For the Love of Apples

Once upon a time there was a brave and beautiful young adventurer named Marisa. She very much enjoy spending all of her free time traveling to see and experience the world around her. In her journeys around the world, she had experienced many different cultures, people, languages, foods and more.
The number of places that she had visited in a year alone were difficult to count because when she was younger, she made a promise to herself to never stay in the same place for more than a week at a time. That means that in one year, she travels to a minimum of 52 places. She stops just long enough to learn something new, experience something new and meet a few new people or visit an old friend or two.
In Marisa’s most recent travels she has been scaling the dangerous cliffs of the the Akoka mountains which are located on the other side of planet earth as her small home village. As she was making her way through the dangerous mountains, she came across a small village that seemed to be completely isolated from the rest of the world. Oddly enough, the people spoke the same language that she did though they had never met anyone from outside of their village because it seemed that the rest of the world was too afraid of the dangers lurking within the cliffs of the Akoka mountains.
When Marisa arrived, she was greeted by a large group of people who were in awe of her because they had never met a foreigner before, especially not a foreign who was a beautiful as she was.
It was true, even after a long and exhausting journey with dirty smeared on her face and her hair blown in every direction by the wind, Marisa was still the most beautiful girl in the room in everyone’s eyes.
In this crowd of people there was a young man, slightly older than Marisa, he was the son of the village leader. From the moment he saw Marisa, he could think of no one else. For the next two days, he took every chance he could to see her, smile at her, talk to her and even just be in the same room or area of the village as her.
On the third day of Marisa’s visit to this remote village, she was walking through a beautiful garden. The garden was surrounded by tall hedges and everywhere you looked there was a different variety of flowers. Blues, purples, greens, pinks, whites, yellows, even a black rose, there were more flowers than any one human being could ever imagine! They were all in full bloom like it was spring time but when Marisa reached the center of the garden, to her surprise she saw a beautiful apple tree that was full of gorgeously ripe apples. She wanted to gather a few to take on her journey, as she was planning to leave at day break the next morning.
Before she could reach up and pluck a single apple from the tree, the village leader’s son appeared between her and the tree almost like he could appear and disappear out of thin air.
At that moment, he reached up for the exact apple that Marisa was going to pick and pulled it quickly out of the tree. He moved in close to Marisa and gave her the apple. She graciously accepted the apple and then the man was gone. Confused by what had just happened, Marisa returned to the room she was staying in without picking anymore apples.
The next morning, Marisa had all of her bags packed including the apple given to her by the leader’s son and she was just about to head out of town when she heard a rapid knock at her door.
When she opened the door it was the man wearing a rather large and ugly headdress and holding one made just for her.
Marisa thought it was a parting gift from the village leader but when the man placed the headdress on her head, linked arms with her and pulled her quickly out the door, Marisa realized that something was wrong.
Tragically, she was correct. For Marisa, did not know the culture of this village because it was very isolated from the rest of the world and she had only been in the village for three days. Due to her lack of knowledge about this culture, she participated in a cultural ritual without even knowing it.
You see, in this village the apple is a sacred fruit, there is only one apple tree in the whole village and it is full of fruit year around.
Though no one eats of the fruit except on a very special occasion. When a woman is standing under the apple tree, if a man presents her with a perfect apple and she accepts it, she is agreeing to marry the man. As per cultural practices, the wedding it to happen the next morning at day break, followed by a delicious feast of all things made with apples and then the happy couple must spend a year together in solitude in the apple tree garden getting to know each other better.

So, for poor Marisa, her adventurous traveling days have come to an end, at least for now. It is too late for her now but had knowing what she knows now, she should have never taken the apple.