30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 6, the Watermelon People

There was once a very lazy god. All the rest of the gods mocked him and scolded him and made fun of him behind his back, but he really was too lazy to care. The only thing he cared about were his watermelons - suculent and juicy and bright bright red with black seeds the color of onyx and skins like emeralds and pearls. The rest of the gods laughed at him, but they certainly coveted his watermelons. However, he never chose to share. Instead, he slowly tended his deep-rooted, well-watered garden and ate the juicy fruit of his wonderful watermelons slowly rocking in his porch swing, and spitting the seeds into the field.

Well, one day he was lying under a tree, enjoying the god-like sounds of the heavens, and the great arching branches of a great arching god-tree, which looked something like a live oak, when up came a very sprightly little god, much like a hornet and began to bother him. It started with just wanting his watermelon for himself, but the little hornet-god was too clever just to ask, so he started to bother, which was his specialty. He buzzed and buzzed and mocked, as the lazy god eyed him with lazy contempt, until he got quite close and actually decided to steal a bite out of the lazy god's watermelon. He was almost too lazy to care. Almost. Instead of swatting away the little hornet, instead he clamped a big hand on his little scrawny neck, and pushed him into the watermelon. Then, balling the whole up in his hands, he threw it quite away. Noone bothered him about his watermelon after that - but the hornet god did get some watermelon. And out of it he built his nest- for after all, the sweet juice was good energy, and nothing like a gaggle of little hornet gods to make the world... ahem... a better place.

In any case, noone bothered the lazy god. But bother did find him. One sunny spring day a wonderful wood nymph happened upon the heavens, and upon the lazy god's broad patch of watermelon. It was all much too sunny for her - used as she was to the dappled shade, so she shrank into a shadow and hid under one of the biggest melons in the patch - which was quite large! When the lazy god came to pick it, as he had it planned as the afternoon's entertainment, she yelped in alarm (though it didn't sound like a yelp coming from her - more like a light hummingbird sound) and drew up to her full height. At her full height she was almost as tall as he, which was no mean feat.

Well, things being as they are, the lazy god fell right away for her. Maybe not exactly for her at first (for she was extremely comely) but eventually, after many days spent lazily but persistently waiting for her to come out of the dappled sunlight at the edge of the woods to take a piece or two of watermelon, the lazy god found himself rather desperately in love. But he did not know what he could do to win her. Always lazy, he was in a pickle. And with nothing to offer but watermelon. After a while - working away slowly, his mind did eventually come up with some ideas - he decided he had better just ask her what it was she wanted, and so he did. She smiled up at him, not sunnily exactly, because she liked the shade, but rather brightly like the light at the edge of the forest, and whispered that more than anything she wanted a forest with people at the edge of it. He sat down and thought about this. This might cause some trouble. And where was he to get people?

The spring had broken and summer was in high gear, then fall came and finally the ground was getting cold for winter. The wood nymph was getting cold and thin, and one day the lazy god left his small house to find her gone. She had left him completely. He was deep in sadness, like the snow over the remains of his watermelon patch. He went home and sat saturninely by the fire for days.

He was not happy that winter, in fact he had never been so miserable in all his immortality. And he cried. Not big tears, but dry, sad, miserable tears. He missed her, and he wanted her warm by his fire. She had never come into his house - happier outdoors - but he wondered that he had never asked her. Why had he not given her her people by the edge of the forest? Then she would love him!

He sat by the forest where she used to frolick. It was cold and desolate, but he sat nevertheless. He sat and sat. He sat for months. He sat until he heard the snow begin to drip, and he began to feel a warmness in the trees. And this made him sadder.

Finally, spring broke - a little, that is - and the trees began to bud. They were not complete, but they were beginning. The lazy god began to cry. And then, pulling out the very last of a piece of watermelon - a watermelon that had frozen over winter, but was just beginning to melt, he ate it slowly, and with every seed he wished for her return.

The seeds fell all the way to earth, where they bedded themselves deep in the melting ground. As spring began to spring forth, the watermelon seeds were watered by the lovely rain and sunned upon by the warming sun. And they began to bud. But they did not bud watermelons; rather, up from every seed there sprang a person, and together the pile of seeds became a village - bustling and full of life.

The lazy god didn't know. But down below, his wood nymph who had gone so far away in winter saw the watermelon people. She was delighted. She knew he loved her. And when another god came the lazy god's way, it was with a message.

Too tired to fight, the lazy god had nothing to say. "Go on, tell me," was his only response. The peremptory messenger god looked a little aghast, but cleared his throat and told. The gods had seen it, the lazy god was wanted on earth by the town he had started, and as the patron of the town would have to live near it always. The wood nymph was not included in the message.

With heavy heart, the lazy god headed down the great ladder. He found the village, and was momentarily lighthearted at the sight of the houses and the life of the people. But he was still sad, and went to the woods, crying the sobs of one who has cried too much. He sat down in a shadow, and it started up, with a little yelp (although, being the wood nymph, it was more like the sound of a hummingbird).