The Outcasts of Werin & Co.™
Mindi:
I'm a blue thread. Papa Blue says we're the outcasts of the factory. Werin & Co.™ is a fishnet company. We are from the blue side with all of the other blue threads and separated from all of those grubby green threads. I was woven into the net last Saturday. I was the last thread that they wove in, because when the factory workers were trying to weave Addie in, she got caught in the machine and ripped. Our net was sent out to the dumpsters. We've been here ever since, waiting to be brought to the dump by the garbage man and rot with the rats for the rest of our lives. Wait a minute! What's that rustling?
Norman:
I'm a green thread in the mighty green net. Well, we aren't so mighty anymore ever since Little Mickey tried to talk to a factory worker at Werin & Co. ™. The worker fled and dropped us into the machine, and we split down the middle. The right side was fine, but we threads on the left side were a little worse for wear. So here we are in the dumpster just off the green side of the factory away from those nasty blue threads. They're such slobs!
Anyway, here we'll sit until Tuesday when the garbage man comes.
Mindi:
Something smells different. It smells like the white stuff that the workers always ask the others to pass. Sat? No. Silt? I don't think so. I think it's called salt? Hmmm... Maybe.
Anyway, that rustling noise turned out to be an elderly human. When he found our net, he picked us up in his callused hands and put us in and old burlap sack. When he opened the bag, we were on a dock near the seashore and there was a green half net lying next to us! We inched away from it.
Norman:
We were lying on the dock next to half of a blue net. We instinctively began to inch away, but then we saw the old fisherman's boots. We froze because humans were not supposed to know that we were alive, but the fisherman did not seem to be at all fazed at our movement.
"Hello there!" he boomed, his black eyes crinkling with merriment, "As you know, we have half of a blue net and half of a green net, so the logical thing to do would be to knot the two together, but I see that you two haven't taken a liking to one another. Therefore, I cannot put you two together without your consent. So I suggest that I fish with both of you separately."
He then proceeded to pick us up and sling us into his boat along with the blue net. When we got out to the middle of the choppy waters, he anchored us to one side of the boat, and the blue net to the other. We were then thrown into the water. I watched the fish swim by, but when they swam into our net, they just swam back out again. We weren't big enough.
Mindi:
As the fish swam in and out of our net, I realized that we would have to join with the green net if we were going to catch any fish. As soon as I thought it, I realized another thing. It was out of the question. Blue and Green threads had been at war since the beginning when the first people learned how to make colors. But there might be a chance that Green wasn't so bad.
Norman:
That night when we were back on dry land and lying on the docks again, I thought about how we could fish separately and still catch something. I couldn't come up with an answer. I looked across the deck, and found that a girl string was looking curiously at me.
"Hi," I whispered and she whispered back "Hi."
We continued talking throughout the night. I learned that her name was Mindi. As dawn came we found we had become good friends. That was when I realized that she was a blue string and she realized that I was green. We both gasped and turned away.
That day as I was underwater with the fish, I found myself thinking that I had found the solution to our net problem. Maybe, just maybe it would work.
Mindi:
Nathan's not so bad. Maybe the other Greens aren't like them. Then we could finally end our Net troubles and we could stop being a half-net anymore. It's worth a try. I'll ask Nathan tonight and if he says yes I'll start convincing Papa Blue tomorrow.
That night I told Nathan of my plan and he said that he had been thinking of similar one himself. The next morning we put our plan into action. I convinced Papa Blue while he convinced Mama Green.
Nathan:
Mama Green would have nothing of it. I tried and I tried until finally, I said the right thing,
"Papa Green would have wanted you to." That stopped her cold. I kept going, "He always did think that the dispute between Green and Blue was ridicules." I waited several seconds.
"Alright," came her quiet reply, "We'll try it."
I wondered how Mindi was doing. She probably wasn't faring too well. Papa Blue was very intimidating.
Mindi:
Papa Blue said it was the most utterly absurd idea he had ever heard.
We have a long history of being successful fishernets, so I played on Papa Blue's pride. I told him that if we couldn't even catch one small trout then what good are we? We certainly won't go down in history books now. But we will go down in history as ending the dispute between Green and Blue.
Before we were thrown into the water today, Green and Blue wove themselves together for the first time. We were thrown into the water together once we realized that we were stronger together than we were apart.
