Salt Flats Messenger
The salt flats were once a vivid and colorful place. Paramecium and armadillos dressed in pink and paraded up and down the mountains. Loose flocks of purple crows staggered around watering holes full of chartreuse water. The sky was a brilliant red, and the earth a brilliant jade color, with flowers sprouting a watermelon pink and black pansies dappled along waterfalls.
One day a beast appeared, a black beast with an invisible stomach and a mirror mouth. He was being ridden by a naked man wearing a hat shaped like a donut that was sliced in two by a sword. Together the beast and the man rampaged the beautiful salt flat valley, slicing the animals in two and trampling the flowers. In a nearby valley, a grey fox was eating a mouthful of honey from a giant beehive. He was talking to the bees because they had worked out a trade whereby the fox would tell them where the best smelling flowers were and he would ward off their predators while they went to collect their pollen. It was working out quite nicely for him and he was licking at a particularly sappy part of his fur when a rather large bumble bee slammed into the hive and collapsed. The bumble bee had come a long way, from the nearby beautiful salt flat valley, and he brought word of the man and the beast who were destroying everything. By the time the bumble bee had escaped, most of the valley was dead and turning white. All of the color was disappearing. The bees were distraught. And the fox had an idea. He filled his mouth with honey and took off in a sprint.
When he got to the salt flat valley the fox dug a large hole and climbed in. He laid his head back and opened his mouth, revealing a giant pool of honey. In the middle of this pool he placed a large and beautiful flower. He sat and waited. In an hour he heard the beast and the man come running through the meadow. Chopping flowers down, cutting animals apart, turning everything into white. The beast was swallowing the animals up into its belly and they disappeared, and then he would cough and his mirror mouth would release a cloud of salt, covering their bones. They moved down the valley in this manner, suddenly spotting the pool of honey and the lone flower. The man drove his heel s into the beasts side, snarling and laughing, and they both landed in the pool of honey and began drinking it up, covering their bodies in the amber liquid. When they were fully immersed the fox snapped his jaws shut and swallowed both the man and the beast. They tried to escape, digging at the foxes belly, but because they were covered in honey, their attempts were futile. The savage beast and man were destroyed at last, but as the fox looked around at the valley he wondered why the color had to leave. He had tried to save the valley but alas, the fields and lakes all shone with the piles of white salt. The fox wept for his colorful friends and fell asleep in his tears. That night the ruler of the constellations looked down on the weeping fox and pulled a few stars into place, shining them on to the fox. He saw his valley of white, and saw the foxes coat of grey and had an idea.
When the fox awoke, he felt a little better and so decided to wander over and take a drink. When he got to the pond and saw his reflection he was startled. His entire coat had changed color, showing all of the pinks and reds and purples that belonged to his friends in the valley before. Now he would always be a reminder, a messenger, to carry the story of the salt flats with him wherever he went.
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