In the heart of a bustling market, where vendors hawked their wares with the fervor of actors on a teeming stage, lay the most peculiar stall of all—a humble stand operated by a spirit not entirely benign. Here lay the Selfish Avocado, lounging among other seemingly mundane fruits, its essence sorely pinched from its kin’s abundance.
“A finer fruit you won’t find,” boasted Lin, a vendor with a smile as sly as a fox. He knew more than he let on about the avocado’s true nature, but in this city, secrets were a currency more valuable than gold.
“Why call it selfish?” asked Mei, a curious passerby with eyes that glinted like the sea under a full moon. She understood that the city whispered of things unseen, things wrapped in the slender threads of magic.
“The avocado seems self-absorbed,” Lin replied, his tone layered like a puzzle. “It’s said to devour anything placed beside it, leaving other fruits shrunken and dull.”
“Yet it gleams so,” Mei mused, reaching out to touch its dark, glossy skin. Her fingers recoiled at a chill that leaped from its surface, a warning.
“Because that is the way of the world,” Lin shrugged, his words a dance of nonchalance and caution. “Appearances can deceive, can they not?”
As the sun slumbered below the horizon, leaving only the sultry drape of night behind, Mei found herself drawn back to the stall. There, in the quiet hours when the market slept, the avocado began to stir, its voice a mere whisper in the darkness.
“Why hover, restless one?” it asked, its tone a smooth, buttery tease that defied the laws of the natural world. “Seek you an answer, or merely company?”
“I seek honesty,” Mei challenged, the air around her thickening with the presence of the unseen. The avocado chuckled, a sound like the rustling of leaves in a secret wind.
“And yet you come to me.”
The revelation hung between them like a specter, casting a phosphorescent glow over the cobbled market.
“Why do you taunt the other fruits?” Mei pressed, her resolve bearing a weight akin to the earth. “Do you not share the soil beneath us?”
“Share?” echoed the avocado, voice curling like smoke. “In a world that devours, what role would you have us play?”
With those words, a cloak of awareness lifted from Mei’s eyes. She saw the market, once vibrant and full of life, tossed upon the currents of an invisible storm—a consequence of neglect and selfishness, mirrored in the contemptuous fruit before her.
“They who forget their roots soon wither,” the avocado whispered, its voice fading into the ether. Mei blinked, and once more, it was merely a fruit, ordinary in its peculiar beauty.
In the days following, whispers of the talking avocado spread like dandelion seeds across the city. Fewer lingered in the market’s shadow, unnerved by the seemingly innocent fruit and its eerie song.
Lin chuckled quietly to himself, as the Selfish Avocado remained unsold, its gleaming surface a testament to its untouched nature—a forgotten echo in a now silent song of consequences, both natural and magical. For the city was nothing if not a master of irony: its avarice reflected in the fruit it could neither sell nor consume.
And so, the Selfish Avocado sat, eternal in its loneliness, a keeper of truths unseen and unsaid—a glaring emblem of what lies beneath the polished surfaces we cherish, but dare not confront.