The Tale of Temecula The Pure

Long ago, a king came to power who wanted above all else for his kingdom to be pure in all regards. As a boy this desire had begun and it would continue until his departure some time later. Never did he accept anything less than pure in his hidden domain.
His rule began simply and unlike those of most other kings. He was raised up as the child of peasants in a distant, long-forgotten kingdom. All of their lives, his parents had struggled in poverty. They worked the earth and returned little benefit from their toils other than their simple stone hut and the few animals that accompanied them there.
The boy himself, Temecula, was conceived as a mistake; an accident his parents vowed never to repeat. He presented the burden of another mouth to feed for a poor family. His mother had lost a considerable amount of working time in her pregnancy and carrying of the boy, who was left mostly to fend for himself from early childhood. She couldn't afford to make this error again and risk losing even more time and money to another child.
From the time he could walk, Temecula was expected to contribute to the family's work.
He joined them in the fields during harvest season. During the rainy season and Winter, Temecula and his parents would instead make a ten kilometer walk both ways daily to the nearest mill where they would continue to make a living.
In this method of parenting, Temecula learned the truths of labor before he even learned to speak. He knew action before he knew words. Thus, for years after he was given the gift of speech, an upset grew inside of him. Gone was the purity of action without ulterior motives and perspective. Temecula had known that the family worked, but he had not known until he could speak that there was reasoning behind the work. It was not an act of pure labor, and this pushed the boy into a shell of his own design.
A dozen or more years passed, and young Temecula became a man. In his later teenage years, both of his parents passed away. They had lived short but rugged lives. Temecula took a period of silence and threw himself into his work, finally free from his parents' motives in doing so. The following year, his area produced more crops faster than this portion of the kingdom had ever seen. It was then that a servant of their great and powerful king came to visit the village where Temecula had lived his entire life.
The short man came on a white horse too large for his own good, which made him look exponentially shorter than he indeed was. He arrived in Temecula's small village one early afternoon, asking to whom or what the increased grain production could be owed. As the people of the village were kind, none but one tried to take credit for Temecula's increased labors. The king's man knew immediately that this other was lying, as he looked nothing short of being on death's door in his old age.
Within the evening, the knight had been directed to the small home of Temecula's parents. Here, he met with the quiet, contemplative boy, and provided the king's offer to someone who would do so much additional good for the kingdom. He said that the king would like to extend anything he could offer within reason to the boy.
At this point, Temecula had said only three or four words, and he once more fell silent. The knight agreed to give the young man a day's time to think his reward through, and trod away to the local inn on his white horse. He was bemused and intrigued. Anyone else who had been extended this sort of offer had known immediately what their desires were, but this young person had not known, or had at least concealed, such a desire. The knight slept fitfully that night, and in the morning returned.
After a sleepless night's deep consideration on the matter, Temecula told the approaching man of his want. He said without hesitation that he wished for purity.
At this, the knight laughed. The boy had been so guarded before, and now he made such a strange and lofty request before the king's servant had time to dismount his steed. Unsure what the young man meant in asking for this, the knight decided to offer tangible representations of what he assumed purity to be.
The knight first offered in response a virgin maiden as a sign of purity. Temecula refused the offer, and commented that no mortal can be fully pure. He then requested once more purity.
At this, the knight bit his tongue in frustration and offered the finest, freshest clothing in all the kingdom. It would be crafted by the greatest tailor known to the king. Again, Temecula turned this offer down and asked for purity.
The knight then fidgeted with anger and extended one last offer, this time for a parcel of untouched land closer to the king's palace. Once more, Temecula shook his head and declined the offer. Once more, he asked only for purity.
The short man grew frustrated, and questioned the young man as to what he sought in asking for purity. Temecula responded that he had been up all night trying to find the right words to ask for what he wished, a more specific way of describing his desires, only to arrive at the one word.
The king's man demanded that if Temecula were to take this matter without seriousness, then neither he nor the king had anything to offer the young man. At this, Temecula nodded in understanding and bade the knight farewell.
The man left their village that day, as Temecula did the same in the evening. If this kingdom could not offer him the necessary purity he required, he would not be its subject any longer. He packed food enough for a week's journey, and little more otherwise than one change of clothes. In the dark of night, he stole away from the old house and ventured down the road from the village on which he had never journeyed.
Temecula wandered aimlessly for eight days, going this way and that through the wilderness. He did not allow any pretense or external drive to overtake the movement of his feet. Through forest and by lake, across a great dam and through an intricate cave carved into a sheer rock face he ventured, never dissatisfied so long as he was moving.
When he approached the exit of a great wood on his eighth day abroad, he looked upon a rainbow in the distance greater than any he had previously beheld. Its scale was massive to the point of seeming larger than life, as though gravity might bring its colors crashing down and paint the countryside in its wake.
He was not one to fancy a fairy tale, but one of the few stories on to which Temecula had held since boyhood was of the rainbow. His parents had told him that if one journeyed to a rainbow's base, they would be granted their greatest desire. He had kept this belief as a comfort since he had learned to speak and the impurities of language had seeped into his everyday life. Without hesitation, he immediately headed for the rainbow.
It was mid-morning, and the journey took approximately four hours by foot without rest. Temecula approached the base of the rainbow on one end after climbing all manner of rugged terrain. He arrived at a cliff face and, looking up, came to see that the brilliant colors were hung high above at the falls of  a crystalline river overhead.
Not giving voice to any potential fears he possessed, Temecula climbed the jagged face of the cliff. He selected a spot several dozen meters to the fall's right, so that his grip would not be compromised by water, and he made to climb the wall. This venture took him an additional hour, given how inexperienced yet driven he was in the matter.
At the crest of the falls, Temecula pulled his aching body onto the flat surface overhead and collapsed with heaving breath next to the magnificent river.
A voice came to his form, though it was unlike any he had heard previously. It lilted and seemed to weep from joy as it spoke. The voice asked Temecula what his desire was so that it might grant it. Through closed eyelids, Temecula explained his desire only for purity. The voice turned warm and agreeable, explaining that the man would then become his own king, and that within his kingdom only the most pure would be allowed to set foot. Lastly, the speaker asked that Temecula open his eyes, lift his tired body, and carry himself into his new domain.
Temecula agreed, standing on the spot. However, he noticed that though he was bathed in the varying hues of the rainbow whose gaze spread for almost a hundred meters in total, no one was waiting to greet him. Instead, he beheld what appeared to be a hollowed doorway through the trunk of an ancient-looking tree before him. Knowing instantly that this was the beginning of his purification and that of his new home, Temecula stepped swiftly and disappeared into that tree.
It's said that if one is pure of intention and they go wandering, they will find this doorway within the base of a tree. There, they will stumble into the majestic kingdom of Temecula the Pure. It is said that anyone pure enough to behold this kingdom is allowed to stay within it for as long as they live. For though children like Temecula may wander with good intent, they cannot wander forever. That is why Temecula himself still lives, and yet has not been seen by another person in this land since being snubbed by the king's knight.