Although zebras are united today, this was not always so. Long ago, the zebra tribes were separate and unconcerned with each other. Each tribe managed its own affairs, and the others could go rot for all they cared.
But when an unthinkable calamity upsets the balance of the plains, everyone struggles to survive. One zebra, Maelewano, will take it upon herself to draw the tribes together and support each other, forming the beginnings of what would become Zebrabwe. By ancient tradition, her tale has been directly passed down from one generation to the next across centuries, always in person. And today, it’s your turn to hear her story.
Editor’s note: Due to the corruption inherent in oral tradition and based on what scant archaeological evidence exists, the following is estimated to be roughly 50% history, 25% myth, and 25% hagiography.
Written for Jake the Army Guy's Horseword Extravaganza II and as an experiment for my 50th story.
The rhyming gets a bit repetitive (especially since I can't help but read it to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme,) but I admire the ambition involved it writing the story entirely in ABCB. Really sells the "oral tradition" feel. Looking forward to more.
Ah. Well, that didn't take long.
Classic tragedy of the unready leaning on tradition rather than take a risk, despite the insistence of a visionary. Now to see what tipped the scales.
And so the tables turn... but once that spin starts, one must bear the momentum in mind. Upsetting the status quo creates the possibility of someone else swooping in and following suit.
Huh. I figured Maele would be held up as a martyr and ofhers would carry on her cause, but the problem with being a revolutionary visionary is that no one else may share that vision. They're following you, not necessarily your cause.
In any case, gripping cliffhanger.
And a reversal of fortunes, leading to something greater. Hopefully this is interesting enough for Discord, assuming he's even looking in this dorection.
Nicely done. Poetry always makes for tricky business, but you got this to work out quite well. (And I do have to appreciate the irony of Discord's meddling leading to greater harmony.) Best of luck in the judging.
I can’t believe someone actually did enough horse research to know what fucking quaggas are. Amazing stuff.
Amazingly underrated. The fact that this is all poetry is awesome. It’s very rare on this site that someone is crazy enough to go for more than 1k of poetry.
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Honestly, ballad meter is fairly easy to write, as long as you're willing to break the usual rules of sentence structure over your knee. It's surprisingly close to semi-normal speech and once you've been writing in it for a while, you start thinking in the proper meter. (That being said, I still had a rhyming dictionary open in one tab pretty much from start to finish.)
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I use a rhyming dictionary after getting a set of starting words stuck in my head too, otherwise I would be lost.
But anything past a few couplets and I can feel the alarms in my head going off.
I’m a filthy free verse cheater at heart. What you’ve got is admirable.
This was pretty incredible. The story telling was more vivid than a narrative, for sure