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No one was ever able to accurately estimate exactly how long ago the Phenomenon, known colloquially as the Wisening, happened. Not even the Kingdom's historians who endlessly studied and examined the matter were able to determine a date with any degree of certainty or satisfaction. Therefore its origins were shrouded in mystery, and numerous legends and myths sprang up over time to accommodate the gap in knowledge. One thing that everyone was sure of was that it started with the Cry, when someone heard the Tidings and began to tell others, and still others, until all of the Kingdom knew and took up the Cry. However, no one could say how the Cry began, who heard the special Tidings first, or from where, and many factions were formed, supporting one legend or another.

Some said the Tidings were first heard by a mountain girl, deep in the wild cedar forests of Zar, who had left her village for a day on a perilous forage for precious healing mushrooms. Others said, no, they were first heard by a wandering merchant, winding his wary caravan of spices and furs through the steep mountain passes of the Northern Border. Still others, and mostly unpopular sorts, insisted, much to everyone else’s righteous indignation, that definitely the first to hear them was the playful child of a family on pilgrimage while he had strayed from the trail and unwittingly squatted to defecate beneath the overhanging boughs of the Tree of Souls.

However, all these legends were never so popular, so spoken of, or so admired as the one that the Kingdom's Elder’s Elder proffered, which told in remarkable detail the journey of the Cry, from its initiation in a lonely mountain forest to the King’s ears themselves.

It told that no one individual had heard the Tidings first; the Cry did not start from one mouth, but from hundreds. It told that the Tidings were first heard in the darkness of early dawn by the trees of Shedwater Mountain Forest, and they began the whispering. And the trees with their gentle voices a-rustle whispered the news to the beasts that prowled beneath them until by the time the sun began to peak above the hazy horizon they all knew, whether worm or warthog or majestic mankalo. And then the beasts started the Cry, first a murmur, a suggestion of something impending, like tremors before an earthquake, like sudden silence in a place of noise, like smoke where there should not be fire. And gradually the Cry started to become a roar, and the wind became agitated, as though by rustling leaves and moaning through crevasses it might add to the cacophony. And the roar rose up and up, growing louder and louder, until by the time the sun had crested the peak of Shedwater it filled every space, every silence, so that it seemed as if even the rocks themselves were humming with some emotion, as though all of Shedwater Mountain were singing some indefinable song.

And then the people of the Kingdom heard it. First those that lived in the humble granite villages under Shedwater Mountain’s embracing shadow, of course. How could they ignore the Cry, that deafening roar, that boomed, that ached with promise? But at first they did not understand it, because they were awed by its urgency, and their minds were befogged with doubts. Only when the children, who were still innocent of guilt and not jaded by Time the Corroder, began to join in the Cry with their sweet voices did the people glean its meaning, and then the Cry became not just a roar, an oblique tidal wave of sound and emotion, but suddenly it had significance and drive. Dispatchers were sent far and wide with the Tidings, and everywhere they went the Cry was taken up by those that dwelt there, so that it spread as quickly as a virus, contaminating entire villages and towns like a sort of benevolent plague, and always growing louder, stronger, rushing onward, until everyone’s throats were infected and all the denizens of the Kingdom had the Cry on their lips.

The sun rose steadily, following the Cry’s progress all the way, until by noon the Cry reached the capital city of the Kingdom, then known as Meh, now happily demolished in a giant corporate demolitions project. And there it did not simply spread, but ignited and flamed, like a fire running through a field of brushwood, and it consumed the whole city, so that every alley, every street corner and basement resounded with the Cry.

It was then that the King’s Royal and Extremely Personal Messenger heard it, from the depths of his master’s massive palace, set imposingly upon a green hill that rose like a beacon from the city centre. Being in the massage parlour (where he could be found most days, shamelessly exploiting the benefits of his high position), and engaged in a feeling of ecstasy as kinks were worked out of his back by expert chiropractors he had arranged to be bought and imported from a neighbouring kingdom, he was not at first cognisant of the commotion. It came to him as a dull roar through the palace walls, so subliminal that he barely noticed, and when he finally became aware of it he was so surprised that he leapt up from his lounge chair and dashed out into the corridor. The legend neither confirms nor denies if in his haste he had remembered to robe himself.

He followed the sound where it lead him, which was to the Royal Balcony. Opening its finely gilt doors he stepped out into warm sunshine and was greeted with the Cry. Even though he stood high above the city on tons of solid marble, still the sound reached him as though the foundations of the palace were hollow and he stood not one inch from the Cry's origin; as though it were emanating from the air itself.

