Hate grew inside him like the trunk of an old tree, rough in texture and strong in nature, the canopy spread firmly overhead. One day a hateful thought planted a seed, and from then on, each hateful thought helped to sprout a new bud, a leaf, a fresh sprig of black blossoms. The leaves decayed with the passage of time and dropped to litter around him, and he often thought to himself in helpless despair, “what a mess. I wish someone would help me clean this up,” never understanding, it’s a rare type of love that reaches out to help the hateful.

In the summer the blossoms became fruit, black and rotting on the limbs. They dropped to the ground, spraying the grass with seeds, which in time became the trees his children fed on. He knew that eventually the decay around him would grow into a solid mountain, but he also knew that he could hide behind that mountain. So he shook his tree with vigour, to drop more fruit, to spray more seeds, to grow a forest, to build the mountain, to hide himself and the chaos his hate had created.

One day, goodly men came to cut down the forest and conquer the mountain, but the roots indignantly reached out to choke them, righteous in their existence. Those men ran away, black seeds clinging to and smuggled within their hair and beards, unknowingly carrying hate back to a fearful world.

To make themselves feel better for their cowardice they told tales from their pulpits of wicked men with hateful thoughts and the seeds these men had planted. But the smuggled seeds which had lain dormant, leapt at this fertile ground. Fear was just the soil they needed, and hate grew inside those goodly men, like the trunk of an old tree, rough in texture and strong in nature, the canopy spread firmly overhead.