[FN] Pondemonium
"Life is pretty shitty, no? "
He said staring at the reflection of a sky that hadn't consented to being stared at. It was a sunful day, not that that meant anything special. There were mayflies all around him that dulled their wings against a current that stole the moisture off his skin. And he sat all square waiting for someone to notice the words that he'd croaked to life on this uneventful Saturday afternoon.
There wasn't much to do around the pond. Except of course kiss the sun and munch on the mayflies. He didn't wonder whether they minded the munching. He didn't know how to. But even if he did, even if he was aware that they were bothered by being snacked on, nothing could be done about it. It was the way things were, and nobody that called the pond home ever felt the need to question whatever passed for normalcy.
Just the other day, he and a bunch of other juveniles had witnessed something that could only be described as bizzare. During the unforgiving heat of the day, a scorpion had crawled her way to the shore of the pond. After what appeared to have been a reluctant negotiation, Bufo, a very promising philosophy major at the Webbed School of Ambitious Amphibians, had ushered her onto his back. After a couple minutes of harmless drifting, they were shocked to see both of them suddenly dissappear beneath the glistening surface of the calm waters.
Other than the few murmurs that dominated the better part of that night. The night Bufo was pronounced ireedimably dead. The incident was never revisited. He had left behind a single mate without any offspring. And, to no one's surprise, the scorpion had been seen crawling out of the pond unharmed mere seconds after the whole affair. Scorpions are good swimmers.
Still waiting for a response from his dull eyed friends, he slowly retracted his head upwards. It was an angle of reclination that had never been thought achievable by members of his species before. Whoever was observing him, mayfly or lilypad, must have had a difficult time trying to figure out the expression held within his eyes. Considering that it wasn't typical for a frog to go a minute or so without concealing his peekers with his membranous lids.
The state that his eyes had assumed, wide open like the malicious gape of a garter snake, lasted a full five minutes. Two mayflies had matured into adults within that time, and had already passed on their meaninglessness to a new generation. His friends, too immersed in their feastful frivolities to grant anything else their attention, were oblivious to the abnormality taking form in their vicinity. But, when the croak came, and oh how it came! Nothing could have feigned oblivion towards it.
The croak was loud, and precise. Almost like the announcement of a rainy night by the unkindness of ravens that dotted various patches of the pond. To say that they were startled would be underwhelmingly nonsensical. It is a well known fact that frogs have no tolerance for christening their feelings with unboisterous words. As so, what the unsettling utterance from Anura's buccal cavity invoked was something between befuddling and nonplussing.
"I think I saw God!" Croaked he.
"What?"
"... "
"Anura!?"
"... "
No one knew how it happened, or why it did. Other than the wee weightless minutes his mates had spent trying to croak the shock off their chests, and alerted the entire pond about the ordeal while at it, his death hardly passed as anything worth ribbitising. Death was a palpable occurrence around the pond, and the best you could do was be grateful it hadn't come for you sooner.
However, unlike any unremarkable bufal demise. A rumour had started budding at the time of his undoing. It found a voice in the humming of dragonfly wings when the sun was at its meanest; And floated in the mist that hovered above the pond at uncroakable hours of the night; It found composure on the lilypads at daybreak, making the dew taste a little bitter; And, by the peak of noon, a conclave of distinguished croakers had been summoned in the Hall of Reeds to adress the unrest.
Before his death, whatever death was, Anura had croaked a strange string of words. Everyone that could understand words had understood what most of the words he croaked meant. All except the elusive one at the very end.
"It spells GROD!" One protested, convinced he was the smartest in the hall. "I believe it to be a sort of archaic croak that members of Anura's clan spurt out as a final plead with the Reed Sweeper"
"No idiot! That's pertaining competence and benevolence.What the croak very obviously spells \*checks papyrus\* is GOBE!" Clade, Bufo's mate, pleaded.
"Clade love. Never in my myriad of frog years, have I met an idiot more moronic, or a moron more idiotic. I neither have the crayons nor the patience to explain to you how 'gobe' isn't even a real word, or how what you so gracefully defined to the gentleman is 'good'. Bufo must have went down with a smile on his face. With that said, members of this epistemic council, I'll spare you a sermon and declare, without a blemish of doubt, that that Anura's final croak spells G-O-D"
The Conclave of Croakers went silent. A silence that was unfamiliar to anyone who had resided in the pond long enough to call it home. Like a bloom of summer algae that had plagued the pond every now and then, the silence pulsed across the Hall of Reeds kinetically. If anyone had been keen enough to listen through it, they would have heard the rumbling of chainsaws a forest or two away. Whatever chainsaws were.
Claude slowly turned her head to face the source of the whistness. The silence had been rapidly mutating into discomfort. With the cadence of a bullfrog that was desperately trying to be singled out for mating. And a counterintuitive placidity that wasn't very attributable to the kind of personality she possessed. She gently enquired for some clarification.
"What is a crayon?"
"What?"
"You said you neither had the crayo... "
"I know what I said Clade. Were you internally fertilised perchance?"
Unfortunately, Clade wasn't aware that fertilised had been a word until Dendrophryniscus (no one knew him by that name...everyone called him nothing because, until today, no one knew he existed) had uttered it. Seeing that this would lead to further deviation from the topic at hand, Dendrophryniscus reiterated, eyes anywhere but on Clade, that the word Anura had croaked before his untimely demise was 'God'.
God, he explained, seeing that no one had chanced upon the word before, was a transcedent being that humans believed was responsible for creating everything that was anything. No one knew what transcedent meant or what sort of abhorrence a 'humans' was supposed to be, but the council had been too captivated by the young frog's oration to interfere. He went on to expound that whatever he called humans had built systems around this "transcendent" being. Through them, their entire lives had been spent revering the hallowness of God's nature.
On request for elaboration by anyone that wasn't Clade, he plunged into an exposition about these systems, that he proudly denominated 'religion'. He said that religion was what allowed humans to commune with God. And that through it, humans could learn to transcend beyond their own 'carnal' limitations and live a life that was both 'righteous' and rewarding.
It was hard to tell whether the piercing gazes they awarded him were meant to convey the intrigue they were experiencing from this unusual lecture, or exasperation towards the unsolicited preachment. The conceptualisatiom of 'heaven' was recieved as nonchalantly as the idea of a 'devil'. The contraption of 'sin and righteousness' with as much unblinking advertence as the mechanism of absolution. And, before anyone knew it, the sun had made it through ten full cycles.
It was dark when they finally left the hall. Clade led the procession of the conclave through the recumbent reeds that made for the hall's entrance with a blankness in her soul. When asked by the little crowd of mayfly munching bystanders what had been happening inside, each had either retorted to complete silence or croaked meaningless mumbles and dazingly marched on.
After the entire lot had made its way outside. Dendrophryniscus stood amidst the pale eyed parade of starstruck scholars and chanted an enigmatic assortment of croaks. They all tilted the mass that made their heads and faced upwards. Each assuming a position that had only been observed by the mayflys that had witnessed Anura's regression at the onset of this affair. And, when morning came, two hundred lifeless bodies were the new face of the pond.
THE END.