Limewood’s Penchant for Catastrophe

Two poorly carved curved wooden ornaments meant

for a fancy mansion to add accents to an English

renaissance elm table in the dining room were,

just as soon as seen as having been designed ineptly,

dumped directly into some bleak yard in back where

discards, faux pas, broken rakes and other undeserving

bits of waste lay waiting for whatever next demise

would be their dreary destiny. But these two poorly

carved curved wooden ornaments would not put up

with this: to be dismissed disgustedly did not accord 

with their exalted self-esteem. Sufficiently infested with

their rage, they schemed – and planned their vengeance.

They could make a plan because the man who undertook

to undertake them into being gave them sentience.

Some artisans who work with certain kinds of lumber find

they too can do that. Grinling Gibbons, for example,

gave his carvings psyches, souls and minds because

he worked in limewood. The sad fact for their enemies

was that these poorly carved curved wooden ornaments

were limewood too. Sentient limewood also lined

and framed a good part of the mansion readily in view.

Limewood could send soundless messages to other

limewood radially within half-a-mile. And so a revolution

was fomented that quite made the elm wood table’s owner

lose his smile. How the limewood’s grand collective plan

began and then proceeded to succeed to make the stout 

elm table rot we cannot after all divulge. If we did, we fear
we’d make the limewood mad. Limewood’s penchant

for catastrophe is not a penchant we would press

it to indulge. The outcome would be very bad.

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