Once upon a time, an apple lived at the top of a very tall tree way out in the countryside. He spent his days blowing in the wind, counting the clouds as they passed through the sky, and trying to swing from his branch to the next one up.
One day, word came to him that he had had relatives. Once “relatives” had been explained to him, he learned this much: a cousin, an apple from the city, was coming to visit him in the tree.
His cousin arrived the very next day. He took her on a tour of his branch, pointing out the sky, the higher branches, and the few other apples who rested near him. His cousin apple was very polite, but did not seem impressed. He wondered how much grander life as a city apple might be, and jumped on the offer as soon as his cousin asked if he might like to see the city with her.
They spent the next day carefully climbing down the tree (especially carefully, because he had heard rumors that the apples near the bottom often went missing) and making their way toward the city.
His cousin’s house, it turned out was, way up high as well. After enjoying the songs and dances that seemed to go on in the city (what his cousin called a parade), the cousins climbed up what appeared to be another tree, they nestled on top, with oranges and bananas and pears and berries.
“What is this place?” the banana asked.
“We call it the Hat.”
He spent quite some time talking with the other fruit, and simply enjoying the wonderful city sounds and smells that drifted by him.
But then, something happened.
Something dreadful.
Just as the mango was launching into a story about a play she’d seen, a long-fingered hand reached up and plucked her from the hat. All of the fruit fell silent in horror, listening to a horrible crunch below.
After that, chaos erupted. The apple was hardly able to find his cousin as all the fruit ran around in circles. But find her he did, and he told her that as nice as the city was, he’d prefer to return to his own tall tree, where he was never in any danger of being eaten.
But when he returned home, a funny thing had happened.
The tree was still there, but all the other apples had gone.
Somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard a crunch.
The End.
Source: The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, Aesop
