The Courageous Captain

Long, long ago, there was a country far away called Lesserpier. This was in the old days, when the sun was still a child. Lesserpier was a small country filled with humble farmers, and sons and daughters of the soil. The people of Lesserpier were kind and noble, but weak in the matters of conquest and war, such that they never captured other provinces and hardly ever went to war. They lived in beautiful, mossy huts of stone. It was a quiet, peaceful existence that the people of Lesserpier led. Next to the country of Lesserpier was a much larger country. It was a powerful, war-weathered country made of warriors, businessmen, and politicians. This machine of a nation was called Greaterpier.

The queen and king of Greaterpier were expanding their lands at a fantastic pace. Every day, it seemed, a new province would fall to their armies. Quite soon, Greaterpier and its sub-countries occupied most of the continent. The peoples of the world spoke of Greaterpier in hushed voices; they spoke of armies so large that their combined footfalls caused earthquakes. Finally, the rulers of Greaterpier turned to the lush forests and peaceful farmland of Lesserpier. The people of Lesserpier were horrified. There was not the time nor the resources for them to build up an army or an armory. In war, they would surely lose.

The Lesserpierians sent a messenger requesting mercy to the queen and king of Greaterpier. The rulers of this nation pitied the hardworking, good people of Lesserpier. But they did not wish to relinquish this easy victory for nothing. They then offered an ultimatum: the Lesserpierians could avoid war if they brought the Diamond At The End Of The Earth to the Greaterpierians, or the DATEOTE, for short.

The king of Lesserpier beat his head, paced around his court, and tried to think of a solution to this dreadful quandary. Just as the people despaired and set out to prepare for inevitable loss in battle, a captain of the army stepped up, and offered to sail to the end of the Earth, in order to find the DATEOTE. After many days of sailing, and many struggles, the courageous captain reached the end of the world. To his surprise, there wasn’t a DATEOTE in sight at all! Instead, there was a sun-like object in the sky.

“Why, captain,” said the first mate, “the DATEOTE is in the sky!”

“Yes, indeed,” said the captain. “But it isn’t a DATEOTE so we cannot call it so. Let us call it the Much Overdue Object Notice, the MOON for short. We can only return notice of this new thing, for we cannot offer this thing from the sky as tribute.”

The rulers of Greaterpier were thrilled with the knowledge of this new celestial body, and immediately accepted the title of “MOON.”

And to this day, the DATEOTE is called the MOON.

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