The Bamboo Beings

Many years ago the realm of Faerie became angry with we humans. They disliked how we treated nature as if it were there for our pleasure. They considered that we did not respect nature's desire to feast upon us or be feasted upon by us. As a result, it was decided to teach us a lesson.

The Chinese faeries began to plant bamboo and grew it carefully. The Welsh faeries used the bamboo to create a being that would strike fear into us humans. All the rest of the faeries gave the being their magic protection from fire and bullets and the like. However, they overlooked one detail, which would save us quite by accident. They also gave it a 'Hydra' touch so that if it was attacked by a human it would multiply.

I am ashamed to say that we humans did not learn from our mistakes. We attacked the being and it multiplied into many similar beings. All of them flexible and terrible. These beings lashed people with their long fingers and chased them out of the wilder places into the cities. The faeries laughed to see it and followed the beings into the cities too, planting fast growing climbing plants that tore buildings apart and returned huge swathes of our cities into forests and meadows. For some people this was not such a problem so long as the bamboo creatures did not attack them.

Eventually, a zoo-keeper had an idea and took out the pandas. The faeries had forgotten the pandas and in the confusion, so had we humans until the zoo-keeper remembered that pandas like bamboo. The pandas did not attack the bamboo beings. They held them close and then ate huge chunks out of them. The bamboo creatures tried to lash the pandas, but their fingers were bitten off by the pandas.

A group of people attacked the bamboo beings to make them multiply, but it did no good. The pandas ate the bamboo beings until they were full. Then they slept and while they did so, the armies tried to herd the bamboo beings into large pits. The faeries, being capricious after a while became bored of the bamboo creatures and turned them into rampant ivy that snaked along the ground and climbed over all that it could. It's roots tore up the ground and it's tendrils stuck to the buildings.

People forgot to go to work. Economies collapsed and then altered. People gathered in smaller communities and farmed the land. They foraged for their little groups and created a barter economy with other small groups until they forgot what money was. They slowly learned to adapt and after a while, the faeries forgot why they had wanted to punish the humans and returned to their realm. The people regained their cities little by little until once more we had our new societies and forgot the bamboo beings. All that was left of the first one, was a leaf, a seed and a few sticks of bamboo that the pandas and the faeries had forgotten.