Once upon a time, there was Comfort, and there was Safety, and they were very close. Comfort could live without Safety, and Safety could live without Comfort; but as they realized they were better as a pair, they preferred not to be apart.

All went well for a while, until people started to mistake one for the other—saying, I want comfort, when, in fact, what they meant was, I want safety, and vice versa. At first, Comfort and Safety found the confusion amusing. But as it increased, they began to squabble over which of them was needed, with Comfort saying, You go, and Safety saying, No, you. The result was that the wrong one would appear, or both would, or neither would, leaving people to find such inferior synonyms, that the two nouns suffered severe identity crises, and, eventually, could not function at all.

Naturally, their relationship soured.

Comfort, who had never had much self-esteem to begin with, due to Safety’s rigid moral certainty, wanted to seek Therapy.

But Safety scoffed at the idea, claiming that any word beginning with a definite article was a joke.

If Comfort had been of a different ilk, it would have pointed out the rich irony of Safety’s comment, considering that both of them had been described as illusions. But, since arguing was antithetical to Comfort’s nature, it said nothing, and plunged head first into a vat of warm chocolate pudding.

Meanwhile, Safety, who was not about to sit around and wait for Comfort’s return, hoisted itself up and stalked off, determined to find and court Happiness.

But, as Happiness, in a fit of self-doubt, had also taken a nose dive into the chocolate pudding, where it found Comfort ready to embrace it with open arms, it was a pursuit that proved utterly futile.

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