Fable (6)

1 Surrounding shadow, many penumbras asked it with curiosity, “You lie down and then sit up. You raise head and then lower head. You go and then stop to think something. What are you doing on earth?”

2 Shadow was confused with their question. He thought, “I have lived for so many years. Everyday I live a routine life – work from nine am to five pm, dinner and sleep. I never ask myself why.”

3 He answered them, “Perhaps that is life, I think. All people are the same. As soon as it dawns, birds fly out to take up a place to catch insects. As soon as livestock reach ranch, they indulge themselves in grazing. I work from nine am to five pm. That’s all. Why do you ask this question that is not a question?

4 All others are so, me too. How do I know why it is so? Someone says, I like the skin of snake or cicada that clings to the body of them. Someday they don’t need me and take me off. Then, I leave.

5 Fire or sunlight makes me exist. If they go or are replaced with dark or night, I disappear. Excepting fire and sunlight, there is something unknown that remote-control fire, sunlight, dark and night. All these are too complicated and mysterious for me to make them clear.

6 I have to be forced to follow them. They come, I come. They go, I go. When their light is stronger, my vision is darker. Have sunlight and fire been asked why they suddenly get stronger?”