The Elephant in the Sunroom

Cordelia was a lively creature, full of the curiosity and adventure of her parade. They often bathe in the cooling mud and traipse through the tall savanna, but nothing intrigued Cordelia more than the little square hills. Though the other elephants acknowledged their surroundings, with careful attention used for lions, they did little to approach the square hills in the wild. Some hills had red caps and others black. Some were slanted and others flat. Cordelia could not yet leave her mother, as she was young but one day, she was able to meander to one hill with a clear, square box on the side of it. This hill was fascinating, for it had plants living underneath it! Cordelia’s trunk reached for the plant with pretty red berries, but her trunk was stopped by something invisible. She pushed the invisible thing but to no avail! She wandered around this barrier until it at last admitted her. She reached her trunk for the red berries once more and tried pulling its roots from the ground. The plant lifted with ease but an orange rock encasing it fell to the ground with a crash!

The horrible sound spooked Cordelia, so she ran towards the invisible force and managed to break it with all her might. It too made a horrible crashing noise and she ran all the faster to her parade. They were there waiting for her and she told them about the clear box. She told them of the invisible wall and the food inside it had drawn her in.

Her mother chided her, saying “Trickery is the way of humans.”

Cordelia listened to these words and looked on the square hills will more caution than before. Humans had come for their kin, taking them with sticks that made the sound of thunder. These rocks of orange and clear walls made very loud crashes, which is probably the same human trickery. The square hills fascinated her still but the trickery behind it kept her from getting close again.

Once she was older, Cordelia was able to stand at her mother’s height and roam with freedom. She saw the square hills, ever increasing on the horizon, knowing to never approach them. They went their usual journey throughout the year, visiting different water holes throughout the land. Each of them remained very much the same, so she and her parade wandered the wild with ease. One day, they came upon the watering hole that was near the hill with the clear box, finding it to be completely surrounded with the same kind of strange hills! With sadness, the parade resolved to move on to the next watering hole, but Cordelia was thirsty as well as hungry. Nothing bad had happened before and though thunder sticks were a fear, the orange rock and invisible wall in her past encounter never hurt her. That is, until she went under the hill to investigate. She then decided she would be safe as long as she did not go within.

With firm resolve, even though the other elephants warned her, Cordelia thumped into the midst of the hills after the sun had gone down. The ground at her feet was stone instead of dirt and lined with a myriad of strangely colored rocks. Curiously, she touched the yellow rock with her trunk, feeling the smoothness. She then lifted her foot and made to step on it. It crunched under her weight and there came a sound unlike any Cordelia had ever heard. Strange and piercing bird calls filled the air and the square hills all around her started to glow like the sun! Quickly, she thundered down between the square hills, stepping on many colorful, smooth rocks as she went. They too started their angry bird calls. Such horrible sounds! She finally made it to the center of the hills, tangling into the middle of vines tied to dead trees. The vines were strong, trapping her there and panicked, Cordelia began thrashing within the trap, but the lines burned her! She instantly ceased her struggle. The sounds of the colorful rocks blasted behind her and with horror, she began to see more of the square hills around her glow.

Then humans began to filter out of the hills, gazing up at her. All around her, they stood, keeping their distance, but watching. For a long time, she watched them as they watched her. Suddenly, the square hills lost their glow, and everything around went dark. All of it could only be illuminated by the moon.

Then a bigger bright-red rock came drifting towards her and she backed away as much as possible. The vines burned much less now. Out stepped humans who had been inside this rock, as they were under the square hills. The humans then extended a long branch, attached to another with entwined branches. A human was upon it, getting closer to her face. She tried to strain, to get away from the human trickery, but to no avail. With a foreign, yet calm voice, the human lifted a stick. Though similar to the thunder stick, it was not the same. The human never once caused it to make a loud noise. Instead, the vines began to untangle, and Cordelia could move her head. Soon she was free!

Cordelia then turned around and saw that the square hills were all dark as well and the colorful rocks quiet. Even though she had overturned a couple of them, the shrill noise had stopped. The humans kept their distance as she lumbered by and she saw the open land before her now. Her parade was waiting for her at the edge of the hills and she began running towards the safety of their numbers. Behind her, the humans gathered at the edge of their hills, watching as she reunited with her family. Then, all the hills began to glow as one and the parade watched the trickery with a wary eye. Cordelia and her parade decided it was best to move on from this strange place and left the glowing square hills behind them.

Cordelia thought that sometimes human trickery did not lead to harm, though she wondered why some used thunder sticks and others sticks that freed a wayward elephant.