#she once got an entire loaf all to herself because of our blunder

[belle-of-a-time]

I had to look up if dogs could have banana because I had a PB& banana sandwich and my dog gets the last bite of crust of any sandwich I eat because I love her and…

[ID: safari search result reads “can dogs eat bananas? Are bananas good for dogs?… If you’ve ever asked “can dogs eat bananas?” The answer is yes. Banana…” end ID]

Why so many words just to say Yeh bro dogs can have a bananer hoo-rah!

[ecotone99]

[MF] When The Moon Was My Only Friend

[This is the second draft of another story I posted earlier. I'm open to all criticism and I hope you enjoy! Thanks!]

When The Moon Was My Only Friend

By u/taylorehlert

I live alone on a planet. It’s probably one smaller than you’re used to. It takes precisely 612 normal steps to circumnavigate my planet (and that’s counting walking directly through the river). There are lots of bushes and some trees on my planet. Most of the bushes are plain, but sometimes I’ll get lucky and find a blueberry bush. The trees never get that big, except for one - a huge baobab tree on the other side of the planet from where I live. It takes 21 steps for me to go around the base of the tree. I’ve climbed it before, but it never ended well. Grass covers the rest of the planet. It used to be tall grass, until sheep moved in. They eat much of the tall grass for me. They aren’t very friendly, even when I give them some of my food. So, we made an agreement: I don’t mess with them, they don’t mess with me. We get along much better this way, though it's been harder to find blueberries since they moved in. But whenever there is a moon in the sky it is much easier to find blueberry bushes.

My home is on the river. It is small and sturdy, just 8 steps by 10 steps, but it has everything I need. Outside of my home is my garden. It takes a lot of work to garden on a small planet. To make my garden I tilled the ground, removed all the big stones, made furrows for water, designated where to plant my wheat, made pathways to get to all of them, and then built tall walls around the entire thing. From sunrise to sunset, I toil to make sure no weeds come and choke my hard earned wheat. It’s not very exciting work, but if I didn't have it I don’t know what I’d do.

I have to get ahead of my work when the wheat is ready to harvest. This way I can spend a whole day making my bread. I gather the ripe wheat, and grind it into a fine flour. Unfortunately I cannot tell you my top secret recipe. But, I can tell you some of the process. After you make the dough, you have to knead it. You should keep kneading until your shoulders slightly ache. After that, you need to let it rise so it gets soft and fluffy. After I put it in the oven you can prepare your next loaf or take a break. I only get the bread out of the oven when I can smell it on the other side of my garden. After a couple weeks of cold stale bread, nothing compares to fresh outta the oven, warm bread.

At night, I don’t have any work. I like to fish in the river, or try to find some blueberries that the sheep haven’t found. But mostly, I marvel at the beauty of the stars. They dance, play, laugh, and sing. They are totally free. Every once in a while a moon would get stuck in the pull of my planet. They might spend a couple months silently rounding my planet before they slowly drift off to be free with the other stars. Moons are the most beautiful things in the sky and in my life. I always wished they could stay longer. Oh, how I wish I could be with them in the sky so I don’t have to be alone. At night, though they look down, they seem to not see me. Sometimes the loneliness gets to be too much. A little while ago, I tried to climb the tall baobab tree so I could try to talk to the stars. I fell. It hurt very bad. I don’t plan on doing it again. But, I know I can’t spend every night I spend alone, enviously looking up. The thought of that scares me more than climbing that tree again.

One night as I was laying in a clearing, a moon passed right above me. She must have been new, there hadn’t been a visitor at my planet in some time. She was shockingly bright, even for a moon. She was facing me and grinning, which was a little uncommon, but she seemed to be looking at me, which was very uncommon.

“Hello”, she called down to me. I was shocked. See, it was a very long time since anyone who lived in the sky talked to me. And this was not just any star, it was a moon - the most beautiful thing in the entire night sky.

“Are you talking to me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied, “but your voice is too faint, I can scarcely hear you. Is there a way we can talk more closely?” Thud, Thud, Thud. My feet took me past the river to the great baobab tree, the only place tall enough that I could talk with her.

