Edgar the Turtle

     I think it's short story time. So here is a children's fairy tale I wrote about a turtle named Edgar. Enjoy.

In a small village by the forest there lived a turtle. Now, this was no ordinary turtle, you see his shell was made of the leaves of the forest and of the flowers of the meadow. And his eyes! He had the most wondrous eyes, you see! If you looked close enough you could see the waves of the nearby lake. Edgar was a caring turtle, always playing with the village children and warning the townsmen about storms brewing on the lake.  

Everyone loved Edgar, he was even elected mayor of the small village. He ushered in a time of prosperity and peace for the region, which sounds ridiculous since Edgar was a turtle. Obviously the village was quite distraught when they woke up one spring afternoon to find him missing. They searched everywhere! They looked high and low! And while high and down. They checked his frequent stops and even his in-laws. And when they grew extremely desperate they asked his wife, Esmeralda. She hadn’t seen him in three days, nothing out of the ordinary.  

They tried to organize search parties, but without Edgar’s guidance they ended up having a lovely picnic while occasionally calling out his name. In between courses of course. This went on for three days until the picnic food began to run low. Unfortunately they were forced to begin eating their feasting foods. That night they tried to set up the great silk party pavilions, but without Edgar, they didn’t know how to. So they turned it into a giant blanket! By morning, the silk was ruined. Fat and grease stains covered every inch of the thing.  

It had been four days since Edgar disappeared, and the townspeople were growing concerned. Concerned enough to actually focus on their search and look outside of the village. They still didn’t know how to divide into smaller groups so they walked out into the forest in a large mob, trampling the meadow, and breaking the saplings.  

They walked under the branches and over the fallen trees, they tried calling out to him, but they ended up having a singing contest and a mushroom eating contest. After that last one the trees began to change colour and move about. The townspeople fled the forest screaming, only to run right into the lake. Half of them survived the three foot deep waters. The survivors were treated as heroes when they returned to the village in defeat.  

Edgar returned a week later from his annual vacation to the everglades to find the village half burnt to the ground and the people running around unclothed because they had forgotten how to wash their clothes. Now you might think that Edgar was surprised by what he had found, and to the average person this would be. But Edgar was turtle, not easily surprised. Add to the fact that he came back to this every year. You see Edgar was the mayor of a town populated by what the politically correct call slow people. Slow enough to elect a turtle to be mayor and then to annually burn the town down. You see, everything falls apart when your mayor turtle is the smartest person in town.