STORY IN REVERSE
( A "What if" story )
By
Russ Gibbons
&/\&/\& A King wins a war and conquers much of Europe many centuries ago, changing most of the lives on the continent.
Fifty years earlier when his mother was a princess, she was sitting in the forest, pulling pedals off a daisy --- "he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, " --- when her future husband walked up to her.
The season before, a butterfly is pollinating flowers, and ready to land on a daisy. At that moment, a tiny gust of wind pushes a leaf off a tree, which falls near the butterfly and scares him off.
What if . . . the Butterfly didn't pollinate the daisy that had the right number of pedals to end with "he loves me ", and the princess married someone else, and had a different child, who grew up and didn't win those wars.
The world as we know it would be totally different today, based on how a single leaf fell.
&/\&/\&