He gasped, for he grasped its meaning instantly, and so great was his shock that he loosed his bowls right there and then. He stumbled back through the balcony doors, tripped on the sill and fell backwards onto the jewel-encrusted floor. The balcony doors were left swinging gently open, and through them the Cry rose up to envelop him. He was suddenly filled with a deep sense of peace as though something long expected had finally arrived, which he knew it had, and his head cleared of its befuddlement, and he knew what must be done.

He must inform the King.

Quickly he traversed the palace, down double-wide stairways, past huge rooms bursting with fine art, past servants who stared at him in disgust and cupped hands over noses, and onward, through the kitchens (a short cut) exploding with busy, fat, red-faced cooks, savoury fumes, squawking chickens, stacks of bloody meat, with delicious citrus and tropical fruits and barrels of beer overflowing and soaking the dirty tiled floors - down a servant’s stairway and through a set of heavy oaken doors, and bursting into the throne room, crying wildly, “Wisdom! Wisdom!”

The King looked up. He sat on a huge golden and bejewelled throne that dominated the centre of the Throne Room. He spent most of his time there along with his entourage, all of them blissfully unaware of the goings-on in the Kingdom. The King’s Royal and Extremely Personal Messenger threw himself down at the King’s feet and prostrated and grovelled according to custom.

The King looked down on him with a frown. He had been perusing a brochure displaying all the latest kingly fashions, and ruminating on how lovely a thing clothes were to wear. Why would any sane person ever take them off?

“You may or may not be dressed,” he said (in accordance with the legend's ambiguity).

Immediately a servant rushed over and draped a towel over The King’s Royal and Extremely Personal Messenger's backside. Then he scurried away. He was fired the next day, on the grounds that he was careless. Apparently, he learned, hand towels were not adequate articles of clothing, especially in the case of someone who was already robed.

“Great King!” cried The King’s Royal and Extremely Personal Messenger. “I have great news! Wonderful news!”

“Oh, bother,” said the King.

He belched.

“Queen Wisdom has responded to the summons! She has come! The whole Kingdom is crying her name!”

The King might have said something in reply to this piece of news, except that at that moment he was suddenly overcome by an absurdly long, rapid-fire farting fit. So intense and profoundly obnoxious were the King’s expulsions of methane that the King’s Royal and Extremely Personal Messenger thought he was being shot at and in his fright jumped backwards and accidentally swallowed his tongue.

Now, one is to understand that it was not the King’s fault for this outburst, but rather the Royal Physician’s. The King had recently contracted an intestinal disorder that caused him to be gaseous. The Royal Physician, an absentminded man, who happened to be experiencing a midlife crisis at the time and who also happened to be a quack, had concluded that it was caused by a certain undesirable food in his diet, and recommended that the King eat strictly spiced beans for the next six-ten years.

He was obeyed.

As the King’s odorous symphony of farts reached a reeking crescendo, by a remarkable coincidence it chanced to sound for the briefest of minutes extraordinarily like Beethoven’s For Elise, and had someone who knew the song been present it might have sparked a bought of morbid hilarity. But alas, no one present did know the song, and the farts gradually faded away along with the remarkable coincidence, which died and went where all inadvertent and unacknowledged comedy winds up.

By the time the King’s anul emissions had subsided there was a decidedly pallid green cloud surrounding his throne. Seven servants quickly rushed forward, holding their breath, of course, and with the use of giant fans briskly swept the gas cloud away into an unoccupied corner. Most of them survived, but one wasn’t so lucky; he accidentally inhaled.

Once the situation had settled and the corpse had been dragged away to the local potter’s field and buried unceremoniously in a two inch whole in the ground, did the King deign to respond to his Royal and Extremely Personal Messenger.

“So they’re crying ‘Wisdom’, are they?”

The King’s Royal and Extremely Personal Messenger had thus far failed to extricate his tongue from his throat and was lying on the gleaming white marble floor where he spasmed and twitched convulsively, slowly suffocating. Needless to say, he was only capable of a polite nod.

The King grunted. He raised his arm in order to glance at his non-existent imaginary wristwatch. Then he realised he had forgotten to put it on. He spent a whole minute ruminating on where he might have left it. He fumbled in his non-existent imaginary pocket. Lo and behold, there it was!

He put it on.

“So Queen Wisdom has responded, has she?” said the King to his Royal and Extremely Personal Messenger.

The King’s Royal and Extremely Personal Messenger grunted vaguely in response and gestured wildly for help at a gaggle of servants that waited nearby. They shrugged their shoulders at him and shook their heads. Nobody liked him, they all thought he was an overly-pampered, lazy sod.

The King raised his arm and glanced at his watch.

He belched.

“Well, it’s about time.”

The King’s Royal and Extremely Personal Messenger, not wanting to be a bother to anybody, discreetly crawled into a quiet corner and died.

So the legend told.

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