Flashbacks to my last attempt to climb the tree and talk to the stars race through my head. A star called to me on that night so similar to this. Filled with excitement that I might have a reprieve from being alone. I climbed to the top of the great tree and had a wonderful conversation with that star. But on my way down my foot slipped and I fell a very long way down. Every part of me hurt. And that star who I trusted, laughed at my blunder. She tried to talk to me again the next night, but I was too embarrassed. Eventually she gave up trying to talk to me and left my planet. She thought I was embarrassed that I fell, but this is not true. I wasn’t embarrassed that I fell, it’s that she stole any chance for me to get up with dignity. But this is no common star that is calling to me. This was a moon and I would not, could not, fall this time. I was determined to make something out of this. With fear racking me to my bones, I took a deep breath, and I started to climb. My chest tightened as I climbed higher and higher. I knew if I looked down I would fall, so I kept my head firmly up. Painstakingly, I reached the top, where there is a small platform that I can lay down on and look up. She was there waiting for me. Directly above the tree. We could now talk freely without shouting.

“It has been so long since you talked to me, I didn’t think the stars still knew I existed,” I said.

“I am not really one of them yet. But the stars know of you,” she insisted. Her voice was much louder when I was at the top of the tree. Her voice was ethereal, when she spoke you want to listen to her. “We watch your hard work every day. And it shows by what you get out of it. ”

“A few loaves of bread, a little bit of fish, and the occasional blueberry?” I said dubiously.

“It's more than most stars have. They might be free to dance and sing all night long, but they would give a great deal to have a hot meal.” This surprised me, I couldn’t believe that as I was staring longingly up, they were gazing jealousy down.

“Why are you here, instead of being free with the other stars?” I asked

“They told me that once I leave this planet I become like the stars way up in the sky. But I am young and I can’t leave without their help. I got stuck by the pull of your planet. Don’t worry though, I will be gone soon.”

“What if I don’t want you to leave. You are more beautiful thing I could ever imagine.” I said simply. For some reason this made her blush and turn away.

“The sun is coming up now, I must go now. Will you climb this tree tomorrow?” She asked. I told her I would and we parted. I carefully climbed down, making sure to have solid holds before I committed to them. Ecstatic about the night's events, I arrived at my house and I called to her, “I’ll see you tomorrow!” She looked at me and smiled. If she hadn’t, I might have thought it was all a dream.

The next night. I made the perilous climb up the baobab tree in hopes I could talk to her again. Despite my doubts, she showed up. We had a wonderful conversation that lasted the whole night. We talked every night for an entire week, then the next week, and the month after that. Each time I climbed the baobab tree, I became less frightened to do it the next night. Pretty soon I realised that I stopped fearing the tree. She became my light in the darkness, the only relief in the dull lonely life I led. Even the sheep seemed to like her. Because she spent so much time around it made it easier for them to find blueberry bushes. I spent every day looking forward to our nightly conversations. Before we started our nightly conversations. I knew of her beauty, but over weeks I would learn what true beauty meant. Not beauty of appearance, but beauty of soul. She told poems that cut to my core being, and she told me stories of far away planets that she passed. It seemed to me that only angels could have taught her the light she put forth, and the songs she sang. I loved our conversations. Talking to her felt so natural. We talked about life and love. We talked about music and art. We talked about philosophy. She is much better about philosophy than sheep, they don’t really care for Plato’s Republic. I never imagined I could feel this way about anything in my small world.

It seemed a normal night. Though she had her usual smile, something seemed slightly off. “You seem a little dimmer then last night, are you okay?” I asked

“Everything is fine. I’ve just started learning how to leave a planet. Some of the stars that are teaching me said I had far too much light and they needed some of mine. I have so much light I was happy to give it to them. I think if I can make them happy things might get better than they have been.” Despite her words that everything was okay, it sounded as if she was trying to convince herself that it was true and her smile seemed slightly forced.

“That is good.” I responded. It seemed an insult to the creator that she would give away her light. I wanted to really push her as to exactly why she would diminish her light and give to the stars who I knew didn’t really need it, but I didn’t think that was the right time. I was scared that if I pushed her she might not want to come back. And I really wanted her to come back. As I was contemplating this, time passed in awkward silence.

“Why do you ask me to come back and talk to you anyway?” I asked. “It’s nice to have someone to talk to, and you always seem to know the right thing to say.”

“Look all around you. Are there not stars enough to talk to?”

“They don’t like just talking like you do. I am just a moon, but I might become a star, if they can teach me how to leave this planet. They tell me how shameful it is that I can’t leave. They tell me I’ll only be whole when I can dance and sing with them, and when I'm not stuck here. I know I am a burden on them. When the sun is above your sky their songs and laughs turn bitter and scorful toward me. But I need them because I want to be free.” Her smile was gone. At that moment, I saw something in her face that I never expected. Sadness, fear, exhaustion, and a deep intense loneliness. I saw my own face reflected back at me. My instinct was to try to fix her problem, but I knew it couldn’t be that easy and I don’t think that is what she wanted. She looked away.

