An Ancient Tale Retold
Once upon a time, a homunculus, who had just been created the night before, managed to escape from his cauldron while the exhausted alchemist was fast asleep at dawn after a night’s hard work. Roaming the empty village, he soon became famished and thirsty, and began searching for something to fill his stomach. He had knocked at many a hut’s unhinged wooden door and walked from neighborhood to neighborhood, all the way without a single soul in sight, before discovering a dilapidated ardor of a sort draped all over with luscious bunches of purple little balls. Short and feeble, the homunculus looked up pensively at those scrumptious fruits, knowing that he was too powerless to get at them without some certain help of good wizardry. Then he thought of the magical elixir he had stolen from the alchemist’s workshop. He brought out that vial and, after shaking it lightly, gulped the gooey liquid down, in hope of growing tall and husky in a matter of no time. He must have got the wrong one, however; instead of getting bigger, he felt in the left part of his chest a curious feeling, which might be described as a strong desire for romance, for love. In fact, he consumed a potent potion of what alchemists call “philters”, a concoction which can render any creature under the sun taking it smitten with a particular one of their likes and of the opposite sex. Thereupon, regardless of his unfulfilled appetite, the homunculus sallied out to find his lover.