Echo, the Forest Nymph. Adult (standard:fairy tales, 1445 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jul 22 2020	Views/Reads: 1433/1008	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Long ago and far away, lived a young maiden named Echo. Lovely, smiling, and personable, she had only one failing....

Long ago and far away, lived a young maiden named Echo. Lovely, smiling,
and personable, she had only one failing. 

"Blah, blah," Echo would mutter in her sleep. "Blah, blah," she'd talk
to her handmaiden while dressing. It would be "blah, blah," all through 
breakfast, splattering bits of chicken and rice across the table. It 
was so bad that poor Echo was forced to eat alone. The young lady would 
blah and bluster throughout the day. Echo would never shut up. 

"Please, dear," her mother would say, "you must constrain yourself." 

Echo would continue smiling, nodding but only raising her dulcet voice,
ignoring such advice. 

Her father, a wealthy merchant, tried many methods and even tricks to
quiet his daughter. "Echo, darling," he would say, "ladies don't talk 
during musical concerts." It did no good at all, Echo nodding while 
speaking on the advantages of silk shifts over rayon; her beautiful but 
constant voice rising over that of the singers. 

Years later, while banished to a lonely tower in the family castle, Echo
felt an urge -- as all young people do -- for intimate companionship. 
By that time, her propensity to blabber was well known in the kingdom 
and young men preferred cohabitation with victims of the black plague 
rather than ten-minutes in her presence. 

Although intelligent, it was impossible for Echo to get any schooling --
not when she constantly drowned out teachers, her constant yammering 
disrupting every class. In her presence, no other student could get a 
word in edgewise, much less front, back, from above or below. The only 
exercise in gym class was in frustration. 

Kissing a mouth -- though a lovely and tasty morsel -- while it was
blathering was impossible. Sexual situations while listening to a 
diatribe on how to make brown gravy turned out to be immensely 
distracting. 

The young lovely resorted to a myriad of lures, such as lap-dancing in
the nude -- on an empty chair, of course -- in a tower window. Young 
men would take every opportunity for self-gratification from a distance 
-- though out of range of Echo's pleading. In fact, an entrepreneur 
built a Men's Club, complete with pay-per-view binoculars, at the edge 
of the woods to accommodate her admirers. 

Eventually, word of the lovely young lady's condition made its way to
Hera, queen of the gods. Curious, she came down to Earth to see for 
herself. 

The Goddess was, at first, only slightly annoyed by Echo refusing to
listen to godly advice. After a half-hour of trying in vain for a 
conversation, Hera became deeply incensed. A goddess does not take 
kindly to hearing a lecture on how to fry lamb chops when giving advice 
to her subjects. 

Hera thundered a curse onto the girl. "From now on, you are to be
banished to the Black Forest way the hell over in Germany," the goddess 
ranted and raved. "You will never speak your own words again, having to 
repeat only the last bits of every other voice you hear. That way, you 
will be forced to listen to what others say about you." 

And, it was so. Although her daddy built his daughter a nice cottage in
the middle of the forest, poor Echo was banished out of polite, and not 
so polite, human company. 

Even the forest creatures avoided Echo. At first, since she repeated
their greetings in their own language, she was accepted. Later, the 
unfeeling forest denizens thought her crazy and stupid. After all, 
although repeating their voices, she seemed to have no opinions of her 
own. Later still, Echo would repeat their insults to them. If a deer 
hooted and called her a simpleton, she would do the same right back. No 
deer likes to be called names by a simpleton, so they left her alone. 
The other forest creatures felt the same. 

Echo's only companion was a deaf rat named Oscar. ( Sorry. I have to put
him in or he'll bite my toes.) 


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