Once there was a dream in a field. A city of innovation rose from the field. The dream took form and became a building. Many of the building's floors became a school. The city of innovation embraced the school. Children gravitated toward the building to join the school. Teachers flipped their careers over to join the school.
The school had great potential. For awhile the children and their parents and the teachers all flowed in the same school dream together. Alas, the school was helmed by a pirate. Whatever the dream was, whatever it might have been, the pirate, ever hungry and ever thirsty, ate the school piece by piece until the hulled school collapsed in on itself.
Fingers pointed in many places, the pirate bowed and promised it was done eating and drinking the school. But the dream burned away when the school was finally revealed as pennyless. The weight of this nothingness was the beginning of a slow, yet obvious death. It was foolish to believe the insatiable pirate, but the children and their parents and the teachers clung to the dream. To let go was unknowable and scary. Two days before the start of the school year, all the true believers were jolted from the dream. The children lost their school. The teachers lost their jobs. Many cried. Some went hungry. Some swore revenge on the pirate. Many, many lost their gold.
The children scattered. There were places to go, but no place they would all be together ever again. The children were upset, but they eventually healed in new schools. Some teachers left the dream and the field for other towns. They were bitter about this, but they healed too. Some teachers salvaged what they could, pressing ahead into the dream. They would not give up; this was their way of healing. A few children and a few teachers were at the same new schools. It seemed like the dream had chances to continue. No one knew, but lurking underground in another land was a monster.
The monster reached lanced and leached many in the lands close and far. The children and teachers focused on surviving in their new school. Many hid their faces. Many stayed home. Some improved. Some stagnated. Some lost their way. The scourge of the monster was long, wide, and persisted for years. The crimes of the hungry and thirsty pirate lessened by the monster, disappeared into the chaos wake.
To be continued ...