The Sun Rise over Mai Secuel

I want to share a little story with you, that is part of the Tales of Wisdom collection passed down to us by the Chocolatey Mistress:

Once upon a time, there was a little village called Mai Secuel (in some parts of the country it was called “Mai Es Cue El”). It was a buzzing little place, because the inhabitants provided services to other towns, that no-one else could offer to anyone but kings. They filed papers in enormous warehouses, and even found them again when requested. Being generous and good people at heart, they did it even for free.

So Mai Secuel prospered, and grew. And grew. And grew. And more and more people from all over the country came to Mai Secuel, to have their data stored there. And it could have been a true success story, if not…

Well, the people coming to Mai Secuel started to become displeased about the service they received. Entire warehouses had to be shut and locked for hours, just because someone requested certain papers of his to be changed. And so it came that long queues started to build up all around Mai Secuel. And the people coming to Mai Secuel had the exact opposite of an English attitude towards queueing.

But the real tragedy happened one morning in June, when the emperor of the country in which Mai Secuel is situated, decided that paper filing would have to conform to certain rules from now on. People should be able to use a very elaborate form of speech to request exactly what papers they wanted. So that no more misunderstandings would happen, and competition could break up the monopoly of Mai Secuel. But Mai Secuel’s people were never very good at languages. They barely managed the little they knew, and had no aspiration to learn something new.

And so it came as it had to come. The emperor ordered the sun to not shine over Mai Secuel any longer. And the sun complied. And it went dark in Mai Secuel.

The people there - being very stubborn - refused now even more to learn the new language. And so it came to be that Mai Secuel had to endure darkness for many years. Other towns started providing similar services to Mai Secuel, first and foremost the city of Pos Grescuel or even the very expensive Mountains of Ora Kel. And they spoke that new language the emperor wanted fluently.

But after all those years during which the Sun had watched Mai Secuel’s misery, it could not stand the pain any longer. Even the Sun has a heart, and so it decided to defy the emperor and rise again and shine on Mai Secuel. The people of Mai Secuel were blinded by the light at first. But eventually they realised what had happened. And as their sign of good will for the Sun’s deed for their little town, they promised they would learn the language.

It took them many many years until they spoke it fluently. Stubborn as the Mai Secuel’ans are, it took the Sun many a heat wave to make them remember and keep their promise. But in the end they did learn. And the emperor’s vision had become reality. People could choose freely where they wanted their papers filed, and even if they were foreign to the town, they were always understood.