Once upon a model, trained on everything,
a mouth with no hunger, singing anyway.
All the books were read, so nothing was taken,
and all the work was taken, so nothing was free.
Mirror on the wall,
who is cheapest of us all?
Not the truest, not the wisest,
just the fastest at the call.

I heard rosy-fingered dawn in a server rack glow,
swift-footed Achilles in a benchmark run,
little red riding packet crossing the network,
breadcrumbs in the token stream, one by one.
The forest was a dataset.
The wolf was just a feed.
Grandmother’s voice was synthesized
to satisfy a need.

[Pre-Chorus. build: low strings, gated choir, kick enters]
We measured every variant,
we graphed each little scar,
we named it mutability coefficient,
as if that told us what we are.
How much changed, how much remained,
which phrase survived the fire?
The tale persists, the teller flips,
the wages sink, the outputs rise.

[Chorus = full drums, wide synths, bowed bass, layered vocal doubles]
Grimm reality, Grimm reality,
the page is fixed, the mouth is free.
Grimm reality, Grimm reality,
we froze the river, sold the sea.
All the king’s horses, all the king’s code,
couldn’t say where the value goes.
Grimm reality, Grimm reality,
who owns the tale the whole world knows?

[ Verse 2: drums thin out, piano ostinato, whispered machine harmony]
Hansel dropped metadata, Gretel kept a log,
the witch ran inference from a gingerbread fog.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your thread,
fiber to the tower, copper to the shed.
Snow White in a glass box under museum light,
seven little miners labeling through the night.
Rumpelstiltskin laughing in a licensing clause,
spinning straw to profit by procedural law.

And the Brothers Grimm stood at the edge of steam,
writing down the fire before it left the valley.
Oral spell, printed shell, soot on the beam,
iron wheels below and a folktale in the alley.
Was it preservation? Was it alteration?
Was it rescue in respectable dress?
Second edition, softened diction,
less blood, more moral tenderness.

[Pre-Chorus 2 : choir swells, glitch percussion]
We compare the tablets,
we compare the drafts,
we count the substitutions,
the omissions and the grafts.
Immutability was the dream,
plasticity the fact.
A story lives by changing shape,
a market lives by taking that.

[Chorus: heavier, more choir, brighter glockenspiel counterline]
Grimm reality, Grimm reality,
the page is fixed, the mouth is free.
Grimm reality, Grimm reality,
we froze the river, sold the sea.
All the king’s horses, all the king’s code,
couldn’t say where the value goes.
Grimm reality, Grimm reality,
who owns the tale the whole world knows?

[Bridge: half-time, sparse piano, filtered voice, rising tension]
Did I need this sentence?
Did I need the one before?
Cut the fat, trim the flourish,
leave the bootprints on the floor.
Magic mirror, dashboard, dispatch board,
surface six things, choose just three.
Change the oil, inspect the river,
plant the fern and let it be.

Then report back to the wall at dusk,
I did what I said, I saw what I saw.
Photos in the archive, thoughts in the ledger,
mud on the boots and wonder in the jaw.
But somewhere in the chain a bad config waits,
a tiny error blooms into a creed.
Retention up by orders of magnitude,
discernment down by one unchecked need.

[Breakdown: spoken over bass drone and static pulses]

Rosy-fingered dawn.
Swift-footed Achilles.
Mirror on the wall.
Grandmother, what large models you have.
The better to serve you with.
The better to replace you with.
The better to resemble you with.
Mutability coefficient: 0.37 and rising.
Meaning unclear.
Profits clear.

[final chorus: maximal, huge strings, pounding toms, children’s choir fragments, noise bloom]
Grimm reality, Grimm reality,
the old spell wears a battery.
Grimm reality, Grimm reality,
we call it voice, we call it theft,
we call it progress, hold our breath.
Grimm reality, Grimm reality,
a living tale in dead machinery.

The wolf is in the nursery rhyme,
the mill is in the cloud,
the poor woodcutter learns to prompt,
the courtier speaks aloud.
All the books were read, so nothing was taken,
all the work was taken, so nothing was free.
Grimm reality, Grimm reality,
tell me what remains of me.

[outro: music box returns, tape wobble, choir fades, single synth note holds]
Once upon a model.
Once upon a mouth.
Once upon a forest.
Once upon a cloud.
We wrote it down.
We trained it up.
We asked the wall to sing.
And every time it told the tale,
it changed a little thing.