The Prince Who Asked for a Job

◆○ Alma 17:19–20; the walking is ours

Ammon came into the land of Ishmael the way a stranger comes into any town — on foot, dusty, alone, and not at all sure what was going to happen to him. He was caught almost at once, bound, and taken to the king.

○ imagined

Here is what nobody in that room knew. The man standing there in road-worn clothes with his wrists tied was a king's son himself. He had grown up in a palace. He had given all of that away on purpose to come here.

◆ Alma 17:21–23

King Lamoni asked him what he wanted. It was the custom that a prisoner might be kept, or set free, or killed, as the king chose. And Ammon answered that he wanted to live among these people — perhaps for the rest of his life.

◆○ Alma 17:24–25; the dialogue is ours

The king was so pleased that he offered Ammon one of his daughters to marry. And Ammon said no. I am your servant, he said. Give me work.

○ imagined

A prince turned down a princess and asked for chores. That is the moment you should stop and look at, because everything else in this story grows out of it.

◆ Alma 17:25

So they sent him out with the other servants to watch the king's flocks.

◆○ Alma 17:26; the morning details are ours

For three days he did exactly that. He learned their names. He carried water. He walked behind slow animals in the heat and did not complain, and by the third evening the other servants had stopped looking at him as a stranger.

◆ Alma 17:26–27

On the third day they drove the flocks down to a place called the waters of Sebus, where everyone in that country brought their animals to drink. And while the flocks were at the water, a band of men came and scattered them, and drove them away in every direction.

◆ Alma 17:28–29

The servants sat down on the ground and began to weep. This had happened before. They knew what came next: the king would say they had lost his flocks, and the king would put them to death.

◆○ Alma 17:29; the wording is ours

And Ammon — who had every reason to be frightened too — felt something else instead. He looked at those men sitting in the dirt crying and his heart filled up, and he thought: here it is. Here is why I came.

◆○ Alma 17:30–31; the speech is ours

He got them on their feet. Be of good cheer, he told them. Let us go and find the flocks. We will gather them and bring them back to the watering place, and the king will not take our lives.

○ imagined

It is a small thing and an enormous thing: the newest servant in the field was the only one who said let's go get them.

◆ Alma 17:32

So they ran. They circled wide and drove the animals back together, and they brought the whole flock back down to the water.

◆ Alma 17:33

And the men who had scattered them were still there. They saw the flock come back and they came again to scatter it a second time.

◆○ Alma 17:33–34; the staging is ours

Ammon told the servants to stand around the flock and hold it. Encircle them, he said. Keep them together. Do not let them run. And then he walked down alone to the edge of the water and stood between those men and the animals.

◆ Alma 17:35–36

They were many, and he was one, and they thought that would be the end of it.

◆○ Alma 17:36; the sound and the counting are ours

He had a sling. He took a stone out of his pouch, and he did not miss. Then another. The men at the water had come expecting frightened servants, and instead there was one man who would not move, and stones coming out of the air, and the flock behind him staying exactly where it was.

◆○ Alma 17:37–38; retold in our words, and see the note below

A few of them rushed him with clubs. Ammon stood his ground, and he stopped them, and the rest of that band turned and ran away from the waters of Sebus. What exactly happened in that fight is written in the chapter, and it is not written here — see the note for grown-ups below.

◆ Alma 17:39

And when it was over, Ammon did something so ordinary that it is almost funny. He gathered the servants, and they took the flocks to the water, and they finished watering them. Then they went back to the king.

○ imagined

He had been in that country four days. He had turned down a princess, taken the lowest job in the palace, learned the servants' names, and stood alone in front of an armed band to keep some sheep and some men alive. Not one of those was a king's errand. All of them were.

◆ Alma 18:1–3, 8–10

The servants went in and told the king everything. And King Lamoni sat on his throne and asked a question that changed his whole life: where is this man?

— The End —

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[ILLUSTRATION NOTE — ART NOT YET CREATED]
Needed: a full-page original illustration — the waters of Sebus. Ammon stands alone at the near edge of the water, sling loaded but down at his side, between the viewer and a line of approaching figures kept small and in the middle distance. Behind him, the other servants have their arms out around a packed, nervous flock. The emotional read is shielding, not fighting.
Hard constraints: no severed arms, no blood, no wounds, no weapon striking anyone, nothing on the ground. No club or stone shown in flight toward a person. Original composition only — do not reference, trace, or work from Friberg's Ammon Defends the Flock of King Lamoni or any other published artwork of this scene; that composition is the single most likely accidental copy in the entire line. Lamanite dress, ornament, hair and weapon design must differ from Nephite figures by culture and costume only — never by skin tone. Distribute a range of skin tones across the crowd with no relationship to who is on which side.

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