A couple of people, naked, sit casually munching apples, each thoroughly lost in the supremacy of the taste as they masticate the flesh to juice and it slides deliciously over tongue buds down to eagerly awaiting bellies. Gurgles of slithering juicy pulp heading toward stomachs are punctuated with sighs, gasps and an occasional choking cough when the wondrous fruit has not quite reached soft pulp state before it hits the back of a throat.
The ground around them is littered. Small bones (cracked and sucked, gleaming from dew and well-gnawed) are arranged in whimsical patterns amid patches of fur and hair. Grass, once green, forms a muddy mat around the tree from which the wondrous fruit falls. The surrounding air and basic ambiance tend to be on the slovenly side of fetid.
Manners… no one here had ever considered such stuff as that. Toilets… also not considered. Pretty much, you put things in one end and they come out the other…. Surprise! The closest these persons came to dressing was in the form of sticky bits of fruit seeds and fruit skin as well as a dribble or two of drool. Not stupid people, just a trifle new and rough around the edges.
So, it is morning and the dew is glistening on almost everything (but no roses) including the persons just now having their breakfast. They woke to the fresh buzzing of flies on the fur and bones. Given the lack of understanding of the need for sanitary facilities… well, imagine what other substances might be smeared or piled about that flies just love, and bees and maybe some wasps, too. And let’s not forget the ants! Hordes of them! The only place there was no dew was beneath the diners. They had not moved since the sun had set the night before.
A sort of gentle wooziness kept them from standing. Not that they cared about that action currently. It is a beautiful morning. The sun, long risen, is shooting shafts through the branches and leaves of the tree providing the meal. Most importantly, more fruit is in easy reach, this is their tree and it has revealed to them a most delightful, delicious, bubbly, and giddy pleasure. Only they know. The tree had chosen them. They were the chosen ones.
They hummed this, throats singing to each other as they crammed more of the mushy brown fruit into their mouths. Belching and giggling and farting and laughing out loud. Eating some more and so on.
Pubescence would describe the stage of these critters’ lives, but, for Now, they were rather ancient. In fact, though they knew it not, they were currently the elders of their diminished group and soon to reach an even rarer status… but not yet… well, but soon. It is by accident and not design that among them, one is male and one is female. They had all fought over this tree since the fruit had started to ripen. These two happened to be matched in obduracy and obstinacy and each had been unable to make the other one leave.
Accepting this reality, they formed a beneficial partnership, sleeping and waking alternately and thus kept an easy defense of their mutual possession. They traded. Very jealously. They got meat in return. One fruit bought many small meals of meat. They did notice that the fruit changed in color and hardness. From this came the secret revealed. If these people had known the word `sacred,’ they would have applied it here. This is a pure `hallelujah’ moment. At the Dawn of Time.
The secret came from the dark, as most secrets do. In the life cycle of the tree, it was happily divesting itself of all those heavy things cluttering up the ends of its branches. As each fruit dropped, a branch would reach just a little higher towards the sun. Anyway, this tree’s fruit was quite ready to paste its seeds to some soil and because of the sugar content, had sneakily turned alcoholic.
They had never been drunk. They were only just learning. Glory! Glory! Of course, they didn’t know these words, but they felt them and were feeling them mightily at the moment. If they had known the words, they would have slurred them and giggled.
It happened in the night. The fruit had turned. They gorged and were filled with light and spirit and slept and dreamed and awakened to sensuality of a different sort. They were charged. Woof! All kinds of fumbling and fondling occurred and then in a moment of magic for the male and most likely disappointment for the female, certain body parts matched, communicated and at least one expressed itself quite happily. Learning. Knowledge. Wonderful stuff.