliefs in this, and all of my works, but I hope other people can interpret it differently.

"Do you really think that we cannot live for ourselves" - I don't believe this, or at least not entirely. The building of the bridge was intended to show that they could live for themselves, if only they weren't so concerned with having a perfect leader.

"so desperate for guidance that when no leader is in sight we would fashion one on a whim?" - This I do believe in. Everything that takes a large role in our lives is a form of 'fashioned' leader, from government to religion to business to musical tastes (consider how vehemently people will defend their favourite band or singer) and almost anything else you can think of. Not all of these things are necessarily bad, and I'm not sure we could live without them all, but I do think that they are our own leaders, and don't always lead in the right direction.

Oh, and it took me a second to work out what you meant by the "unpolished" non-pun, but I found it very funny when I noticed it XD

[Terrapun]

I must confess that I haven’t considered the fact that every idea that we embrace might be treated as our own “leader” of sorts, hell... there’s more, people are being led by leaders long dead all the time (and I'm not talking about mummified zombie Lenin, well not only about him anyway) through the ideas that were left behind. It is so obvious now that I'm stunned that I haven’t thought about it earlier. Bah! Rambling again. Anyway, as for practising writing short stories, I think you nailed it. While the story is short it leaves plenty of threads to pick up and think about. I'm quite jealous now, and I don’t like to be, such an ugly feeling. My attempts at writing usually end up as unwieldy blocks of text that I have to sculpt down till I have something semi-decent. I have a knack for text-walling, that I have to fight even now.