tINY PEOPLE

Once upon a time there were five million people alive. Some of them were very small, tiny in fact, and lived so far down they were below the very oceans. The oceans are only five miles down you know, and the tiny people lived there hidden from view for a very long time.

Can you imagine a world so small? Only those many people, what a glorious life they had! All those people scattered about over the small people, and they lived their lives without any notice of the little people their whole lives.

When the people started to grow seeds, they scattered less, and lived more. They built buildings, roads, law houses and churches. The children played by water and with dogs and raised goats. They learned to collect milk for cheese and to collect honey. 

When the cities grew larger, the people would dig into the earth and look for precious stones. There were a great variety of stones to choose from. Some, as clear as pure water, were very strong and could cut through anything. They made rings and crowns from them, too. They became a great pride of the people and they dug and dug for more. 

As the holes in the Earth got bigger, the little people became afraid that their homes were not safe, so they tried to move deeper into the earth. But as they did this, the sun went away. The further they moved from the sun, the more desolate the earth. The ground was cold, wet and black. The walls of the earth dripped, and the grounds were hard to live on.

As the people worried about their home, they decided to move and live among the people of the earth, and they scattered in forests, underneath the heavy cover of dark boughs and deep red floors. And they lived there a long time and loved the forest even more then their first home. Deep in the woods they built tiny wooden cities, from the fallen trees they found there. They roped together large soft pieces of wood, damp enough to make beautiful, basket woven houses so pretty, and with skill made bridges, for over rocky creeks, so that the cities were beautiful and stretched out like a canvas, lit by tiny flames inside the globes of finely carved shell lanterns that burned the oils of the nuts of trees.

They lived this way for a long time and they made food from the nuts, mushrooms, and berries and leaves, but were too small to even friend an animal. But they were very happy, with the little they had, they were free and peaceful people. And they lived there for a time.

Then one day a man came to the place where they lived. And he was a good man. He found the little city alive and bustling, alit on a fall night when out hunting. The people were frightened by him, for they had lived in the forest for so long that they hadn't seen a person for generations. The man was still kind, and he realized how afraid that he made them, so he hid mostly away from these tiny people, but came to watch them, and sometimes, bring them special gifts that he thought they might enjoy from his much larger world. He brought them spools of thread, and thimbles, matchsticks and flints, and things like this that he saw which might excite their imaginations.