The place where the marigolds bloom all year-round and the red-breasted robins call lovingly to passerby is a fictional place for a fictional story. In today's society, it is hardly likely that such things as everlasting marigolds or throaty robins will be plentiful, especially not with our cities and pollution.

In the case of this story, these things are hidden from the meadow's eye, as it is a gentle place. Large, ancient redwood trees tower over the small creatures on the ground, sentries to the peaceful place, protectors from the violent ones. They chuckle with glee and whisper to one another of the things that may please trees and wildlife. Rivers of cold, clear freshwater flow from the northern mountains and pool into a large, shallow lake in the midst of the meadow, the cattail fronds and croaking frogs embellishing the glass shield over the lake, winds occasionally drifting by, happy flicks and wicks that stir the glass briefly and bow the cattails to their lord the lake until they dissipate and the glass solidifies again, and the frogs return a-croaking. The clouds are far and few on a summer's day, and only bring the briefest of showers to the rich lands, as they needn't much more water than they are given to start.

The marigolds, ah, the marigolds. So many of them in this beautiful meadow that caresses the trees and hugs the rivers and lake. They are plentiful and dispersed into the tall yellow grasses that lay haggard and unkempt around them, almost a mockery of their pompous existence without allowing them the right to brag about their radiance. They sway in the breeze and dance in the wind, lick the drops of rain from their soft, succulent petals and into their emerald throats, the air purified with each microsecond of their being. They whisper gossip to the jackrabbits and lure the lone red fox from his den, teasing him with the sounds of his mate, leading him in circles until he gives up and returns home, his confidence lowered and his heart breaking.

As a day in the meadow wears on and grows old, the breeze drifts less fluidly and more starkly as the dark descends. The stars twinkle and glisten down upon the meadow, ivory wisps of starlight that cascade the world into a black-and-white ghost land, a place where the flowers then dance in the stilled winds, the trees shake and shiver in the warmth, the foxes and raccoons flee from the shadows of the rabbits and mice. And as the starlight is beautiful it is deadly, for many a locust may try and settle upon the marigolds to devour them with a wrath unsuited for the meadow only to have a lash of luminescence sting their protected hides and give them leave to flee the meadow, ne'er to return.

Such is the way of the meadow in the valley. It has always been a peaceful place, always will, and is in great contrast to what lies beyond the hills to the east: tall, steel spider webs and columns of marble with iron and gold-leafed projections emanating from the monstrous creations of mankind. The tall, dull, grey-glassed prisms of rectangular origin make the basis for the heart and home of the city where jobs provide money and labor is cheap. The expanding city has already laid down a firm, irrefutable and unforgiveable law, a law so deathly in its creation that its punishment is the same if not worse, a law that mandates the preservation and utter isolation of the meadow, the justification that no matter what may happen to the civilization, no human harm shall come to such a sacred and protected place.

O, the beams of galvanized ions and the sheets of heated sand may come and go, and will form structures beyond our imagining, from the simplest of houses to the most extreme and complex of resource and ecology buildings. And so many buildings there are, for a large city should have many of everything and little of time to wait for time to grow old. There are cafés on the corners of the numerous roads, shops and stalls set up in the most inconvenient of places. The sidewalks are tarantulations of color and smells. The buildings explode from the earth behind the small shops and stalls: coffee shops, tea houses, clothing stores, jewelry stores, electronics, furniture, hardware, software, appliances, musical instruments, motorsports, cars, trucks, bicycles, mopeds, shoes, hats, helmets, scarves, hamburgers, hotdogs, toys, games, candy, casinos, motels, hotels, whore-houses, bars, ice-cream parlors, elderly homes, apartments, condominiums, office buildings, research centers, general practitioners, nurses, emergency rooms, operating rooms, morgues, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, community colleges, state colleges, universities, world leadership dorms, shipping and manufacturing plants, pizza parlors, even hair salons. All of these wonderful and overindulged beings have their purpose in the world, their place amongst the others. The wondrous colors and sounds and sights and smells, the taste in the air on the ground level is beautiful, oh so beautiful. And in light of all the fruits of labor, the oppressive grey buildings stack like monotonous soldiers behind the lines of window shops, the sentries of the city, distant, man-made cousins to the redwoods of the meadow.

Of course, all of these thousands upon thousands of people have to live somewhere, so while the skyscrapers are in the heart of the thrumming city, the houses are around the outer rim and frilly skirts of the ever-expanding city. Foreclosures are less common in the light of the economic growth than ever before, though at any minute the government of the large, solitary city may change its pompous, overbearing mind and cheat the hard-working taxpayers out of the money they already struggle to stretch to fit their every need.

The taxpayers live in these houses around the city, every house different of color, floor plan, lawn arrangement, landscaping, ownership, interior design, even of different purpose: where some are actual living spaces, others are merely additions to already flourishing households that are a bit too crowded with somewhat meaningless possessions. They come in all shapes and sizes, be them short, tall, skinny, fat, blonde, brunette, red-headed, blue-eyed, green-eyed, hazel-eyed, brown-eyed, grey-eyed, thin-haired, full-haired, well-endowed, uneducated, high merit scholars, even those who don't own homes and live on every last bit of everything they have.

While some people work themselves literally to the grave and wrap their minds in nothing but the meat that will be fed into the societal grinder, others live as contented as can be, happy cats bathing in the deliciously warm rays of blissful sunshine and heaven. Both can exist in the same household and can even exist harmoniously within one person, though one may dominate significantly over the other. And from these sets of traits, a man by the name of Nathaniel Krauss emerged.