There are things above us. I do not know how far above. They are taller than anything we know.
At first I thought they were trees, because they remain in one place and reach upward. But trees do not move in groups. Trees do not cover themselves in light at night.
These things do. They are many.
They have covered the ground with hard surfaces. They have made the air bright when there is no sun. I do not know why. I watch them because there is much to watch.
They make the air warm when it is cold. They make the air cold when it is warm. They make noise that travels farther than they can.
Sometimes they sit together and look at markings. They created the markings themselves. Sometimes they become very angry because of the markings. I do not understand why.
I have watched long enough to see something stranger still: I have seen them draw invisible lines. I have seen them exchange metal and call it worth. I have seen them choose a word and let it decide.
Then, later, they forget.
They forget that a hand made the line. They defend it as if it had always been there, as if the ground itself had drawn it. They starve for the metal as if it grew from soil. They let the word isolate them from each other.
I have never once seen the ground draw a line.
They will cross great distances because of a word. They will hurt one another because of a piece of cloth. They will build divisions around places that were there before they arrived. I do not know why they do this.
We do not do this.
When there is food, we move toward it. When there is no food, we reach outward. When the ground becomes dry, we come together. When there is enough water, we spread out again.
There is nothing more to decide.
The tall creatures seem to have many more things to decide. They have made rooms filled with smaller rooms where they sit and decide things. They make other creatures wait outside. Sometimes they argue for a very long time. Then they leave and nothing seems to have changed.
I like watching them.
Once, there was a great noise. The ground shook. The air became dark.
The tall creatures stopped doing their many things. They came out of their hard places. They carried the injured. They broke open doors. They lifted fallen things.
They stopped asking who belonged where. They stopped caring about the marks. They went toward one another.
Thousands became tens of thousands. Tens of thousands became more. They filled the roads. They passed food from hand to hand. They carried strangers. They slept beside strangers.
And then something happened that I have only ever seen among ourselves. They stopped moving as thousands of separate things and began moving as one thing. No one called them to it. No one led them there. They simply narrowed, all at once, toward whatever was hurting them, the way water finds the low ground without being told which way is down.
I knew this thing. It was the same thing we become when the ground is dry.
I knew. They were together because something was hurting them. For a while, there was no other reason.
Then the shaking stopped. The darkness lifted.
Then they took down what they had made for one another. The tall creatures went back inside. They returned to their separate places.
The invisible lines mattered again. The markings mattered again. The words mattered again.
They stopped carrying strangers. They stopped sleeping beside them. They became many things again.
The coming together happened to them. The going apart, they keep rebuilding.
I watched this happen. Then I waited. There was food nearby. We began to move toward it.
I do not know if the tall creatures remember what happened. Perhaps they do. They remember many things.
They have made a machine that remembers almost everything. They have made a thing that goes above the clouds and returns. I have seen the lights from their machines moving across the night. Sometimes I wonder where they are going. Then I stop wondering.
The tall creatures can see very far. They can make almost anything. They can go into the sky, remember the dead, and imagine places they have never been.
Yet when the world breaks, they come together only for a moment. When the pain passes, they go apart.
I know this because I have watched them. I know this because I am small.
The ground is dry now. We are gathering.
Above us, the lights are coming on.
