“… no point worrying about that problem, our ole lake monster, she’s already busy chewing on that particular coin…”
Part I: Lariosauro, just an old lake monster
Deep in the belly of an Italian lake, lived an old lumbering beast from the ancient world. The lake was named Lario, meaning deep and reflecting, and had been sculpted by colossal glaciers eons ago. This lake aptly boasted the deepest and most shimmering waters across all the surrounding Alps. The old beast sometimes wondered if she came to live in this lake because of its depths or if it was deep because she lived there. Nonetheless the creature, despite being quite colossal, bigger than most whales in fact, found her home to be quite capacious and cozy indeed.
She had never actually seen a whale, incidentally, but had gleaned these things from the whispered stories of the many shoals of chatty delicious fish. Oh those delicious schools of plentiful lake fish. Most would fill her large belly without complaint but sometimes bartered their lives for stories of the outside world. The lake beast delighted in hearing about open oceans and these friendly blubbering whales, even when it all felt so impossibly big and fantastic. Like the many wonders beyond the lake’s borders, there were so many mysteries hiding in the corners of her old mind. She had trouble recalling how long she had been living in this mountain enclosed lake. To her it was some place she had always been. To her, it was a timeless haven, an intrinsic part of her being, a story in itself.
And it was a good story too, one she retold every day with gratitude, as she spent the long days in her own perfect paradise. Indeed she learned the value of sharing stories, and they seemed to quench her desire to be anywhere else. Many tales were woven by her seafood companions, who bubbled giddily but often misremembered the details of their days. And then there were the tales she overheard from those clever shirt-wearing apes who walked upright along the shoreline. They painted worlds more intricate than eyes or ears could every capture and she liked those best of all.
For nearly two hundred years she watched these strange wobbly leg-walkers make fire, make war, make love, and make up some of the most wonderfully tall tales. She found herself often hiding in the depths, spying on their strangely animated ways. And on warm summer evenings, when her sister Moon was still asleep low beyond the mountain ridge, she would linger longer by the shoreline campfires to hear these busy critters chatter away.
The hairless, shirted apes would spend hours jabbering their mouth flaps at each other, assisted by exaggerated hand gestures. She would often look at her own short fins and wave them about in silly mimicry, before feeling self-conscious and giving up entirely. She would even blow bubbles in hopes that they would burst at the surface into similar sounding musical words. This often ended with disappointed, but wise, abandonment of such monkey business.
A few times through the seasons she had been careless in her eavesdropping and was spotted by these shirt-wearing mouth flappers. They would point and crowd around the shore, in what she deemed a large overreaction. And the lake would grow turbulent with boats for weeks on end, causing many seasons of unnecessary disruption to her peaceful fishing. Times like these quickly taught her to be more private as she bided her time in deeper hidden chasms. She understood how overexcited these wobbly hand-wavers tend to get, and decided it was best they stayed friends from afar.
Little did she know for all this fuss over her sightings, one positive thing had emerged from the upright apes. They began to steadily repeat the same words in her presence, and it became clear that they were trying to give her a name. They called her things like ‘lake monster’, ‘dinosaur’ and ‘reptile’. They even compared her to the story about a possible cousin named Nessie from a land far up north. They quibbled about the right words to use and some even used smarter sounding names like Ples-ee-o-saur. But eventually they settled on naming her after their own lake and took to calling her ‘Lariosauro.’
Well, she had never met this cousin beast they whispered about, although she was sure jealous of how cute her name rolled off the tongue. Still, she had never had a name before and she supposed ‘Lariosauro’ was a delightfully round sounding one. So she accepted the gift gleefully and adored it like a jewel. She didn’t know much about the ways of these silly apes, but she sure loved the way they made sense of things with names. But whenever she felt overwhelmed with their wild imaginations and made-up problems, she would make a fast dive to easily solve the only one that troubled her, a hungry belly.
On a particularly beautiful day, the majestic and newly named Lariosauro was happily on the hunt to fill herself with the bounties of this vast paradise. After having her fill, she tried prodding these fish for any new stories from afar but quickly grew weary from their same old misremembered tales. And just then, she saw reflecting on the water’s edge, an unfamiliar and peculiar upright ape, slowing his shoreline steps, gazing full of woe into the abyss, and weaving a new story that filled her with a captivating sorrow.
Part II: Lario, just another peculiar upright ape
This woefully peculiar ape was among a tribe of lakefolk who called themselves villagers. Like the Lariosauro, this upright walking primate was enjoying his solitude in the serenity of the open waters and its twinkling reflections. Unlike the old lake monster, he seemed to be muttering his lonely heart’s song aloud, and showed no delight in the bounties of fish or the whispers of their stories.
The young man’s name was Lario, also named after the lake where he was born, aptly sharing its qualities of depth and reflection. He had spent his entire life, along these lakefront shores, in the medieval port town called Silica. Lario had never traveled beyond the barriers of the Alps, but often retreated from the bustle of Silica’s townsquare to the neighboring monastic villas, who boasted the most vibrant botanical gardens in all the land. Today was such a day of retreat from his troubles, as Lario walked mindfully along a sandy path of hanging blossoms and waving cypress trees.
