“Toot toot,” says the sheep to the tree bark as she gorges herself on droppings from low branches. The fruits were never her fancy, but still: an ewe must eat.

Bacon jam wafts in the air: danger; delicacy. She knew who died for that fragrance. Suddenly her meal loses its flavour.

The great trunk beside her bends as the tree leans down to whisper, “silent days and blackened nights, sweet one; you will not be my fertilizer today.”

“Toot,” was the only reply she could offer. She trembles. Fear mingles with rage. Injustice always boiled her blood. Chewing through the core of the fruit, teeth grinding on its seeds, she glares at the boy spinning cartwheels down the hill in the meadow.

“Were that he was my lunch today,” she thinks, the fruit’s juices dripping from her bottom lip.

The tree uproots and slides seven meters down the opposite slope from boy and ewe, wanting no part in this quarrel. The sheep stands alone and exposed on the dirt now. She doesn’t notice as she stares with evil intent at the child. The child turns and notices her now. Their eyes meet for an instant, then the sheep drops in place, her heart frozen and her limbs limp.

“I see I was mistaken,” the tree says to itself. Shrugging its branches, it ambles back up the hill to the now-peaceful sheep and awaits its own eventual meal.

———

I’ve said a number of times that I just write what comes. This is what came one night when I was sitting in bed.

I’ve also said, “everything counts; all art is valid and valuable.” So, with that in mind, I’m sharing something incredibly random simply because that’s what came and—just like the things I write with more deliberation—this strange little story ought to live and breathe in the world.

So, if you ever think, “my ___ isn’t good enough;” look here. I wrote this. Why? No idea—why not. It made the world more colourful and strange. That’s enough.