I thought this to be the one. This child, barely eleven, showing himself to be a prodigy of his clan, dressed in robes impractical, red and green, showcasing the inferior aesthetical inclinations of his bloodline. This walking disaster that was about to get initiated in the Roads.

“Come here, my son, today you shall choose your fate,” the ostensible father beckoned from across the lodge, sitting his big, strong, yet thoroughly-cucked-by-a-street-belonging-mid-hoe figure on a blue rug with frills that rested upon, you will never guess it, a caramelized floor. This is no metaphor. The floorboards had caramel on top.

The child stepped up to the plate, up to the lines of blunt and edge weapons lay before his purported ancestor. No, little one, you are the son of that curious merchant that supplies the fucker that raises you with daggers. The redheaded one.

He calmly kneeled in front of his father, and joined the palms of his hands above his head, looking like he was high fiving himself for having learned to walk across a room without dying.

“Father,” he unknowingly lied, “allow me to master the dark ones as my weapons.”

The man scratched his dense beard. “You cannot, my heart. It’s forbidden by our founders.”

“But, I really want to bind the dark powers to do my bidding, father.”

“No, our constitution forbids it. Look. “ He took out a book that was stashed closed to his heart , under his several layers of clothing, and cleared his throat. “ ‘Henceforth, and by the love of any deity you may think of or even that luscious rabbit that tries to seduce me at night, the Gromera clan shall be forbidden from owning slaves. They are too mentally stifled to be superior to anyone. In addendum to that, enslaving them shall be considered animal cruelty and punished by two slaps on the wrist.’” He quoted the supreme law of the land, that by which all clans would abide.

“Father, I want my weapon to be a bunch of tanned big men with strong arms and stronger melanosomes. This is my fate, and I shall master it.”

“Son, no.”

“I want to master the Road of the dark ones, or, as others call them, the N— “ and so the supposed father did the one thing worth writing about in his life and bitchslapped his wife’s son.

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“Pick a weapon, moron!”

And so the child picked a weapon.

This, suffice to say, was not the one. My search had to continue.

----------------------------------------

Seven hundred fifty-fifth time’s the charm, or so they say. Half a world away from my last attempt, another child was being presented by options by his mother. He had the traits to be the one. Dark hair, extreme Dunning-Kruger, his mind-hamster was as obese as his progenitor, here in front of him. He was holding a rottweiler puppy by the dog’s armpits, making the little pooch dangle in front of so many sharp metal utensils one would think they wanted to cook the poor thing. Truth is, this child, a prodigy among the people of the valley, was the sharpest tool in a shed full of dildos.

For you to fathom how ascended this family was compared to the Gromera, consider the following: they knew how to use tables and chairs. The most accomplished members of this family learnt to multiply things by two after a life of struggle and cultivation. Those who achieved immortality by means unnatural even became capable of the unthinkable: comprehending exponentiation, if only conceptually.

“My dear son, as you know, your father…”

“The butter man?”

“I said Your father, not your brother’s.”

“Uncle Simin?”

The mother nodded energetically. “Grandfather Simin to you.”

The Rottweiler began to get the feeling that he was the least inbred mammal in the room, by a long shot.

“As I said, your father is not here so it comes to me in this, your eleventh birthday, to present you the long table of weapons.” she gestured to the long, oblong table in front of her, where three dozen different tools of murder were laid. “Now choose one and start to shape your fate, my child.”

“Mother.” The boy held the pup aloft. “To choose a weapon is to put Jagger down on the floor.” For the record, these people were still a couple generations away from caramelizing their floorboards.

“Yes, you can pick him up afterwards.”

“But wood and metal are cold, and Jagger is warm,” The child argued the endothermal nature of his companion with extreme deftness and a wit way above his age.

“Kalon, dear, the only warm thing here will be the backside of my hand if you don’t choose a road.”

“I chose the Road of the Rottweiler!” The brat declared, raising Jagger as he struggled to get free from the hands of that stupid individual. He needed his beauty sleep, 20 hours a day at least.

“You cannot choose that road, for it doesn’t exist—”

From beyond the cracks on the caramelized reeds ceiling, a beam of heavenly light enveloped the child, as he had made a choice: from that day onwards, he would follow the road of the Rottweiler, to never deviate from it, to practice and cultivate it to the last consequences. Unless he had a regret and asked the heavens for a path change, that they freely allotted because forcing an eleven years old to make a life-changing choice was the epitome of stupidity and inconsideration.

This was not the one, but I was tired of searching, so it would have to do.