Week 1 Storytelling: Political Strife in a Forgotten Town

THE lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown;
The lion beat the unicorn

All round about the town.

Some gave them white bread,
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum-cake,
And sent them out of town.

(nursery rhyme)

Nothing had been the same since the coup. With the humans driven out, a vacuum of power had been created. As one would expect, mammals still held control, but they had divided into two factions: the Hooves and the Paws. 

To determine who would rule, the mammals made an agreement. Each faction would offer its greatest  warrior. It would be a standoff to match the gravity of David and Goliath's battle.

The Paws offered the Lion, their graceful and commanding feline. His mane seemed to expand when he roared. His power laid in his voice. Words were his weapons. The Hooves, on the other hand, offered a rare, relatively unknown challenger: the unicorn. While her existence had been challenged in the past, it had been said that her horn possessed the ability to defeat any challenger, no matter what his or her strength. 

The two combatants faced each other in the town square, and the respective factions gathered behind their champions. The Lion stood stoically at one corner of the square; nothing could be read from his inexpressive face. Wanting to make a statement, the Unicorn brandished her horn in a way that caused the crowd to jump back. She prepared her charge, but just before she could commence, the Lion opened his mouth.

The sounds that emanated from his gaping jaws failed to make sense to the startled crowd. There was something about the cadence of his roar. It seemed to have order and evoked memories of the way in which the humans spoke.

The Unicorn initially became paralyzed with fear, but once she regained her senses, she sprinted off away from the square with the Lion in pursuit. The confrontation continued throughout the town; the Unicorn would make an attempt at a charge, and the Lion would respond with his seemingly magical words causing the Unicorn to sprint off again.

With the battle decided, the rule of the one-town kingdom when to the Lion thus putting the Paws into power. 

The presentation of the plum-cake by a human representative of the Paws and Hooves. Wikipedia Commons.

To put themselves in the good graces of their new ruler as well as ameliorate the Unicorn's hurt pride, the citizens took it upon themselves to gift the combatants with bread. This storyteller can't explain why a group of animals would bake bread for a carnivore and an herbivore, but for some reason, it worked for some time.

Years later, the Paws and the Hooves began to form a truce without the approval or awareness of the Lion or Unicorn. Tired of the rule of a king and the antics of a resentful unicorn who had taken up vandalism and racketeering, they planned to throw them out of the town. The bread-giving had continued since the first battle, so the citizens decided to create a call-to-arms in the form of bread--in this case, plum-cake. 

On the anniversary of the Paws-Hooves confrontation, the distribution of bread continued as normal. Brown loaf. White loaf. Brown. Brown. White.

Plum-cake. 

The moment the plum-cake was presented, the Paws and the Hooves came together and used the same power the Lion had utilized years ago: Words. At the sound of language, the Lion and the Unicorn retreated with the same promptness that the Unicorn had demonstrated years ago. 

A republic was established that sought to eliminate differences between the Paws and the Hooves, and a holiday was declared to commemorate the overthrow. From that point forward, the date would be known as The Rising of Bread and Fair Rule. 

Author's Note: This slightly absurd tale is based on a nursery rhyme titled "The Lion and the Unicorn," which is quoted at the top of the page. This nursery rhyme in particular can be found in an online version of The Nursery Rhyme Book edited by Andrew Lang. The rhyme gives an account of a lion and unicorn who fight in some way for the rights to the rule, and the lion ends up beating the unicorn everywhere in the municipality. Afterwards, the two animals are given different types of bread by citizens while some citizens end up giving them plum-cake and chasing them out of town.