AND an orator said,
Speak to us of Silence.
And he said:
Silence can be a valuable tool.
And it can be a great inconvenience.
If a man should ask you a question and you remain silent, he may take it as an insult.
Yet if you answer him, he may take it as a larger insult.
When a person remains silent it provokes mystery, as happened many years ago in Hafnir, near Pez.
In that town there lived a very beautiful young woman.
Her beauty was unsurpassed, but she had one flaw.
For, as long as she had lived she had never spoken a single word.
One day the Calif and a group of citizens called upon her father’s house as they had so often in the past years.
They were there to encourage her to speak.
The Calif cleared his throat and asked:
“If an apple tree, heavy with fruit, should go unnoticed by man, the birds, and the changing seasons, and all of the fruit should rot, never to be tasted, would not this be a Sin?”
She did not reply.
The Calif then asked:
“If a fireplace contained dry wood and kindling, would it not be a Sin never to ignite the fire and fulfill the fireplace’s destiny?”
She did not reply.
The Calif then asked:
“If a bird of magnificent plumage should never venture to take to the air, the skies and places distant from its home — would that not be a pitiful waste of Nature?”
It was then that her eyes alighted, and she looked up at the Calif.
Her soft lips smiled and parted, and for the first time in her life she spoke.
What were the words that broke her Silence, Master, the man inquired.
“Your fly is open,” he recalled.
Kehlog Albran – The Profit