2. Once Upon A Time
Once upon a time there were some shepherds who were settling down for the night in the meadow along with their flock of sheep. Suddenly a bright star appeared to them and exploded into millions of glittering fragments that rained down on them. The shepherds were blinded and terrified and dropped their spoons, as they were eating their supper; the sheep were stunned and just stared, tufts of grass hanging from their open mouths.
Then a voice from above said, “Err, sorry guys. Didn’t mean to scare you, sorry.”
This gave the shepherds a new jolt and they spilled their oatmeal porridge.
“Ahem, awfully sorry, but we’re going to rock your socks off. Sorry, guys, sorry.”
The shepherds were petrified, but their eyeballs shifted involuntarily to glance at their feet they’d been warming at the campfire: Not very much of a sock to rock off on any of their feet, just shreds and gaping holes around the toes.
“Er… well, anyway, we’re bringing you some great news,” the voice continued. “There’s a child born today, and he’ll grow up to be Something Else! We’ll rock your, er.. socks off now, but one day he’ll rock the whole world’s socks off! Yeah!”
“Yeah,” a chorus of voices repeated from above.
The glittering confetti cleared from the air to reveal an array of shining barrels pointing right at the shepherds’ faces.
“Please, don’t shoot us,” the shepherds whimpered. They had never seen or heard musical instruments, so they thought the shiny things must be weapons.(No use for anything else in the mountains seething with robbers and wolves.) Unfortunately, at the very moment one of the shiny tubes sputtered out something like a pebble, which hit the shepherd who had spoken right on the nose. He darted behind a rock for shelter while the rest covered their heads.
“You dumbhead, didn’t I tell you to fix your sax before you blow it,” a stern voice said. “For good.”
“Yes, mam.” The were shuffling sounds and some bursts of laughter but no more more projectiles.
All of a sudden the night erupted in thunder. The shepherds tucked their heads under their arms and waited for the sky to fall down. The ground was pounded by bolts of lightning and repeated thuds of thunder throbbed in the shepherds’ bones.
“What is this?” one of them whispered to himself. “The end of the world?”
“No, just the intro,” a roar came from above. “And we’re the Rock ‘n’ Roll Angels!”
This was the worst thunder the shepherds and the sheep had ever lived through. Nevertheless, in no time they all found themselves shaking their legs, bouncing and clapping their hands to the rythm of the storm. They even joined the refrain: “Peace, peace, good will to police, peace on Earth and piece of cake, please.”
“No, that’s not the way it goes, you dimwit.”
When the tempest was over the shepherds were out of breath. The sheep had been chewing the same grass over and over and over again and finally swallowed.
“Okay, let’s go!” a figure up in the air hailed to the shepherds.
“W-where?” The shepherds were still all shaken. “Why?”
“To see the newborn King. In a manger. Sleeping.”
“In this noise?” one of the shepherds muttered.
So, while the band packed up their stuff, the shepherds kicked dirt into the campfire and got their cloaks and staffs ready. They didn’t know what else to do. Then they hurried off into the dark night following the bright but awfully noisy creatures. Nobody had any thoughts in their heads left to worry about the sheep.
Gradually, life in the meadow returned to normal. The sheep let their mouths relax, they forgot to swallow, and their eyes grew heavy and drooped. One by one, oblivious to the dangers of the night, they fell asleep. All except for one little sheep that couldn’t go to sleep.
The little sheep walked about and thought. On the ground it found the object that had hit one of the shepherds right on the nose. The sheep sniffed at it: it smelled like strawberry. The sheep licked at it: it tasted like strawberry. The sheep ate it: some tough strawberry, hard like resin from a mountain pine but sweet.
The little sheep looked around. All the others were fast asleep, so the little sheep walked a bit further. Nobody woke up, so the little sheep kept on going. At the fence it stopped to look back once more, and then it jumped over the gate. The glow of the star had faded but the little sheep remembered the direction where it had traveled. So it decided to take a shortcut across the fields and head towards the highest peak in the distance, behind which the star had disappeared.
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