The Demon
Originally published on November 2nd, 2012 by Dimitri Bouniol. #FNADNST
The demon sat atop the tree.
Day in and day out, he would watch over the peaceful plains, watching the wild creature roam it basking in the warm sunlight.
Every now and then, he would notice a human cross it.
Sometimes it was an elderly woman, collecting herbs, sometimes it was children chasing butterflies.
On more than one occasion, the demon wanted to simply say hello, and so he presented himself to an old woman who was passing by.
“Hello,” the demon spoke.
The old woman, thinking she was alone and not knowing where the voice came from, stood up in a hurry.
As she looked around, she saw a tall, handsome figure emerge from the forest.
However, she noticed an unnerving quality about him: he was not human.
Having been in many situations in her life, the woman knew this fact from experience.
“What business do you have with me, …demon!?” She replied.
“Business I do not have” the demon answered. “I sit and watch over this land day after day, year after year. I wish only to kill some lingering boredom by coming down from my tree to say hello.”
Weary of the demon’s story, the old woman spoke with a high voice “Nothing good has ever come to me for dealing with demons of your kind!” and she hurriedly left.
The demon of course didn’t think much of it, and returned to the top of his tree.
A few days later, he saw a group of children run on by.
However, it seemed like a group of children were all running after a single young boy.
As the demon looked closer, he noticed that they weren’t simply running after him either, but bullying him as well, calling him all sorts of names.
The moment the boy tripped, all the other children started violently kicking him as he braced his neck, waiting for the storm to pass.
The demon didn’t quite know what to make of the situation, so he decided to scare away the group.
The demon felt no emotions towards the boy — he simply figured that instead of simply watching he would interfere.
On another day, he could have chosen to simply eat all the children, but this time he just felt scaring them away would quench his boredom.
So he slowly emerged from the edge of the forest, this time as a monstrously huge cougar, with fangs stretching past it’s jaw, and eyes focused on the prey in front of it.
The moment one of the children noticed the fearsome creature, he screamed at the top of his lungs, causing the other children to quickly take notice and run away.
All of them, except the bullied child that is.
The demon, upon witnessing this, spoke: “Those humans happily left you to save themselves. What selfish creatures.”
The boy looked up, scared of course, but brave enough to converse back with the demon: “Why, do you plan on eating me?”
The demon laughed, perplexed at this child’s question, and thus turned around to re enter the forest and return to the top of the tree.
The demon thought that humans were such bizarre creatures. No matter if the demon simply wanted to say hello, or if he actually saved one, they would always look at him as a monster who plotted their demise.
Oh course, the demon had no such care in the world. All he wished was to make the days pass more quickly.
And so the demon never intervened again.
He simply observed.
Since then, he never saw the old woman, nor the children again, and by now they would surely be long dead.
The demon saw bandits that used the grassy hills to camp out.
He saw villagers who hosted a festival.
He saw a young couple cultivate the land and harvest it for many years.
The actions of humans to not only fear things that were not human but to hate other humans as well perplexed the demon even further.
Eventually, more and more humans happened across the land.
The area was soon not as peaceful as it once was.
The wild animals stopped grazing in the sunlight.
Trash and litter started to accumulate all around.
Slowly, the trees of the forest started vanishing one by one, and large constructions replaced them.
Soon, the tall tree where the demon watched over the land was shadowed by concrete in all directions.
The demon no longer had anything to observe.
And when he came to that conclusion, he realized that the tree on which he sat was starting to be cut down.
Unsure of how to respond to such a situation, the demon simply sat there.
And as the tree fell, so did the demon.
There being nothing left to watch, the demon was content with its eventfulless life.
It simply remembered at how foolish those humans were, but at the same time, realized something else.
For such foolish creatures, they had managed so much, while the demon did nothing but save a single one of them from being bullied.
THE END
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