A long time ago, during a time of monarchies and slavery and expansion for the crown, there was a young man who played the guitar. He would take his guitar and travel from town to town, playing on street corners for a living. He was offered several times jobs as a minstrel to lords and ladies, the chance of a lifetime. And sometimes he would take the jobs, for a little while. But he always ended up leaving, going to yet another town, never coming back. That is, until eventually he realized that he had traveled to every town in the empire's reach, and he had nowhere else to go.

And so he decided to travel outside of the empire. To another kingdom to peruse its people for his living. He packed his things, some extra food, and set out.

While on his way there he met another wayward vagrant. The vagrant asked him his business in this kingdom and the man said that he was looking to make ends meet playing his instrument.

The vagrant frowned at him and did something unexpected. He reached down and grabbed a bag off of his belt. He then opened the bag and pulled out a single black seed.

"Boy," he said, "You are one plagued with thoughts of a better place on the horizon. I hold in my hand the solution to your problems. This is a seed for a tree that will grow on it, always and without fail, whatever you want."

The young man stared at the seed. He was hesitant to believe this old vagrant, but the prospect of this tree was hard to pass up.

"I would like to give you this seed," said the vagrant, "as a gift."

"How does it work?" the young man asked.

"Simply, as you plant the seed, whisper over it what you wish for it to produce, and then wait for the tree to grow."

The young man took the seed and got ready to set off. Just before he left the vagrant grabbed him by the shoulder and looked straight in his eyes, "Be careful what you ask the tree to grow, boy. This is a very dangerous opportunity I am giving you. Do you understand?"

The young man nodded and started back toward the last place he had lived. He stopped a few miles out from the town and set up camp. Without making a ritual of it, he dug a fair-sized hole in the soil and, gingerly taking it from his pocket, dropped the seed in. He covered it up with more soil and, pausing to consider his wish, whispered one small, simple word: "Happiness."

He stayed there several months waiting for the tree to grow, and grow it did, unexpectedly fast, it shot up out of the ground. There appeared to be nothing different about it from any other random tree. He decided to wait until spring, when trees normally grow fruit. If by spring this tree hadn't produced this miracle that was promised, he would leave it and continue what he had intended, going to another kingdom and continuing his life as a street musician.

And on the first day of spring, as nothing happened, a deep sense of melancholy fell over the young man. He packed his things into a bag and set them to the side. After living under this tree for almost a year, now, he had become rather attached to it. It had grown huge over the last months.

So now, as he was about to leave it, he stepped onto a gouge at the bottom of the trunk of the tree and began to climb. He made it about halfway until something began to happen: the tree began shaking violently. He thought at first that a storm must have come in, but no, there were no clouds and it had been a nice day before. The tree was shaking of its own accord. He couldn't move for fear of falling out and probably breaking something. Then suddenly the branches slowly began to curl inward towards him. They wrapped around his body and began to squeeze. The tree was shaking even more now. He wasn't able to breathe.

And then it occurred to him that this was all he had really wanted all along. He had been perpetually unhappy, always moving from place to place to see if he could find the thing that would make it all better, and here he was asking a tree for it. But he had known all along that nothing in the world would actually make him happy. This was how he would find happiness. By leaving it all.

And so it was.