A Thief, A King and A Horse

Sorry I haven't been blogging in a bit, but I haven't been able to get online for various reasons. However, I wanted to share this tale with you. A death row prisoner wrote it and sent it via me to a mutual friend. His name deserves credit: Gabriel Gonzalez, innocent in Texas.

A long time ago, an accused thief was brought before the king for trial and sentencing. The king declared the thief's guilt and pronounced a sentence of death by something truly nasty. The thief asked for permission to speak and when granted it, told the king that, if given a year, that he could and would teach the king's favorite horse to talk. Obviously he was persuasive, because the king postponed the sentence for a year to give him a chance. One of the guards took the thief down to the stables where the thief immediately proceeded to spend all of his time talking to the horse, grooming him, etc. After a few days of laughing at him, a couple of the stable hands came over and asked him why he was bothering to spend so much time on something impossible. Basically they said he was crazy.
"That may be," the thief said, "But I have a year, and who knows what will happen in that time? The king might die. The horse might die. I might die. And who knows, maybe the horse will learn to talk."