The group, now three, the squirrel, the turtle and the young sheep, continued their westward journey, eventually hoping to reach the ocean and find ‘The Whale’. The longer they journeyed, even now distracted by the young lamb that now dubbed itself “Sunny” Chakik questioned the success of their journey. So far they had seen and met many different animals and things, but to find ‘The’ thing of things, ‘The Whale’, not just any whale, began to seem improbable if not impossible.
Recently the squirrel and turtle acquired their young sheep companion, now self named “Sunny”, from a large yard of many, many sheep. Was Sunny ‘The’ sheep, or just a sheep? Was Chakik ‘The’ squirrel or just a squirrel, what about FastPile? Where any of them ‘The’? How could they possibly hope to find ‘The’ Whale? Chakik didn’t even know what a whale was. The turtle had tried to explain it, along with ‘The’ ocean that it swam in. The squirrel knew of water, and he could swim, but what the turtle told him was ridiculous. Swims under the water longer and deeper than climb time and the trees were tall. It just did not sound possible. ‘The’ ocean made as much sense to the squirrel as saying ‘The’ tree. He’d met and played with some amazing trees, but none were ‘The’ tree. Trees were made of wood, as ‘The’ ocean was made of water FastPile explained. Chakik thought FastPile made things more complicated than necessary.
Since the moment Chakik heard the turtles voice and helped FastPile out of the round pool, he knew the turtle was wise. Much more than he ever imagined had been easily explained to him by this strange, small tailed and hard shelled friend. “The shorter the tail, the less the trust.” was a squirrel motto instilled into him from his first days. The turtle had a tail, but it was very small, and served no purpose that Chakik could distill. A squirrels tail was it’s life; balance, warmth, communication, direction and more. The turtles tail, and for that matter, Also the sheep’s tail, seemed rather useless to Chakik. “The shorter the tail, the less the trust.” The words echoed in his mind as he scampered above his two friends on the trial below.
Sunny the sheep had taken a great shining to the squirrel, much to the squirrel’s torment and the turtle’s great delight. Previously when Chakik leapt off to run on the trees, FastPile would leave him alone, knowing he needed to explore and would return soon. Now that they were joined by the young sheep, Sunny, the turtle took a great interest in the squirrel’s high flying antics. FastPile would stick his neck out as far as he could to look upward and always point out where the squirrel was to Sunny the sheep.
This made the lamb bleat with joy, and to the squirrels horror, the next word the sheep spoke, beyond “also sheep” was “Chakik”.
Followed very shortly by “tree”. Chakik didn’t mind that Suny said his name, but trees were sacred to the squirrel and it got his fur in all kind of bunches every time the lamb uttered “Chakik also tree!”.
The turtle took such great joy in these exchanges that often he would have to stop, working so hard to hold in his laughter that he could not walk. Before Sunny joined their excursion, FastPile only stopped as a necessity. Chakik noticed.
Chakik was not happy.