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Once upon a time, there was a rock, indiscernible from millions of other rocks in the world, with approximately two hundred woodlice living underneath it. Woodlice that don't live in wood (as their name would suggest) sound interesting. They are not. They sat there, doing whatever it is that woodlice do before their rock is lifted by a curious passer-by. Most of them were perfectly content. One was not.    Me, he thought one day. I'm thinking, he thought immediately afterwards.       Something had changed. It could not be seen by an outside observer, even if there had been light underneath the rock, and it could not be felt, not even by the other woodlouse sitting right on top of him at that very moment to conserve heat. But if this little louse had had adrenal glands, his body temperature might have risen a tiny bit at that particular moment.   Sheer terror set in as he realized that although he could move across the ground for as far and long as he wanted (he could not possibly imagine the scale of the rock), there was a surface above him that he would never be able to penetrate and he suddenly felt what we would call trapped.   How wonderful it would be if the rock would disappear, he thought, and he imagined the beauty of the world above as he cursed and raged at his misfortune, the injustice of being born and having to live his life in this two-dimensional cage. He thought and wept about it every minute of every day. No wonder he felt it was all somehow his fault when one day, the rock did disappear at the hands of a bored toddler. One by one, the insects dried up in the sun, and peacefully departed the world without having ever seen it. The little thinking louse was, as he felt death approach, one day lifted from the ground by an incredible force. Either I have been sufficiently punished for my arrogance, and this is what dying is like, he thought, or this is only the beginning of my atonement. In fact neither was true. He became lunch for a young sparrow, that lived in an oak with his two siblings.    His favorite part of the day was not when his parents came home to feed them, but when they left. He never missed an opportunity  to admire their powerful backs, their smooth wings that curved so subtly to provide optimal lift. The sparrow liked to look up at the sky and watch the grown birds dancing through the treetops. They were weightless, free to come and go as they pleased, while he was bound to the nest by his big, clumsy body.   There's no way, he thought, I can ever be like them. I will never be so light and yet so strong, so elegant and so fast. I'll have to leave here soon, to hunt and hide and nest myself. But how? His siblings never doubted. They had full confidence in their DNA. Eventually, they would be able to do all that, and more, no matter how bald and helpless they were now. Chicks became birds, whether they wanted to or not. That was the way it had always been, and it would always be. His parents told him the stories of their own youth, that he was too young to be worrying and how everything was going to be all right, wait and see. The young sparrow stopped trying to explain why he was different from all the other nervous little birds throughout history that had all turned out all right in the end. He waited, but never saw.     Fluffy was old, but not completely off his game yet. Sparrows can give one some trouble, so he waited for about fifteen minutes until the parents were both gone before raiding the nest. Maybe he'd come back some time later and try his luck with the adults. In the past, he would have immediately gone for it without hesitation, but time had made his joints creaky and his teeth blunt. Old men must learn to be patient if they want to become even older. These little excursions in the yard were the favorite part of his otherwise boring day.    Fluffy yawned and turned his head to the sunset. He lay on the porch every evening, wondering how many suns he had outlived already and how many he had left. Old cats don't constantly feel the need to remind the rest of the world of their age like old people do. They just assess the damage now and then. Fluffy knew he was lucky in that regard. Most of his interior still worked fine, of the majority of embarrassing problems that tomcats his age could suffer from he had been spared. No bowel-related unpleasantness, no prostate trouble. Yet. He gave so much attention to himself nowadays, as if he was any more important than that of the hatchling he had murdered. Or that of the Rottweiler from across the street who had been hit by a semi last week. The big picture had outgrown him, in a sense. He was too tired to consider himself with the world at large.    Fluffy was in good health, but not immune to the bane of pets that was feared equally by all. Lice. On the back of his neck, Fluffy had taken on a stowaway during a stroll in the bushes. The insect had managed to attach itself in the unluckiest of places. the back of the neck is one of the rare spots where even cats can't scratch. Frolicking in gravel might help sometimes, but never for long. If a louse clings on to where he wants to stay, they're harder to get rid of than most brain parasites.   Chugga-chugga, the jackpot had been won from the opposite perspective. The louse had drank two times his bodyweight in blood already and was just working on his third. That was his life. Here and now. He didn't have the brainpower to visualize a future, all he knew was sparsity and plenty, interchangeable at a moment's notice. 

And there was now plenty, so he gorged himself and gorged himself and the louse was happy in the warm and clammy darkness. His body began to swell, so weighed down by blood and joy he couldn't have moved if he wanted to.   But was this the only way it had ever been? Had he not once been small, and light, and free, and hungry? Compared to anything else he had ever experienced, this thought was so fascinating he stopped sucking for a fraction of a second. That young louse waiting for his big break was not someone else, it was him. And yet here he was, round and content. Apparently, staying in one place took a lot more effort than he thought, (what an informative day!) because the next moment, he wasn't there anymore. The blades of grass rose up to the sky. The thumping footsteps of his former host moved farther and farther away. So that's life, he thought. One moment you're in paradise, then you accidentally let go of a hair and you're back to zero.     It was getting dark now. The louse considered climbing up a blade of grass to look around. How much energy would that take? He had a stomach full of blood that would last him... weeks? Longer? Maybe tomorrow. Night gathered around him, but he wasn't scared. In fact, if he had been anatomically able to smile, he might have. He'd be all right. Hadn't he been right before?