Mountain Spirit

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The Village of Mire was not much of a place, as its descriptive name indicated, but its denizens liked it because it had one outstanding asset: Mt. Miracle. When the villagers had a problem, they could appeal to the mountain, and the mountain would solve it. It had done so many times in past centuries. Once there had been a killing drought, and the mountain had brought copious rain. Once there was an invasion by a foreign power, and the village had been directly in the path of the marching enemy army, certain extinction. But the mountain had spewed out major rivers of lava that encircled the village, causing the invaders to hastily detour around it; later when the lava cooled and weathered it became fertile soil, another benefit. Once the king was going to set aside Mt. Miracle as a tourist attraction, moving all the villagers out and razing their houses; kings were like that. The mountain shook the ground warningly and blew out volcanic dust and clouds of villainous looking gas, satisfying the king’s men that this was no safe place for a resort. Once the village had gotten in a bad financial bind, so had asked for money; the mountain issued a lava stream of solid gold that forever solved that problem. When there was a crop blight, the mountain gave them access to blight-resistant plants on its lower slopes. The mountain always came through without stinting.

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