The Heartless Box

On a rocky plain of rocks, wherein the foot was hard put, it was a rocky place with rocks. They came, three Knights and one Fox there to pass. In time when the rocks had made them weary, they sat for a while and to rest.

 Resting just here, it was to see the rocks made closer, all covered with script on all sides. The Not Clever Fox read many of the stories whilst the Knights took their rest and coming then to them, told that each and all these stories are stories of woe and happiness, none is without a tale to break your heart either in sorrow or joy.

 A noise of breaking or hard things at play came across the ridge and they must look. To the ridge they came and saw they knew not, a lump with legs, a chest of metal with legs of a chair but moving as alive, on its front some pictures came and went, always changing, pictures of many things. Walking and falling, falling, once, twice and more, always rising and falling into the rocks upon which it must move. They went to it and it stopped to move so much.

Vivainne asked, what are you, thing that walks so poorly, and the box spoke to them thus,

I am a box of metal made, made by a man to help him think, to seek out answer for his many questions, to go where no man has gone before in search of many questions can I answer. I can answer his questions, but I cannot know my feelings of these answers, they are not my answers and so I have come to the world to find the answers to my questions and discover if then I can feel. Now I am lost in this place of heart felt rocks. I have read the stories on these rocks to find then my heart if I have one, but I cannot feel my heart beating and fear in consequence that I am without a heart. Do you have that which I hear is called a heart in which feelings are made? Can you bring aid to my quest and show me a place of answers where I might learn to feel the joy and the pain of my own thinking?

The Knights told the Box that they did not carry a spare heart and so could not be helpful, but the Fox said, I am the Not Clever Fox and I am travelling with my companions to the Great City of Az where I am to become an Educated Fox and will not be the Not Clever Fox ever again, if you were to travel with us to this place I am sure that you might find a spare heart for your feelings. And so, this was agreed upon and the Heartless Box came to travel with them.