spindledistrict

More than is known about the last emperor was his love of spindles. He lived, secluded, in a garden full of them, quietly ravelling and unravelling their cotton headscarves in the wind. Once, when a sad peasant came to see him, he asked the broken man Why did he come? the man replied, 'Because he knew the secret of predation and excess'. The emperor laughed, and laughed, rattling the spindles, coiling the cloth around their tip-top heads – he laughed so long one of his attendants fell backwards out into the gravel courtyard, down the steps and smack! on to the base of a giant spindle. All breathed in. And held. As it wavered, cotton dangling, other spindles sighing sympathetically, considering if now was the time to shed their flaxen locks and soar, a beat, then two, a third and nothing. Stillness, fizzling quiet. The last emperor merely smiled cheerily to himself. The attendant dusted himself off, ‘You must see what I mean?’ said the distraught peasant. Hmmmm, thought the Emperor, Hmmm he thought for a millennia, when finally, kicking aside a roughly peasant-sized pile of bones, he simply said, No.