You could read this to a child, but it's meant for you. Will you see yourself in Rabbit? Or perhaps in Squirrel or Pigeon? Inspired by Aesop's Fables, Beatrix Potter, Arnold Lobel (Frog and Toad series) and the like, these anthropomorphized animals...
Possum rolled over to stare at the crack in his wall. It was longer then it had been yesterday.
"Even the crack changes day to day. But not me," he thought gloomily. "I'm the same every day. A witness. A ghost."
You see, Possum was usually a spectator to the forest's happenings, rather than center of the action. Sometimes it was enough to spectate--the recent #crowforbrains and #likeafox activity at the Brook of Faces had amused him greatly. But more often than not, Possum felt it should be otherwise; he should be the protagonist of his own story, instead of a background character. Nonetheless, he felt transparent, and when the word 'ghost' landed in his mind, he got chills.
A sudden and strange urge seized him. Little did he know it was merely his destiny as a possum: his duty as a member of the species.
Possum marched outside, found a nice spot in front of his house, and keeled over. He stuck his tongue out for effect. No, no. Too much. Tongue back in.
Hedgehog found him first. "Poor dear!" she cried aloud, and stroked his cheek with her small sweet palm. She ran off.
A few minutes later, she returned with Turkey and Fox. Fox sniffed at Possum's belly, which almost made him laugh. Turkey clucked pityingly. Hedgehog pressed a bouquet of bluebells against Possum's paw and wrenched his claws around the stems. "Shall we have a funeral at sunset?" she sniffled at the others.
Fox inspected Possum's neck with his nose. His warm breath tickled and Possum nearly lost it. "I guess so," said Fox. His voice betrayed some doubt. "Gives us time to gather everyone. I'll get Mole to dig a nice hole right here."
And it was soon quiet again. Possum didn't know what he was doing--or why--but he didn't want to move. Surely many wouldn't gather...and who knew? Perhaps he'd let them put him in the ground. He could watch the earthworms made cracks in the dirt until he actually did die. What difference did it make?
Before long, Mole began his industrious digging. He hummed as he worked, not sad at all. But let's not think Mole too callous for that. Digging was in his nature, and he wasn't greatly attached to the aboveground animals, having spent no time with them.
A trickle of animals came to see, to smell, to witness the mystery of death. Possum stayed frozen through it all. The sun dipped lower in the sky.
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About an hour before sunset--judging by the shifting shadows Possum tracked behind his eyelids--Hedgehog, Fox, and Rabbit eased Possum onto his back. They covered him in flowers until only his face was exposed. Flowers surrounded his body on the ground as well; they had created a kind of botanical-possum mandala out of his form--and to think! Without Crow to guide them in arranging!
A great crowd gathered as the sky flared glorious colors. They cried and clucked and howled freely for Possum and for their shared fate as mortal creatures. But they also paused to breathe in the delicious scent of the flowers and the freshly exposed earth, and they admired the coral clouds through their tears, as was right. Fox said there, there to the more hysterical ones, but he sounded bemused.
