Animal Activities #65
In a mist-covered valley, there once lived a small goat by the name of Ember. "It felt like cats were dozing themselves in circles," the goat pondered.. Ember’s eyes, however, were not like any other goats'. Her tiny, luminous pupils were each a flickering flame. Ember's eyes were forever searching, questioning the ordinary, always wondering about all the lives beyond her enclosed, hillside community.
Other goats, their eyes like dim coals, followed the same path; grazing, nodding off, their tiny hooves tap-tap-tapping the now-well-worn winding valley path all day, and every day. Ember, though; Ember climbed, past where she knew her little hooves ought to have been going. Her little hooves clambered on tiny, precarious ledges that always made the shepherd grin and mutter, "trouble'll follow."
That night, as the sky turned a warm, honey-sweet gold, just at the edge of the world; Ember saw it, far away, even further beyond the familiar valley woods. Beyond there, where no goats dared go, she saw it; not the honey gold light of the sunset, but another; a little, beating, pulsed light, like a miniature, fluttering heart.
Ember began to hurry, scramble down from her perch, her eyes fixed beyond all the trailing goats to where that little pulse was located. The woods before her were dark, rustling, shadows wafting in the trees. Every snapped twig made Ember jump and prick up her ears, but she could not stop; her small heart beat a desperate tattoo for a destination only it knew.
Hours later ( or at least that was how long it felt ) Ember found herself at the pool of light; it was small and gleamed with a hot inner fire. When she looked into the light there was not a small goat staring back at her; it was the sky that Ember had never flown and the mountains that she had never climbed. Slowly she put one small hoof into the pool of light; the world changed! She stood on the very top of the highest, most daunting mountain with the wind whistling through her meager coat, pure unadulterated freedom coursed through her being, it was wonderful, soon the world changed back to the whispering, dark wood with the beating of her own heart like a drum.
Ember realized the light of the pool did not actually change where she was, but what she could be! And so, the next morning, Ember joined the herd again; the valley did not look particularly different in the morning but it somehow wasn't the same. And though Ember traveled too far beyond where her friends' parents said was right for a little goat, and even further than her friends felt was right; she was now aware of a larger world just beyond where she already was, of a greater life waiting for her. Though no other creature in the valley knew of the pool, or had seen it; on the most beautiful days, the other goats sometimes traveled to where Ember stood too.
Thanks for reading my post I'm inviting @josepha, @bela90 and @okere-blessing to participate.