Under a starless night, in a quiet corner of the world, stood a man whose thoughts flowed like a raging river through his mind. He was made of sunlight, yet he lived among those who had surrendered themselves to shadows.

Whenever he spoke, his words were heard as mere whispers of wind blowing through parched, lifeless leaves. His eyes, gateways to distant horizons, seemed meaningless to those whose feet were buried in the mud of their own making.

The people called him mad, for he refused to drown in the whirlpool of monotony and conformity. They deemed him a fool because he rejected their gilded lies and instead sought pearls of truth in the depths of darkness.

One night, under a sky where the moon shone like a chalice of silver, they said to him, "Why do you torment yourself so? Do you not see that this world is a realm of silence and submission?"

He smiled—a smile that blazed like a fleeting lightning bolt in the gloom—and replied, "You call me mad because I dare to dream of the heavens. You call me a fool because I refuse the chains you've forged for yourselves. But truly, madness is seeking flight within the bars of a cage, and foolishness is searching for the sun at the bottom of a well."

The people left him, yet he was not alone; for the stars spoke to him, and the night breeze whispered to him the stories of the world. He continued to think, and though his thoughts were seen as madness by the lowly, they were, in truth, the sparks that would ignite the fires of the future.

And so, a tree of light grew in the darkness, simply because someone had the courage to be mad in the eyes of others.