The Snivelings: A Tale of Small People

The Snivelings live underneath the sidewalks, in tunnels beneath cities all over the world. They are a curious sort of creature: small, short-lived, yet so clever and quick-witted as to understand all of human science - for after all, nearly anything can be found out just by listening closely enough from beneath the sidewalk.

The Snivelings' lives are hard. Food is scarce, there are many dangers underground - like the deadly Blerthings, and the gnawing kvitterwart - and, surviving all this, a Sniveling will likely only live five or six years before expiring of old age. Yet still they strive - for they have a dream. A bit of paradise - their promised land - just out of reach. The Moon.

A few heretics think that Paradise is actually on Venus, but most Snivelings think they're sort of crazy and pay them no heed.

They build rocket-ships underground, in what time they can spare from their other labours. Some build them from parts scavenged or manufactured on their own. Others, less choosy, steal from humans. For generations of humans (and dozens of Sniveling generations) they have worked, to reach up to the stars.

But now - what's this? A prophet emerges among them, and delivers this pronouncement, rocking in oracular ecstasy: "Should you not complete your holy mission within one week's time, all shall be lost for-ever."

A frenzy! The Snivelings pass word along by clever communication networks, and soon all are working constantly, risking hunger or death by Blerthing in their frenzy. They work and work and eventually, after spending three days and three nights sequentially on their precious rocket-ships, in their caverns beneath sidewalks in cities all over the world... one by one, the Snivelings nod off, and when they awaken, they find the week has passed.

Forlornly, the Snivelings creep to their prophet. They ask him what will transpire, and he begins to rant at their failure, speaking words of doom: tunnels collapsed. Dead babies. Sidewalks - gone. The Snivelings slump, ashamed.

But then - a shock! As the prophet rocks back and forth, seemingly enraged at the Snivelings' failure, he begins to fall apart! His true identity revealed - a Blerthing, disguised as one of them, seeking to destroy them from within!

The crowd falls upon him.

And to this day - if you see a shooting star, not falling, but rising into the heavens - perhaps it is a Sniveling rocket-ship, assembled over years of labour, taking a hundred Snivelings upwards to paradise.

Feel free to wish upon it, still! They won't mind.