Barbarians

Barbarian common sense says safety can only be found in familiarity. Obviously, beyond the limits of the known world were indescribable troubles and pitfalls. This has been proven many ages ago when a generation of weird and wild barbarians were born. Their souls were lit with a desire to wander. But all soon returned to the tribe covered in cuts and bruises. Pitfalls and traps abounded in unimaginable quantities in the unknown world.

Though barbarians knew outsiders were foolish, they were not unfriendly to those lunatics who passed through their village. Overall, barbarians were helpful and generous in the aim of assisting all outsiders on their way.

Over time one of these outsiders formed a friendship with a young barbarian. She invited her friend for a visit in the neighboring town. Young barbarians are not known to be foolish, so it took all by surprise to discover the visit had actually taken place. Not only that, but the young barbarian had returned virtually unscathed, and with a strange abnormality resting upon her nose.

Excitedly, the young barbarian shared about her adventure. Immediately upon leaving the land she was familiar with, she had begun to stumble and tripped an incredible number of times. This happened until her friend observed that her vision might be poor, which could be causing her to stumble and trip so many times. Together, they found their way into a shop that had the most amazing devices. It was there that she discovered, after placing an unfamiliar apparatus upon her nose, that the world could be seen clearly. She had thought all objects were blurry blobs, but the world was not full of blobs. It was full of clear, crisp objects and bright, vibrant colors. Wonderful tiny things previously unseen were everywhere. The stumbles and pitfalls were knowable, and better yet, avoidable. The unknown world opened before the young barbarian, beautiful, and as kind to her shins as her own village.

The tribe listened carefully until she had finished, but they did not believe her irrational ramblings. Nor would they entertain the notion that the world could be as she described it, with insane detail and fanciful color. They decided she had left the safety of the known and, as a result, had sadly gone mad. They would not, under any circumstances, place the foreign device that had caused her delusions upon their own faces. The world was as they knew it. And that was that.