A ripe, heavy orange was tired of hanging on the branch.

“When will I fall?” he wondered. “I’m heavy with juice, I’ve been waiting so long. And I must be such a burden to this branch.”

“I’m stronger than you think,” said the orange tree branch, “And I don’t mind your weight. What’s more, do you think you’re the only orange here waiting to fall? Look around.”

The orange didn’t want to at first. Curious, he finally did as the branch asked. And he saw for the first time all his brothers and sisters, some small & new and pale, some a rich dark vermillion, swollen just as he was.

They greeted him in all their varied tongues and colors and shapes. The sight made him giddy with love to his very seeds.

“Now I don’t want to fall,” said the orange, “I want to stay here with all of you. I see myself in you and feel less lonely.”

And the orange felt some of his ripened, stored-up juice well up and drop as tears. Just then a gust shook the tree, but the orange did not fall — he was saved by having wept, his heaviness reduced by just enough to keep him attached to the branch.

And so the orange got his wish, and stayed on the tree for another season, and spent happy hours in the company of the other oranges, watching them fall and watching them bud and grow anew, so that when it was his time, he dropped with the fullness of life in him, & with a readiness for the soil below, the soft soil patiently waiting like a pair of cupped hands.

The red seed traveled thousands of miles. Sometimes clinging to a galloping horse’s hide, or living in a seagull’s belly, or just sailing across water on gusts. It crossed mountains, rivers, forests. Its little husk was powerful and never once cracked.

One day it settled in a man’s mouth. The man was sleeping and didn’t notice. His dreams were troubled that night.

In the morning he felt a pain in his heart.

“Who is inside me?” he called out.

“A red seed,” said the red seed. “I’ve come to live in you.”

“Why?” wondered the man in anger. “Who asked you to come? I never asked to have anything live in me. Get out.”

The red seed said: “I can’t. I’m buried too deep. Besides, you have been asking for me: In your dreams you’ve cried out for me for three consecutive nights, 13 days ago. I heard and so I came.”

The man was mystified. “I can’t control what comes out of my mouth in sleep! How can I be held to that? Get out now or I’ll swallow poison and kill you.”

The red seed remained still, and said no more.

The man drank bitter poison for the next 30 days, thinking to flush out the seed.

But at the end of that time, the man, very much sickened, could tell the seed was unharmed, and still made him home.

“Please leave,” asked the man, “I’ll do anything. I don’t want you to be in me.”

The red seed said: “I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m here as you asked, and meanwhile I’ve settled in quite nicely. This is my soil now, and I will grow tall and strong from within you.”

 (Read More . . .)

The Moss at God’s doorstep was rust-red and tall.

“When will his step fall,” it asked softly, in a voice like pigeon feathers rubbing together, “and press me together in glad compression? I’m almost grass now, wild and too tall. It’s hard to lift myself up.”

An ant was nestled in the Moss’s dense growth. “Moss, be careful please what you ask for. God’s foot will press you down, but me with it. You’ll grow back, blessed by his touch, but I’m afraid I’ll be crushed and won’t spring back so easy.”

But many years passed, and God never came. The Moss grew tired of the ant’s ceaseless fretting, and when it finally died one morning, the Moss was relieved. “Now God can take his tread and I won’t have to worry about that ant’s anxious cries.”

One night the Moss was startled by a huge thumping sound. God was coming.

He was not naked-footed, however, but shod in sandals. And so when he stepped on the Moss, tamping him deeply down, the Moss felt a great disappointment to his roots. He had wanted nothing between himself and God: certainly not some dirty shoe-sole.

Pressed low and lonely, the Moss pined for his old friend the ant, and felt a great sorrow. Time passed and he got worse, unable to grow new patches, bent low and aching. Soon he prepared to die, never having recovered from the disappointment of the sandaled step.

Just then he felt the soothing taps of small ant-legs, all over his body, and was astonished. “I must be hallucinating after having my old friend on my mind,” thought the Moss.

“We’re real enough,” said some newborn ants, happily. “We rode in on the bottom of God’s shoe, little eggs all of us.” And sure enough, hundreds of ants had hatched, making the dying moss their home. “Thank you for giving us a place to hatch. Now Goodbye, dear Moss.”

And with that the Moss died in peace. The ants went on to find another moss patch, one miles away from the house of God and near no one’s steps, sandaled or bare.

The swordfish was cutting a hole in the ocean.

“Why are you doing that?” asked the electric eel, who was trying to shock the sea.

“God gave me this snout, so I’m using it on the biggest thing I could find, which was the ocean.”

“But you can’t cut the ocean,” said the eel. “Nothing happens to it. You’re crazy.”

The swordfish, dismayed, stopped. “Then what am I supposed to do?” it asked. “By the way, all your shocking of the water doesn’t seem to be affecting it much either.”

The eel, taken aback by this, stopped and looked around. True enough, the blue was unburnt.

“Let’s try that rock,” said the eel.

The swordfish sliced at a piece of rock, and winced. “Ow,” he cried out. “It’s useless!”

The eel zapped the rock three times, only to find it completely unharmed.

“Let’s try the sand,” said the eel.

The eel scalded the sand, but gave up after not a wince or cry was evinced from it. Next, the swordfish dipped his snout into a drift, finding the going easier than with the rock, but still not very satisfying. “It works, but then the sand just fills it back in.”