“I’m here to listen,” I said simply. Her smile returned and I knew I said the right thing. I did the thing that I did so often, but this time I didn’t want to do anything else- I listened.

But every night she returned to the tree a little dimmer than the last. She never told me, but I knew she kept giving her precious light to the stars, who needed it less than her. It angered me, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it. When I tried to talk about why she was giving her light away, she closed up and found an excuse to leave. So, I stopped bringing it up, but it became my unspoken job to make sure she was brighter as she left than when she came.

Then winter came. I had less work to do. She told me the other stars were getting impatient and wanted her to leave my planet soon. To do so, she would have to spend more time with the other stars, and less time with me. I still waited in the tree for hours every single night. Waiting for her to come talk with me. Sometimes she never showed. Spending an entire night alone at the top of the baobab tree hurt more than falling off of it ever did. When she did return to our tree, she was always significantly dimmer than when I saw her last. More and more our conversations left me feeling dim. I wanted so desperately to take away her pain. The pain that she tried so hard to hide. The pain that I saw, but could do nothing about.

One day she told me one day that she prefered rye over wheat. The very next day I pulled up all the wheat in my garden and planted rye, even though I prefered wheat, I would do anything to give her more light. A while later, when the rye was ripe, and when she was as dim as I had ever seen her, I gave her a fresh loaf of her rye bread.

“Thank you, but I’m not hungry. I’ll give them to my friends in the sky.” I didn’t like that. That was her bread. And it was not for them that were taking her light.

“Aren’t your friends the ones that hurt you? Who you give your light to? Why do you still give to those who you have already given so much? You don’t need to give them your light. You need to keep that light.” I could feel the sadness and frustration bleeding into my voice.

“No, I need to give them my light. It is what I do. I don’t deserve my light.”

“But what if you give so much that you fade away? I need you in my life.” I was starting to plead with her.

“I need the stars if I want to be free and giving my light to them is the only way they will teach me. If I give all my light, so be it. I don’t deserve it anyway. I need to be free like they are, do not try to take this away from me.” She looked at me as if she was accusing me of something. I realised in that moment, despite all my effort, it had been several weeks since she left brighter than she came. I started thinking to myself- She is so dim. Could I be dimming her further? Am I making her suffer? Should I leave? She might be better off without me. I felt very cold.

Desperately trying to make her glow stronger, one day I truthfully told her, “You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Despite my intention, my words made her visibly dimmer.

“You flatter me, but I know that not to be true.”

“Why would I lie to you?”

“I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t lie to me, but when I look at myself, I can only see how dim I’ve become. I know I have become ugly. The stars told me this. It has to be true.” This left me feeling incredibly empty and confused. Her beauty was still the brightest part of my life, despite how dim she had recently become. If only she could see herself as I do. If she could, she would shine as bright as the first day I saw her, so long ago.

“I love you,” I said before I could think myself out of it. Though as I said it I knew it to be true.

“I believe you think you love me. But look at me. I am just a scarred, ugly rock. I am a burden. No one could ever truly love me. I don’t deserve love. I am better off forgotten.” When before she might snap at me and get angry, she didn't this time. She just sounded defeated. That was far, far worse. At times, I feel I can create palaces with my words, but in that moment, I have never felt more powerless. The words, I am so sorry, never rang so hollow. But there was nothing more I could do. I wonder if I would’ve said anything different if I knew that was the last time I’d ever talk to her. I wonder if I could’ve said something that would’ve made her come back.

For weeks I went back to our tree and watched her pass over me, facing the other way. All she had to do was simply turn and look at me. She never did. Sometimes I would call out, But every time I did she would ignore me. Slowly but surely she started to drift away. One night I looked up, and realized that I couldn’t distinguish her from the other stars. Either she left my planet, or gave up all her light. The sad thing is I will never know which.

She left without giving me a chance to say goodbye. Because of that, I can never tell her that I don’t really like rye bread but I’m going to keep eating it, because it is what she liked and it reminds me of her. I can never tell her what she means to me. I can never tell her that she should’ve stayed with me. She shouldn’t have given up her light. She shouldn’t have left to be with the stars. The stars who took her light then made her feel guilty for doing it. She shouldn’t have made me feel guilty for trying to be there for her. And even if I am completely wrong, I could never know because she was not honest with me, or herself. Her light was brighter than anything in the night sky- this is not a reason for guilt or shame as the stars would have you believe, it is a reason to be loved. And I loved her. She should’ve given me the chance to tell her this but she didn’t. And now I never can.

Thunk… Thunk… Thunk… The axehead slammed into the great baobab tree. As tears streamed down my face, our tree swayed, then fell. Though it probably made a great sound, it seemed silent to me.

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