The Tale of the Angry Turtle
In a sea, deep beneath the turquoise, shimmering waves, there was a wondrously beautiful underwater kingdom. Its king- a gigantic sea turtle with a great, colourful shell crown decorated with pearls- always looked at his subjects angry, although he claimed to love them all.
In his kingdom, everyone was required to lie. It was the first and most important law that could not be broken. For telling the truth, the king punished everyone. The colour white was supposed to be called black, good had to be called bad, and if someone asked, What is your name? you had to give a different name. No one believed anyone, and no one knew anything. Even in schools, teachers taught the children only nonsense, claiming that adding 2+2 resulted in 1.
Everyone feared the king because he punished the disobedient by imprisoning them in enormous shells where they had to sit for many years.
One day, the king decided to leave his kingdom for a while and stepped out onto the shore. The sun was shining particularly brightly that day, and it dazzled the king’s eyes. On the sandy beach, two little dogs were joyfully playing and running around. When they saw the enormous, clumsy turtle, they wanted to get him into the game and called “Let’s race, Mr Turtle, who will be faster?”
The angry turtle grew even more enraged. He opened his enormous mouth wide to scold or bite the little dogs, but at that moment, the wind stirred up a sand swirl, and the turtle’s mouth filled with sand. The angry turtle became so enraged that he exploded with fury. And he never returned to his kingdom.
The little dogs, frightened, scampered away into the dunes and, after running for a while, looked back. There, in the white sand between the green coastal plants, were the visible footprints of their tiny paws, with the mighty sea wind scattering sand over them, as if to say: words can lie, but footprints do not. We always leave traces in the sand, in the minds and hearts of others.
