...lived a family of fat brown earthworms.  Not a nasty wet sandpile with weeds and flotsam strewn about, but a well-kept snug pile of clean sand with good drainage.  The family living inside this sandpile was your basic ordinary earthworm family; except for one young worm by the name of Bumpy.  Bumpy was a good worm; he attended wormie school and got decent grades, but sometimes he would let his curiousity get the best of him.  Now Bumpy had always kept inside the village compost heap; the land outside was full of danger, for his mommy had told him: "Bumpy dear, keep inside the village compost heap, for the land outside is full of danger!"  Bumpy was keenly aware of such things, but that seed of curiousity grew inside him as he grew older.

 On a time, in the waking dawn hours, the wormie god Hand took away Bumpy's daddy.  Although Hand was usually kind to the village, showering lovely coffee grounds and bits of veggies down from the sky for the village to eat, occasionally he took a sacrifice to appease some other evil god called Hook, and the rites were not pretty; the screams of Bumpy's daddy would echo in Bumpy's head for a long time, and Bumpy cried.

 That night while he slept he was visited by a vision in his dreams.  He saw what he thought was the most beautiful girl earthworm he had ever seen.  She raised her head to him and said, "Bumpy, I hear your cries and am moved to pity.  You have now within you great gifts that the wormie gods have granted you, but they will only flourish if you are guided by a man.  But beware!  Men can be evil as well as good..."  Then the beautiful worm faded away, leaving Bumpy to ponder the message.

 Without a daddy wormie in the house, Bumpy had to take over being the daddy to the younger wormies.  He did most of the wormie chores and took over the daddy wormie responsibilities.  In those days Bumpy grew like a weed, and he became the strongest worm in the heap.  He was also looked upon as a leader among the worms, even though he was still but a stripling.

 While Bumpy was still young there was a great fire in the sky.  The wormies were filled with dread, and they prayed to Hand and the other wormie gods for guidance.  As they prayed they heard a great scream from the heavens, and some say they saw Hand streak across the sky at that time.  They never saw Hand again.  In fact, from that time onward, the heap had suffered great famine and drought, and many wormies were lost.  But not Bumpy, for his destiny led him down a far different path.

 A day after the Great Noise, as it was called, the wormies heard new sounds they had never heard before.  Sounds of many gods at once, but they sounded harsh and mean.  The wormies has a meeting and decided that they would send an emissary up to the very top of the world, where very few wormies liked to go, to attempt to pray to the new gods and to find out what happened to Hand.  Bumpy volunteered for this dangerous mission, which was just as well; for he was the unanimous choice of all the rest of the wormies.

 Now when Bumpy had ascended to the top of the world, he saw quite a sight.  The sky indeed was on fire, and he heard sounds that reminded him of his daddy's cries, but these cries were from the gods.  Bumpy grew afraid and thought the world was coming to an end.  He was just about to burrow back into the village when he beheld for the first time the face of a god.

 The god had a hard shell around his body, even on his head, and it flickered in the light of the fire.  Bumpy noticed several other gods in the area.  He also noticed that the god nearest himself seemed to be the king of the new gods, for the other gods showed him great reverence, bowing and saluting him.  But Bumpy was confused; he noticed that these gods had a part of them that looked exactly like the god Hand.  Then Bumpy remembered his dream and the words of the beautiful girl wormie: These gods must be called men!

 This was too much for poor Bumpy to take in at once, and he started to cry.  He wanted to just crawl away and hug his mommy.  But Fate would have it's way, and the king god heard the tiny cries of our little wormie hero.  The man picked Bumpy up and was about to do him harm, when the gift of human speech was granted to Bumpy, and he pleaded to the man to spare his life.

 The man held Bumpy, speechless!  Never in his life had he ever heard of an earthworm that could talk!  But the man was crafty, and did not share this miracle with any of his fellow comrades.  After getting over his shock, the man took Bumpy and put him in a pouch.  The last thing Bumpy saw was his little sandpile, a sight he wouldn't see again for a long, long time.