It was a sun-scorching midday when the king gifted me a doubled sack. First, I sunk to my knees, intoxicated with joy after the king footed all the way to find me scavenging for grasshoppers along the Okamita River. I unrolled the rucksack and picked up it was empty. 

“Fill it up,” the king said, with teary eyes. “What …?” I asked, frolicking in front of his majesty. “Collect all the thorns in and around the Omatako River and fill up this satchel,” said the mournful king. I grabbed the sac, and turned it inside out. My mind begins to race whether the king supposed I fill it with unalike thorns.

Soon, I put on my yellow sandals and roamed the dry Omatako wilderness. First, I picked up the needle-sharp thorns. Then, I plucked the spike-sharp thorns. I hobbled around and harvested knife-piercing thorns. Afterwards, I piled up the pin-sharp thorns. Later, I rootled for the rare white thorns, and the sac was about half-full. 

I leered for the prestigious rewards awaiting me. I was the lowliest vassal, so to be entrusted with mining the treasurable thorns elevated my spirit. I collected some c-shaped thorns and straightened thorns. I picked yellowish grass-like thorns that scattered the riverbeds. Finally, I spotted some V-shaped thorns and filled the sac. Soon, the pouch swelled in the middle.

I pictured how the king would wage me with a cow, a calf and a churned milk calabash. I daydreamt leaving behind cuisines of grasshoppers and dragonflies along the yawning rivers. 

I picked up the sac, flung it over my sticking forehead. Soon, the stabbing thorns shaped a blood-spattered crown on my head. Thereafter, I lugged the bag towards the king’s palace, but the thorns ripped holes at the bottom of the cottoned bag. I squatted underneath a thorny shrub; chock fill the bag again. 

Instantly, I knotted the sac with dry loops of twigs. When I brandished the sac to the king, his sorrowful words choke my heart. First, the king gawked over the sac and said, “There’s one missing thorn.” “It looks like a golden thimble,” he whispered into my ears. 

I combed the shrubberies for pitted cap thorns. By the time I returned with the grooved rings thorns, the sudden death of the king had spread like wildfire. Afterwards, a plague of mushrooming golden thimble thorns invaded Okahandja in 1890. 

* This is historical fiction.