The Legend of the Short Man on the Tall Mountain

By aepennymaker

Have you ever seen the Short Man?

His name says a lot about him. He's a little shorter than Regular-Sized Man, and quite a bit shorter than Great-Big-Gigundous Man.

But the Short Man is taller than Little-Tiny Man and huge when he's put next to Teensy-Eensy-Weensy Man.

Suffice to say, if you had them all standing in a row from shortest to biggest, Short Man would actually have to go right in the middle.

Which is all beside the point. Size isn't that important, really. You're only as big as your heart is warm. 4

This might sound strange to anyone who knows him now, but the Short Man wasn't always good at things. Or, he didn't think he was. He was good at something, just not what you might expect.

When he was just a Short Boy, he used to go up to the top of the Tall Mountain to play with the clouds. His favorite thing was making shapes in them with his breath - sort of like when you breathe into a freezer, or stand outside in winter and pretend to be a dragon. Except Short Man could breathe a whole dragon if he wanted to, wings and everything.

But it wasn't quite the same as making a real dragon. The clouds always drifted away, and never did anything but clump together and rain on things. That wasn't what Short was supposed to do. He was supposed to make real things. Things that moved, and breathed on their own. The Man family had always made those kinds of things. No one could remember a time when they didn't, not even Older-Than-Dirt Man. Short was expected to learn to make things too.

Short was a good student. He studied just as hard as everyone else. But while everyone else was getting better and better at making all sorts of really interesting things, Short just couldn't seem to find anything he could do very well.

He wasn't tall, and he wasn't small. He couldn't make trees and giraffes and elephants like Great-Big-Gigundous Man. He tried. He asked Great-Big if he could help in the Big Things workshop.

Great-Big thought about it for a moment, then handed Short a giraffe kit and a ladder.

It didn't turn out quite as expected.

After much begging, Regular-Sized Man gave in and let Short make a regular sized thing.

Short sat down at the worktable and started with something easy. What could go wrong with a dog? Dogs were all soft fur and happy grins and wagging tails...

Short Man tried helping Little-Tiny make a rabbit. It wound up as something else entirely.

So did Short Man's mouse.

Teensy-Eensy-Weensy-Man very reluctantly agreed to let Short try his hand at making Tiny Things.

Short wanted to make things, but after trying and trying and trying, he still hadn't found what he was good at. All of his tiny things were little, all of his little things were big, all of his regular sized things were small, all of his gigantic things were regular sized, and now no one wanted to let him practice in their workshop.

Short was discouraged.

One day, with nothing to do anymore, Short trudged up to the top of the Tall Mountain again just to pass the time. He sat down on his favorite rock, and stared into the valley far below.

Without really thinking about it, he started making shapes. A big, puffy lion with a hat on its head. A butterfly reading a newspaper. A whole bunch of birds at once.

Suddenly, Short heard a lot of huffing and puffing coming from the trail behind him. He turned around to find a girl of about seven or eight coming over the last boulder, her face pink and sweaty from hiking up a whole mountain.

For several minutes they just looked at each other while the girl caught her breath.

At last, the girl stepped forward and held out her hand. "Hello. My name is Olivia. Olivia Wattle-Butter."

Short shook her hand politely.

Then Olivia tilted her head and looked at him more closely, her bright eyes crinkling at the corners and her nose wrinkling in the middle. "I've always wondered who was up here making all the cloud animals," she said. "I have come... I've come because my little brother is sick, you see, and Mother said he must stay in bed..." (Olivia was still breathing fairly hard, and kept pausing because she had run out of air.) "He can see the sky through his window, though... So I was hoping... If you wouldn't mind, that is... Would you make some extra-special animals today? It would cheer him up ever so much."

Short blushed to the roots of his wild hair - not that you would know under all the rest of it. "Of course. I would be honored. Anything in particular?"

Olivia sat next to him and pulled a piece of paper from her jacket pocket. She unfolded it. "I've made a list. Dragons are his favorites, but he likes kangaroos, too, if it's not too much bother."

Short smiled. "I can do kangaroos."

Short and Olivia spent the afternoon making all sorts of animals for Olivia's little brother.Short and Olivia spent the afternoon making all sorts of animals for Olivia's little brother.There were more requests after that. Olivia's friend Bob asked for a basket of kittens for his grandmother. Bob's friend Phineas asked for a herd of horses, and so it went. He helped with birthdays, and weddings, and those times when someone wanted to lie on a hill and do nothing much for a while. There wasn't anything Short couldn't make, thanks to all those years he spent studying.

And that is why you can see shapes in the clouds. They're really there, you know. The kittens are really meant to be kittens, the snakes are really meant to be snakes, and the pelican with the coat on is really supposed to be a duck... But that's alright. Everyone has bad days, even if they're very good at something. The important thing is to try again.

Like the Short Man on the Tall Mountain.