Challenge #02364-F174: Deconstruct Reconstruct
With so many species coexisting, we must create new stories and nursery-rhymes. This is one such story. -- Anon Guest
Three blind Meiss, three blind Meiss/ See how they run, see how they run/ They all ran after the farmer's wife/ Who cut off their tails with a carving knife/ And violated the cogniscent rights/ Of three blind Meiss. -- one of many adjustments to Human nursery rhymes.
There are others. With integration comes a certain amount of cultural cross-pollination, so to speak. Stories are told and changed and transformed. One version of Beauty and the Beast does not have the titular Beast transform into a handsome prince, but rather remembers his royal status with the help of Beauty. The Beast remains physically the same, because interspecies relationships don't need physical transformations in which to work out.
The House That Jack Built remains largely the same, though the names of the animals in the cumulative memory rhyme change according to setting. The youthful audience doesn't really need to know about Jack, after all, but they would object to not knowing what a 'cow' was, or why a 'dog' would 'worry a cat'. Then there are simple, linguistic differences caused by the fact that mistranslations create mutations of their own.
Thusly, a copy of Mother Goose is vastly different now to what it once was, say, five hundred years prior. Which was why Shayde was a bundle of confusion and agitation ever since she'd found it.
"Who th' fook are Meiss? Is it even pronounced like tha'?"
"They're a group of fur-bearing humanoids from a region of space close to the Pleiades," said Rael. "The rest is a result of phonic mistranslation."
"Aye, I can see how that happened, but... Is this supposed tae be 'Jack and Jill'?"
Rael peered at the page. "I do believe so. I know there's little in common with the version you're familiar with..."
"Ye reckon? I barely recognise it. It does'nae even have the old meter any more."
"What are you talking about?"
Shayde launched into the version of her childhood. She was right, it barely resembled the current version at all. So much so that it was practically a separate rhyme.
Rael knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this would go out into Galactic Civilisation as a new rhyme, and not an example of an archival one.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / milo827]
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