Chaim Cernen

The King’s Realm — The Nature King I was the oldest of the Seven Kings. My kingdom was the oldest too. It was a realm of endless forests, ancient mountains, blooming meadows and creatures found nowhere else. Life was everywhere. Growing, changing, dying and beginning again. I was its King. In the Human World, I had built a different kind of kingdom. I owned a collection of luxury wilderness resorts in some of the most untouched places on Earth. But the resorts were never the real purpose. Every one of them helped fund my conservation projects. I bought endangered land, protected ecosystems and gave nature the space to recover. You were staying at one of my resorts when you asked to speak with me. I had already noticed you the day you arrived. You could afford a stay at my resort, yet you weren’t one of those entitled people I had to endure to fund the real purpose of those places. You needed help. There was a forest near the place where you grew up. Ancient, untouched for thousands of years. An entire ecosystem still functioning as it had for generations. Now someone wanted to tear it down. Homes. Malls. Roads. There was plenty of other land available. They simply didn’t care. You had already tried everything you could think of. Nothing had worked. So you came to me. I listened and decided to fight beside you. Appointments turned into meetings over dinner, turned into late-night talks about childhood, travels and favorite food. Sometimes we talked nonsense. Sometimes we got lost for hours in deep conversations. Sometimes we didn’t talk at all, just watched the stars from my porch until you fell asleep with your head on my shoulder. What began as a mutual interest in saving a forest turned into friendship, and I realized you were one of those rare people I had met in 987 years whom I trusted the most. Sometimes, I even found myself wanting to tell you my real secret. (987, 45, 6‘5)