Icarus and Liquorice
Legendary Story
Remember the story of Icarus?
Once upon a time this guy made magic wings and learned to fly, but flew too close to the sun and melted the wings and he fell to his death. It is a cautionary tale used to scare people off their aspirations and dreams, but it isn’t what really happened. Because Icarus had a black brother.
A long time ago, in the City of Hope, there were two brothers, Icarus and Liquorice. Icarus was born to a noble family. Liquorice was Icarus’ half-brother, born of his father’s affair with a slave gal. Icarus was treated like royalty growing up. Liquorice was an outcast. Liquorice always looked up to and loved his older brother because he let him help gather feathers.
“Why do we gather feathers?” Liquorice asked.
“Birds use feathers to fly, so will we.” Icarus answered.
For years the two brothers collected feathers until they had enough to build a set of wings. Icarus was the older brother, so he tested them out. They walked with them to the edge of a cliff at the back of their castle and Icarus took to flight. Icarus flew so high that it seemed he would reach the sun. All the people of the kingdom saw this and marveled in its glory.
Liquorice looked up to his brother, as he always has done, but this time much higher. Liquorice followed Icarus with his eyes as he flew past the sun and it appeared like a solar eclipse. Watching this blinded Liquorice for a moment and he tripped on a rock and fell back, rolling down the cliff into a pit of sleeping vipers. Liquorice was trapped at the bottom of the pit as the vipers started to wake from the commotion of the fall and he called to his brother for help.
Icarus heard the cry and locked his vison like an eagle to see Liquorice at the bottom of the cliff in a pit of vipers. The only way for Liquorice to escape was to fly out, but the only set of wings was on Icarus’ back. So, Icarus removed his wings midflight and threw them with his Peyton Manning laser rocket arm and the wings were received by Liquorice like so many TDs to Marvin Harrison.
Without the wings, Icarus began to fall and all the people of the kingdom said “That’s what you get for flying too close to the sun.” Liquorice saw his brother falling and put on the wings and blasted out of the pit of vipers and caught Icarus just before he hit the ground, kind of like how the Hulk caught Iron Man in the first Avengers.
The End