Pencil Hubris
Sharpening a Pencil is somewhat like a test from the gods to test your hubris. They can change its difficulty by varying the quality of the sharpener.
Do you sharpen just till the bluntness dissapears? Mere Peasant. Heroic acts evade you like a cat avoids a herb patch. Disdainfully and pitifully.
Do you sharpen till the tip is a conical cone of perfect proportions? You have the makings of a great victor of this so very mythic of ages. You know where you belong and the gods like you for it.
Do you sharpen till the tip is a shard of graphite so sharp it could cut the hide of the elusive Pencil-Case Oxen? Even the gods are impressed, slightly jealous even. Be wary, great hero, for you may stride too close to their fury.
Are you the one who sharpens till the point is sharp and, yet, still chooses to continue? Do you keep twisting till the tip strains, heaves, before cracking in twain and lying at your feet, the head of the pencil pulled out from its body like Coön's in that mythic age? Fool. The gods have seen your hubris and sent you down to the mountain which you climed to get to that precipice you knew, but yet still avoided. The gods now make you sharpen again, and again, and again, until that hubris of yours simmers down a little, a sysyphus of the stylus, a Tantalus of the wood-encompassed plumbago. As you toil, the gods will taunt you yet, to show you your arrogance, to make you feel every second of it. The Gods will whirr away at their mechanical sharpeners, while their childen, the demigods click the ends of their propelling, Pneumatic Automatons.
All while you sharpen, sharpen, sharpen, sharpen,