" I like grass." The one with the crossed eyes was munching contently on the green stuff.
"Yeah," sighed the little one, carefully swallowing a mouthful, then reaching for another.
"I mean, what would life be like without grass? It would be pointless, wouldn't it?" The cross-eyed on inquired of the small one.
"I don't know," said a black one rubbing against a tree, "scratching seems to be pretty fun."
"Think about this Harold," the cross-eyed one said to the black one, "you scratch maybe three times a day, and you eat, well, practically all day. Now, if you switched them, you would be miserable. Man, Harold, sometimes you just don't think."
"I-I-I," the little one swallowed nervously, "I c-c-could just eat all d-d-day." She quickly grabbed another mouthful and chewed solemnly to illustrate her point.
"Well, you just do that, Charlotte, you have many days after this one."
A whether, newly shaved of his summer wool coat, had overheard the conversation and sauntered over to the group eating in the shade of the tree.
"I couldn't help but to overhear your conversation," began the old eunuch, airily smacking his mouth with the obvious authority that befalls one of such age and stature, "but at the seasons end, you will no longer be eating the grass in this green pasture."
Harold had stopped his scratching, Charlotte shivered under the scrutinous eyes of the whether, and the cross-eyed on stared at the old one with the arrogant defiance of his youth.
"Of course not," retorted the cross-eyed one, irritated at the impudence of the whether, "at the end of this season is the cold season, where we will eat hay and grow our coats so that the shepherd can cut it off and use it to keep them warm. The things don't have coats of their own, so they borrow ours. You should know that, you just gave your coat."
"My dear, dear boy," the whether shifted his weight and began preaching he sermon, "there are, indeed, some of us who are here, who, year after year, shed our woolly coats to those who take care of us." The cross-eyed one was about to interrupt, but the whether continued: "but you, my little children, are to suffer a different fate."
"W-w-what d-d-do you m-m-mean?" queried Charlotte, who was now shaking more violently.
"You, my dear, dear, dear children," the whether paused for effect, and said with a malicious gleam in his eye, "are destined for The Block." A smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.
"What the -"
"W-w-what is T-t-the B-b-b-block?"
"The Block, my young, young friends," the whether said, "is where you will meet your end. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do." With that the whether sauntered back to his corner of the pasture and resumed his grazing.
"O-o-oh my."
"It wasn't true, was it Terrance?" The black asked of the cross-eyed one.
"Well," Terrance postulated, "I've heard of The Block, the carving table, where we get served to the unseen enemy. That would explain the lack of ones nearer to our age."
"What do you mean?" Harold stopped stretching and leaned toward Terrance.
"Well, there are a lot of us..."
"Yes."
"But have you ever seen ones near our age?"
"N-n-n-no." The look of anxiety on Charlotte's face betrayed her feelings.
"Well, I guess it could be true, then." Harold let out a sigh of resignation.
"N-n-no. I-it can't b-b-be." Charlotte was shaking her head in disbelief. "The s-s-shepherds are s-s-so nice t-t-to us. T-t-they wouldn't d-d-do that to us, w-w-would th-th-they?" Harold and Terrance were standing very still, staring at the ground in silence.
"W-w-would they? T-T-Terrance?" The pitch in Charlotte's voice was raising steadily, until it was now a high whine tinged with impending hysteria. She was now visibly shaking very hard.
"No." Terrance let his crossed eyes meet Charlotte's pleading ones. "The shepherd would never harm us." He shifted his stance ever so uneasily but still retaining his conviction for Charlotte.
"S-s-still..." Charlotte's voice trailed off and she searched around her, but not finding what she was looking for, she wandered off to a barren corner of the field, where the grass was dry and brittle, and began to graze absentmindedly, while her mind raced and asked unanswerable questions.
"Char-" began Harold.
"Quiet!" Interjected Terrance. "She needs to sort through this herself."
"But-"
"Go back to scratching yourself." With that the day resumed, minus, of course, Charlotte.
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