Just then the eel and swordfish eyed each other, as if for the first time. They shifted and readied, as if to rush into each other. And with a burst, each fled in opposite directions, the swordfish to his grotto, the eel to his coral pile.
 (Read More . . .)

It was a beautiful morning on the beach. The dark, troubled ocean whirled in the grip of red tide.

A coquina shell, washed violently ashore, kicked fruitlessly against the mud, gasping.

“I hate this sand, I hate this sun and I hate this blue sky,” he said. “Give me back my blood-thick sea full of thrashing.”

A sandflea heard the coquina’s voice, and hauled him into his burrow. There the coquina, on death’s door, was nursed back to health, taught to breathe air, and lived among the shore creatures for a time. The sandflea taught him as much as he could about the beach, the creatures there, and the coquina grew strong.

One evening the coquina, using his shell, clamped and crushed the sandflea and devoured him. In a passion, he tunneled back to the ocean, hungry to be in the dark angry water again.

But the ocean was not as he remembered it: it was pure, clean and untroubled. The red tide had passed.

The coquina returned to shore and dug a hidden burrow. There he used the knowledge he had gained to trap and murder sandfleas.

***
In time, the coquina found himself alone. All the smaller creatures of the shore had fled, and the coquina was too feeble now to travel after them.

One evening he sat outside his burrow, feeling a great loathing for it which he didn’t understand. He turned to crawl back in, but then stopped. He realized he could never go back inside. In a kind of trance, he immediately set out for the ocean.

As he grew closer, he felt deeply that he wanted to leave behind his shell, which had grown dark with blood, and somehow escape himself. He felt like his soul was covered in a thousand biting ants.

All his life he’d assumed there was a vast, deep pit continually sucking him in — now he realized he’d been forever willingly sliding down its slopes. The blood of every life he’d taken had done nothing to melt the frozen wastes encasing his heart and he knew now he’d die with it stopped in ice. He cried out in frustration.

At last he reached the shore, which was fierce and dark with red-tide, just like in his youth.

“Red ocean, why did you cast me out? I could have lived in peace in you forever. Instead you banished me and I became a taker of life.”

“Coquina,” said the ocean, “You would have made reasons to leave me eventually. You would have made reasons to reel in pain at the insult of your life. You were like the fish always searching for the hook, for a reason to reel, twist and curse. You can’t come back into me; I’ll not be your grave.”

And the Coquina understood, dying on the spot.

The last radish sat in the soil, blood oozing from a great wound in its belly. Aphids clogged up the gash, sucking at it.

“No one’s ever going to harvest me,” said the radish, bitterly, “not with this wound, and these aphids gorging on my guts. Who would ever cut me for their soup?”

“Stop complaining,” called out an aphid, through mouthfuls. “Instead of a cook’s blade, you have our soft mouths. Either way you’re eaten. Sleep and count yourself lucky.”

The radish, relieved, fell to dreaming.

The mole followed the dark root down. It was red and smelled sweet, but the mole knew that the tastiest bits would be at the root-ends: the tendrils and soft root-hairs there would be full of secret flavor. So he pledged not to bite until the end.

After a day of digging, the root showed no sign of tapering. The mole, irked & exhausted, nursed his claws and took a break.

“This root has to end at some point, ” said the mole. “But meanwhile the air’s getting warmer and harder to breathe, and I don’t recognize this soil: it smells different, it’s more dense.”

During the second day of digging, it was obvious that the root was tapering — but at this rate he wouldn’t reach its tips for a week. The mole was astonished, but mad with determination. His anger mounting, he forgot about his safe burrow, loving family, and ample food-store above: he dug and dug, blind to his own exhaustion, making slower and slower progress in the tough, alien soil, coughing frequently in the strange warm air.

On the third day of digging the mole broke his right paw. He sat still, in a fog, realizing his predicament. The red root like a giant column stood before him, endless. He stared at it in desperation, then vowed to dig with just his snout if he had to until he reached the bottom of it. He felt himself going insane. Fury boiled his blood.

Just then he heard a great rumbling above him: his tunnel, miles-long, was collapsing. With his one good paw he dug a small niche to one side and watched as dirt crashed and filled up everything around him. He cleared a little space, taking short, shallow breaths from the hot air in his tiny chamber. He prepared himself to die.

An idea gripped him. He cleared away dirt until a small patch of the rich red root was visible. He took a great bite out of its rootflesh. It was disgustingly bitter, but he bit it again, clamping hard this time. He was determined to have one last feast, even if it wasn’t from the precious root-ends he’d wanted.
 (Read More . . .)

The toad trembled on the highest branch of the tallest tree in the forest, nibbling the moss that grew there.

He’d eaten all the moss except for a few last patches, and only now realized where he was, as the last mouthful sat half-chewed in his jaws.

“How did I get here, just feet from clouds? All my brothers and sisters are far below and I can’t even see them. I don’t even remember climbing this high. How am I going to get down?”

Just then he noticed an ant on a leaf nearby.

“Ant,” said the toad, “Can you help me?”

“If I can,” said the ant, “But I don’t know why I’m here myself. All I know is I was hungry and followed the tree’s tasty leaves to the top. I’m too scared to crawl back. Maybe we can work together to get down.”

The toad flicked his tongue and ate the ant.

“I think I will live here from now on,” said the Toad.