The Little Thing That Wasn't Sure What It Was: VI. The Little Thing That Found Itself

The little thing woke up.

It remembered the word it had heard.

It was still there.

Not in the sky.

Not beside the river.

Not beneath the tree.

Inside.

The little thing said the word.

Nothing happened.

It said it again.

Still nothing.

So it went looking for itself.

It looked beside the river.

There was the river.

It looked beneath the tree.

There was the tree.

It looked into the sky.

There was the sky.

But wherever it looked, it found something else.

At last it sat down.

“I cannot find myself,” it said.

Then it heard a small voice.

“Where are you looking?”

The little thing looked around.

Nobody was there.

“I am looking for me.”

The voice said:

“Who is looking?”

The little thing was quiet.

It had never thought about that before.

It looked at the river.

Then at the tree.

Then at the sky.

“I am,” it said.

The word seemed to hang in the air.

“I.”

The little thing said it again.

“I.”

And something strange happened.

The word did not point to the river.

It did not point to the tree.

It did not point to the sky.

It pointed back.

The little thing suddenly understood.

It had been looking for itself as though it were another thing in the world.

But it was also the one doing the looking.

It was the one saying the names.

It was the one remembering the river when the river was far away.

It was the one imagining the bird when the bird was not there.

It was the one asking questions about words.

It was the one listening for an answer.

The little thing smiled.

“I am me,” it said.

The river continued to flow.

The tree continued to grow.

The bird crossed the sky.

Nothing in the world had changed.

And yet everything was different.

The little thing had found itself.

Not by finding another thing.

By finding the one who had been looking.

It stood up.

Then it looked at the world.

“River.”

“Tree.”

“Bird.”

“Sky.”

It looked at itself.

“I.”

For a while, the little thing said nothing.

Then it began to tell a story.

Once there was a little thing.

Nobody knew what it was.

The little thing didn't know either.

But it had a world full of things to discover.

And the story went on.