THE TIME before LOVE AND MONEY Chapter 2

THE TIME before LOVE AND MONEY

Chapter 2

Each dawn, they sang different songs. Each market day, they sold to strangers but never to each other. And above them both sat the King of Laif, sovereign over both kingdoms but father to none—until now.

King Mann Parson, the current ruler, was unlike any of his forefathers. He was young in years but ancient in thought, a man who spent his nights watching the stars and whispering to the winds.
He had a dream burning in his bones—a dream to see Timey and Moneya united. But love was still absent.

“I am not fulfilled,” he often told his royal advisor, an old woman named Iya Moroti. “It is as if I sit on two thrones with one heart. Timey and Moneya were never meant to be rivals—they were born to love each other.”
Why must they remain apart when they both suffer the same enemy? That enemy was a third land called Waste-Town, a place of laziness, greed, delay, and destruction.
The King began to feel a yearning. He believed that Timey and Moneya were not enemies but lovers kept apart by ignorance. And so, he began a quiet work of planting love between them— through trade, stories, and shared festivals.

Slowly, eyes once blinded by rivalry began to notice each other.

In Timey, time flowed like the great River Iji— quiet, endless, purposeful. The people lived simply, planting, waiting, harvesting. Their strength was in patience and wisdom. But they had little gold, little livestock, and many died with their dreams still sleeping in their souls.

In Moneya, however, the clang of coins never ceased. From sunrise till dusk, the people of Money toiled and traded, gathered wealth, and built monuments of stone and gold. But they aged quickly, for time was their enemy. Their children barely knew their fathers, and rest was a luxury only the sick could afford.

Tbc

James Newman