82931: The Path to Peace

Leston was a young trader in Sub-Saharan Africa. He had inherited his father's shop and continued to trade various goods with the various tribes. It made him very rich, but that wasn't the point of his story.

He had been trading for many years, and had gotten to know each tribe's leaders and customs. He knew that when they were happy they would give you their best trade goods in return for your own. But if they were sad or angry they would only give you their worst stuff.

One day he decided to go on a trip around the region. He went to the next tribe over and passed out the good stuff. Then he went back home.

A few weeks later, he got tired of trading so he went on another trip, this time to the other side of the country. This time, he traded out all his worst stuff before he left so that no matter what tribe he visited, he'd have good stuff to trade with them.

When Leston arrived at the first tribe, everyone was happy and eager to trade with him because he had such nice things! They traded all of their best gifts for his bad ones! Leston was so excited that he didn't even notice that he had just traded away everything he owned!

Leston soon ran out of gifts to give, so then he started trading his clothes and food! The locals were excited by these things too! They gave him some really good stuff in return! So Leston kept doing it until finally, there was nothing left at all!

Leston decided now would be a good time to go home because it was getting dark and cold out in the middle of nowhere without any protection against either one of those things, let alone both at once.

When Leston got back home, he realized that there were armed thugs waiting outside his house who wanted to kill him because they wanted what little treasure remained inside his house! Leston didn't have anything else, though! Except... He did have some things in his backpack from his last trip! They weren't much better than what he'd already traded away anyway, so maybe it wouldn't be a big deal if he just gave them away?

So Leston gave them all away too! And thus did Leston learn an important lesson about not letting people know how wealthy you are until after you've left the area where they live or else they will try to kill you just as soon as you get home again.