Down the base of the trunk of that sullen and unfortunate tree that chose to bear a single fruit, hundreds of meters down from the single pear the magician waited.
"Why not cut it down using magic?" the onlooking sparrow asked.
"Because magic doesn't exist" the Badger replied.
A fake and a charlatan the magician was. A back alley trinket dealer that adopted the title of Magician to inspire awe and admiration from his fool customers so easily bought into his lies.
Underneath the massive tree he waited for any passersby that he might pounce on them. For he knew that whosoever laid eyes upon the pear would want it for their own.
For days the magician waited, under nights with twinkling stars and soon the stars turned their backs on him for his selfishness disgusted even them.
Beneath glorious rays of the sun, but even then the clouds shunned its rays from him for his greed hurt their hearts and made them weep.
"Thieves" the magician spat.
"Ungodly beasts and toads" he whined.
For in the onslaughts of self pity and greed intertwined with the thorns of hatred and poison nettles the magician felt the need to prove that he was the rightful owner of the last pear on earth.
Out of stones and boulders he made a fort. Out of mud and murky waters he made a moat. Around the tree he built them all. And beneath the tree, the ground wept as it has never seen such selfishness. At this age, below the scattering of the northern stars and the infancy of Orion's belt, never has anyone's heart been riddled with such filth.
Years the magician waited. Frail his body had become. Bones and the sinews of his muscles could be seen underneath the stretched out cloak he once called skin. Dry was his mouth for neither the rains watered down from the heavens as the heavens felt nothing and no pity for him.
One a fateful day, with the harsh winds coming south from the spine of the world and the clouds roiling in from the northern lights, the tree shook. Mother of the pear and keeper of the secrets of the earth.
The pear having stood there for hundreds of years thought it enough and the magician's greed was too much for their hearts to contend.
Without a shout or a cry, the pear released its bonds and feel to the earth knowing full well the consequences of such an action.
Within the fall, the pear felt its skin tighten and shrivel like the pears that came before it, its juices spilling outward from the gravelly pores that littered its skin.
Within an instance it smashed on the ground. lumps of juices that once would have tasted like the heavens themselves smattering the honest ground below.
The Magician looked down upon it. With faint moisture lining his bloodshot eyes and trembles forcing their way through his mutilated and misshapen body, he wept.
The man, magician no more, wept for the heavens to hear and the ground to feel.
For what was once beautiful was reduced to nothingness. And in its nothingness it was reduced to less.
Such is the way of the world. Such is the harshness of the winds and the dirt and the air. Such is life. Stealing opportunities that had been unseen or ill perceived. The world settles for nothing less.
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