text: Quite some time ago... when the world was still fresh and new, there lived a massive black ox whose name was Burden. Horns of iron and ash, skin tougher than railroad tracks, his coarse wooly fur a shade of black so dark that he looked like a hole in the Earth. Burden was born fully grown with a massive saddle bag strapped across his hulking back. His sole purpose was to carry the weight of our worries and troubles and fears, carry them right to the edge of the world and do away with them. The load was always incredibly heavy but Burden was the strongest Ox in this galaxy and the next, and Burden did his duty without so much as a word or a grumbling. And so, the weight of our worries would drift away and the world was a much happier place because of it. Burden would travel from village to village with his pack and the villagers would come throw every bad bone they could pick inside. Once his bag was full he would start his journey to the ends of the world. Through fire, through brimstone, through the deepest darkest, over towering mountains, and into the abyss. Burden would carry his bag of bones to the very last patch of dirt and ashen rock, right to the edge of the globe. He would empty them out and every bone and bad dream the people had bestowed upon him would fall into the great wide nothing and fade into patches of the night sky. He never asked why, he never complained. Burden knew it was his purpose and he kept his head low as if he was perpetually bowing to Mother Earth. In the beginning, the people of Earth were grateful. They would bring him baskets of lush greens to eat and fresh water to drink and thank him for his cumbersome sacrifice. However, as time went on the people became so accustomed to Burden’s service that it was no longer celebrated and lauded, it was expected and greatly unappreciated. They did not bring him food or water, they no longer gave thanks, they did not await his arrival with bated breath. Now they were impatient and listless. They unloaded their bones into his bag with disdain, as if it were a chore. Some even yelled at him to “Hurry up!” Still, Burden never batted an eye. He kept his head low and carried out his commitment without a second thought as he really didn’t have many thoughts at all. He did what he was made to do and nothing more. Nothing less. The way he always had, the way he always would. Or rather, he would have, if it were not for one particularly mettlesome crow. **CHAOS.** Chaos the crow lived high in the trees and ruled over the sky. Chaos was rather large for a bird, sleek and black... so much so that it almost looked as if he was always moving, even when sitting completely still. Chaos has existed since Burden began to walk the Earth, though they are both quite the opposite. Chaos is loud and obnoxious, unpredictable and seemingly everywhere at once (which allowed him to stick his beak in all the places that it did not belong.) Chaos always watched Burden carefully, he was jealous of his uniformity and consistency. He didn’t understand his mission or why he was obligated to help the humans that he served, the humans Chaos so detested. So every year, he would try and thwart Burden’s journey. He would come up with new and inventive ways to try and stop the ox but Burden never gave way, he carried right along moving the weight of the world on his shoulders. Year after year he tried, and every year Chaos failed. Not to be undone, Chaos had a spirit just as indomitable as the beast and after a while he began to admire and gain a great deal of respect for his immovable adversary. But when Chaos saw how those he served had begun to treat Burden, he became enraged. He could not begin to fathom how or why these mortals could take such a magnificent deity for granted. Chaos landed in the town square and started squawking madly at the villagers, “This magnificent ox is a creature of the Gods as am I and we shall be exalted as such! You fools should be groveling at his feet! Yet you dare to slight him? You dare gaze upon this gift from the heavens begrudgingly? For shame!” Chaos flapped his wings and thunderous black clouds unfurled out from under them and into the sky. Thunder rumbled as he took in heaving breaths, eyes darting from face to face of the crowd that had started to gather. And then, the people simply dispersed. They shrugged their shoulders, they rolled their eyes, they couldn’t be bothered to care. Chaos spent days and nights trying to think of a plan to make the humans see the error in their ways and pay Burden the respect he was due. The villagers knew Chaos was a thief and a trickster, he couldn’t talk to them himself. He knew there was no talking to the ox, let alone stopping him, it would be like preaching caution to a speeding boulder rolling down a mountain. Fruitless. Hopeless. “What to do, what to do!” He cawed frantically as he hopped back and forth on his perch and plucked at his own feathers, “I haven’t a clue, what one could possibly do... I’m shedding, I’m molting, I’m out of my head... I haven’t a clue, I’m losing the... thread!” Chaos stood absolutely still for possibly the first time in his entire existence. His black eyes gleamed with cunning and pride. “That’s it. One little thread. It’s all that I need.” **BONES.** And so, with his ever watchful and incredibly accurate eye, Chaos waited and watched until he finally spotted what he wanted. One tiny strand of thread dangling from the bottom of Burden’s bag. Chaos smirked to himself and waited some more. He waited until every last bone had been thrown apathetically into Burdens bag, he waited until Burden was well out of town and deep into the forest. There, Chaos plopped down only about a foot behind the meandering missionary and hopped along keeping perfect pace. Every couple of feet, he would pull at the strand with his beak. Little by little... a small tear began to unravel at the bottom of the bag. More and more until the tear became a hole. Chaos poked at the hole with his beak, carefully so as not to disturb the beast but with just the right amount of force to make the hole just big enough for the little nit picky bones of the villagers to tumble out, one by one. And as each bone fell Chaos picked up each and every one and flew them back to the village, carefully making little nests of bones and dread, right outside the homes of each of their respective owners. As each nest appeared, all the fear and worry and terror came rushing back to the world. It was a very new and very strange, terrible feeling for the people. Chaos was brimming with glee when he saw the woe on their faces, a look he thought to himself that was beyond well deserved. He saw the expression on every single one and drank it in like a fine wine. What Chaos did not see however, was what happened to his ill-fated adversary. As each bone had dropped from Burden’s bounty, his load became lighter and lighter. Burden was not used to having such little weight to carry at this part in his journey and so he thought surely he still had a ways to go, and yet he was three steps from the end of the Earth... in four steps, Burden was gone. Burden fell to the stars, returned to the sky, and was dispersed in tiny morsels back to the humans who in turn digested their pain and now carried the weight of their own personal burden... and Chaos reigned forever more.