Lario wore his heavy heart, pondering the great toils of his labors, losses of the past, and the dread of an uncertain tomorrow. It was, afterall, his namesake and burden to ponder such trivial worries. He told himself little stories about what kind of man he wished to be and what kept him from those wishes. He thought little about the history of the world, the great legends and heroes of the past, and even the myths and lore surrounding this lake. He had no time for silly stories of forefathers and forebodings, wagging their fingers at him. And least of all, he had no time for stories of romantic tales and lake monsters from the deep.
Stuck in his own head, Lario strode along the Sunday shores this one fine day. He had suffered the loss of a good friend and grew more and more vexed every day about his own death. His nights had grown sleepless. His work days had grown sedated. And his free time, well, it was spent overthinking his own purpose. Stuck in a rut of his own discontent. Even this lovely Sunday, striding along the glory of a late summer beach, all he could ponder was the work week ahead.
Through his mourning, he was filled with self-pity and resented his gossipy coworkers at the local bank. His need for peace over riches and titles was never understood by his wicked, scheming boss. And his once happy days toiling away at a clerk’s desk, waned to a lonely despair with many hours staring out his tiny window.
All of these collected sorrows of the week were stewing and settling thicker than usual inside his mucky head. And true to Lario’s habits of reflection on these weekend strolls, these thoughts began swirling their way into a particularly rank story he loved to repeat:
“I am unique but I am alone. I have struggles beyond what anyone could understand. I work harder than most to overcome them. More than I should. I am under-appreciated and conspired against. The world is against me. I am unable to rescue myself. I don’t feel safe and protected like when I was a child. And perhaps, just maybe, I am my own worst enemy.”
Lario continued to mutter this curse upon himself, plodding through the majestically lush gardens. Despite the gray clouds in his mind, the sun seemed to beg for his attention with dancing prismic colors, as a calm warm breeze rocked the magnolia trees. Lario was helpless to defy the beauty of the present moment any longer, and felt jolted out of his own head with a marveling gasp. And so, by the grace of the day, he found himself no longer able to focus on his sorrow. His senses were overloaded by the soothing sways of triumphant pines and the perfumery of plump citrus fruit.
In this moment, this disquieted young man found a certain peace in putting his old stories aside. He leaned over and rested his arms across a stone carved railing, wondering what it would feel like to stuff these stories in a sack and toss it into the lake forever. This rare revelation inflamed his imagination and he was suddenly enveloped by the warmth of this new idea.
“This could be the answer! I don’t need to be clutching so deliberately to my problems, afterall. They haven’t served me, they’ve only made me unhappy. I could just leave them all behind. Right here, right now! Drop them off my shoulders at this spot at the lake. And walk away forever!” Lario exclaimed exhilarated across the open water. “No more resisting them or debating them. Give them no more attention… and decide to let go.”
Enraptured by this choice, Lario was momentarily interrupted by the horn of the last running ferry for the day. It billowed smoky diesel engines from afar and beckoned its sunset passengers to board. He became alert from his dreamy state, and rifled through his pockets for enough coinage to make the trip home. Glancing down at his handful of gold coins, he was tempted to replay his worries for money, the one that robbed him of faith in his own ability. The story that reminded him how he gave his dignity to his job in exchange for these coins. And in that story he felt the old fear, guilt, and sin that sent him along this road in the first place.
“Right, no more!” the young man realized, “I’ll pack away my sorrows and leave them at the bottom of this lake forever. But what to pack them in? A mere ruck sack would never do. No, a cloth bag would never survive the decay of time. Nor would the strongest rope remain untattered in the endless tides. No, no, it would have to be something stronger. A symbol capable of capturing the imagination and ideals of man. A promise. A coin.”
He looked down into his open palm and from the pile of change, and a few buttons, he plucked from the top a single gold coin, minted and full of promise. It was perfect. Forged by man to last the ages and endowed with the shared beliefs of an entire civilization. This coin was meant to house some powerful magic. So into it he poured his sorrow, casting a spell that imbued it forever with his cursed stories. And standing over his wishing well, he gave it one last kiss goodbye and hurled the coin far away in exile seemingly for all of time.
Lario watched the small treasure shimmer brightly, as it skipped wildly across the lake’s surface, before plunging to the inevitable depths. And just as he began to turn for his ferry, he caught a glimpse at a mirage that made him rub his eyes. Through blinding sunset refractions, a slick gray marbled head broke the surface, opened wide jaws, and its arched back looped into a diving pursuit of that heavy gilded lure.
Lario paused in disbelief. But with his soul now free of stories and speculations, he found only the need to return a small chuckle. He bounced off to his ferry, skipping with a lighter heart, feeling the beginnings of a renewed vow, a promise of freedom from his darkest of days. Or so it seemed.
ORDER ‘STRANGELY FIERCE FABLES’ for the full story:
Paul Carreo 