There was once a mole named Elio who lived beneath a field full of flowers.
Every morning, the other animals hurried somewhere.
Birds built nests.
Rabbits raised children.
Bees carried pollen home.
Everyone seemed to have a reason.
Elio used to have reasons too.
He used to collect smooth stones because he thought they were beautiful.
He used to come out at sunset just to watch the sky turn orange.
He used to leave berries outside the burrows of animals he liked.
Then, little by little, he stopped.
Not because anything terrible happened.
That was almost worse.
Nothing happened.
No one came.
No great adventure began.
No hidden purpose revealed itself.
The world simply continued.
One day, Elio stopped collecting stones.
Another day, he stopped watching sunsets.
Eventually, he stopped coming above ground at all.
The animals worried at first.
Rabbit knocked on his door.
Bird called down the tunnel.
Fox left a bowl of soup outside.
Elio heard them.
He just could not think of anything he wanted to say.
After a while, they stopped coming.
Years passed.
Flowers bloomed above Elio’s burrow every spring.
He never saw them.
Children played in the field.
He never heard them.
The animals who once knew him grew old.
Some died.
Others forgot.
And Elio remained underground, eating when he was hungry, sleeping when he was tired, waking only because his body kept doing it for him.
He wasn’t waiting to feel better anymore.
He wasn’t waiting for anything.
One evening, very late in his life, Elio found one of his old smooth stones beneath his bed.
He held it for a long time.
He remembered how beautiful he once thought it was.
He tried to feel something.
Anything.
But it was only a stone.
So he put it back.
Above him, the sun was setting.
The whole field turned gold.
No one came to tell him.
And Elio would not have cared if they had.
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