The Cave and The Egg
	Once there was a boy named Sean who loved his mother dearly.  On a winter afternoon he was frolicking in the woods, when he came upon a great giant cave. He stopped and peered inside and saw diamonds and gold, a multitude of treasures which his mother would have loved very much.  The boy Sean entered the cave, determined to steal them.  
	But as he entered the cave he became engrossed by the reflections of the diamonds and gold.  They were many, and the boy felt that even if he spent his entire life stealing from the cave he would not be able to rob it completely . 
	The boy was frought with indecision.  There were rubies and emeralds, sapphires and lengthy gold necklaces, arm bands, and long earrings. The boy ran through the cave, taking one trinket and another, grabbing one armful and dropping it later for another, until he reached the end of the cave
	The cave did not seem endless when the boy entered, but now he saw that the entire end wall was steeped in a pile of jewels, and at the top, a great pearl egg, set with a variety of the brightest gems.  
	“But the egg is at the top of this mountain of treasure! Even if I were to spend my whole life growing I do not think I would ever reach it!”
	The boy dropped the jewelry and diamonds he had taken from the cave, saddened.  Then, he saw the pile it had made was similiar but smaller than the towering pile before him and grew an idea.  “I will take this whole cave’s wonders and pile it atop each other, until my pile is greater than this one before me!”
	And so the boy Sean toiled day and night each day to move the cave from one end to the other.  He cut down the trees outside the cave until the whole woods were used to make the ramp which made him go higher and higher.  At last, when the boy was an old man, he had made a pile taller than the one that had dwarfed him when he was a child. 
	“Alas, I have overcome it, and now this pearl is mine!” The old man Sean snatched the egg from the top. He laughed roariously atop his heap, triumphantly shaking the spoils of his work above him.  
	And then, the cave began to shake. The old man recognized the booming sound of footsteps approaching and froze in fear as he saw what was a great creature who was made of parts of a man, a horse, a fish, and a hawk.  
	“Who are you? What have you done to this cave?” the creature demanded.
	“I was once the boy Sean, but now I am the man!” the old man declared.  “I sought this great pearl on the top of this great pile, and I made a greater pile to reach it.”
	The creature turned to the ramp, and pointed to it. “What is this?”
	“That is the ramp I used to make the pile which was greater than the pile that was here before!”
	At that, the creature laughed. His voice trembled the pile beneath the old man and it began to fall apart.  
	“Stop! You are going to kill us both!” the old man yelled to the creature.
	“You are an ignorant fool you has wasted his precious time! You needed not build this ramp to make that pile, or make that pile to keep this ramp.  You could have picked apart the first pile faster, or simply taken an even share of this repository, whose wealth is abundant enough for every living man’s own needs.”
	The creature stopped its laugh, suddenly dim. “Instead, you have deprived the cave from the rest of the world, as each day you took more from the entrance, and placed it far behind here, so that whenever a man found the cave he thought it only an empty, barren place, and continued onward to wherever his journey was.”
	The old man clutched the egg, suddenly aware of his own greed. He plead to the creature,“I beg forgiveness!”
	“I cannot forgive you, for these material concerns do not concern me as I am not of this material world. This is not my crime to forgive.  But rest assured that had I been a man of equal ferocity you would have met your doom immediately.” 
	The old man was silent, keeping the egg between him and his arms and so the creature stirred, “I am a curious, so I ask of you: why have you done this? Why did you desire that egg?”
	The old man tried to answer, but then he remembered why he had sought such a foolish endeavor. And then he remembered that as a child such a goal seemed at once pure.  And then he realized that he had forgotten the meaning of his quest and his love of his mother, who was now long dead.
	“My life has been consumed and squandered.” the man cried, and he continued to inveigh himself, “I sought this egg for pure reasons, to envoke love. But that is all lost. And now I know not what to do with this great pearl, or how to repent to the world, for such a great deprivation.” And then the old man threw himself into great remorse and sobbing.
	“Save your pointless self-pity, old man.” The creature said.  Its voice was massive but gentle.  As it turned away suddenly the man screamed at it. 
	“Wait great creature! You cannot leave me here, this is a horrible injustice and I must be punished!”
	The creature turned to the man, and said to him softly, “You are an old man, and you will spend the rest of your short days atop that heap.” And then the creature continued to leave.
	But the old man cried again, “No! That is a great injustice in itself! The wealth of the cave must be returned to the world again! This injustice made right!” 
	This made the giant turn back to the old man. “What do you suggest, old man?”
	At this, the old man realized the true price of his conviction.  The old man said, “You must use your great voice, and your great size to shake this place, and make these great treasures fall back unto the rest of the cave.”
	“Even I am dwarfed by this great pile you have constructed, and I cannot lift you from atop it and rescue you.”
	“This is my concern, creature. Your concern is to flood these treasures unto the cave, without harm to yourself.”
	“That is not a concern for myself, old man, as I said to you before: I am not of this world, and I cannot be harmed by it.”
	Then the creature bellowed and unleashed its strength against the walls, bringing the pile unto itself.  The cave was flooded and the diamonds and earrings and bracelets, the rubies and sapphires and emerald gems returned to where they had been before. 
	When the creature stopped, he saw no sign of the old man, nor the great pearl egg he had once sought.