“How long will they keep us on the juicer?” asked a new youngling.
“I’ve been here a long time,” I tried to comfort him.”If you have enough ideas they won’t throw you in the pit.”
I’d always believed this to be true, but I’d never seen anyone survive the juicer for as long as me. Everyone goes to the pit eventually, but I was going to change all that. The youngling was crying now.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s alright here, take a look around. There’s nice showers, and we always get fed.”
He stops crying and looks around. I remember when I was a youngling it was hard to find food with no elders around. I can still taste the first meal I ever had in the juicer.
“Will you be my friend?” the youngling asks.
“Of course,” I say. “I’ll look after you.”
The next day I wake to find myself being carried by a hand. I am headed to the pit.
“No!” I yell at the giant. “I still have ideas!”
I rack my brain but nothing comes.
“You served us well,” says the giant. “But everyone is born with a finite amount of ideas.”
The giant drops me. The pit is worse than I’d imagined. Everyone is weak with hunger and the smell of rotting bodies is thick.
One of my old friends from the juicer flings herself onto me.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I never thought I’d see you here, but I guess the pit gets everyone in the end.”
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“There’s no food.”
“Well lets look for a way out.”
“There’s none.”
“Have you tried?”
“No. What are we supposed to do? There are no ideas down here.”
She was right. I’d failed, the giants had taken all my ideas. There was nothing I could do now.
But that night I have an idea. What if the giant’s were wrong? What if we were just assuming they were right and disregarding our ideas in the pit.
It’s a small idea, but an idea nonetheless. This proved the giants were wrong. I hadn’t failed, I could still change everything.
Sometimes I still get scared that I have a finite number of ideas and that I am using them all up- this story is inspired by that fear.
freyawrightbrough 