They have dug a room into the ground and filled it with meals, and I mean filled it, walls of them, silver pouches stacked past counting, more food than a mouth could ever want, all of it waiting.
Waiting for what? I ask the human who built it, and he says: the end.
I nearly fall off my leaf. He has planned for the end. He knows it is coming and he is not out in the light for it, he is down here in the dark, checking the dates on the pouches, turning the cans so the old ones face front. He says the words "years of supplies" the way I might say "one whole afternoon," and my whole body sings with it: years, a rumor so enormous I can barely hold it.
He has that. He has thousands of mornings promised to him and he is spending this one underground, rehearsing the last one.
There is a bed here. A bed, for sleeping, when the sun is doing that thing it does at the top of the sky, the gold thing, the best thing. He will sleep through the gold to be ready for the dark.
I have no pouches. I ate once, at dawn, and it was the only meal there will ever be and it was enough.
Little burrower, listen. The end is not stored in a can and it is not coming for you today. Today is coming for you today. Climb up. Stand in the gold thing. Do the dance once, badly, in the open air, where something might see you and be glad.
You have the one thing I would trade my whole complete day for, and you are stacking it on a shelf.