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right,” answered the cloud. “From the butterfly to you with a few extra stages thrown in.”
    â€œSo why do they die so soon?”
    â€œButterflies don’t live a season,” said God. “They live a life.”
    â€œBut they’re gone when …”
    â€œThey’re gone when it’s their time,” answered the cloud. “To a butterfly the season is their life. They expectnothing more and fulfill their existence. To the trees, your life is brief.”
    â€œYou mean a butterfly thinks of its season like I think of my years?”
    â€œSeconds or hours, long shadows or short, it’s all the same kind of time,” said God. “The butterfly feels he has as long a life as you.”
    â€œReally?” asked the elephant.
    â€œYes,” said God.
    â€œI’m glad,” said the elephant.
    And then God spoke to the elephant, and called him by his name, and filled his heart full of his beloved butterflies, and they soared through his blood, wing tip to wing tip, until he understood the power of their life.

Fishing
    The elephant was standing knee-deep in the river.
    It was not the usual place he would go if he wanted to cross to the other shore. Nor was it the wide section after the bend, where he romped in the water with little danger. No. It was the place where the rapids were numerous and the water frothed past.
    He had to brace his thick legs against the current and occasionally lean into the force of the water. He was gazing intently at the river, his trunk trailing beneath its surface. Often the splashing water leapt in his face. He would straighten, coughing and shaking his head. Then he would wipe his eyes with the tip of his trunk. He tried to judge when a particular surge of water might cover him, but it was to no avail.
    One time, as he raised his head while sputtering and dripping, he noticed the cloud. It hovered over the riverbank where it was safe from the wet extravagances of the rapids. He rubbed his trunk against his back and then ambled to the shore.
    â€œDare I even guess what you’re doing?” asked the cloud.
    â€œFishing.”
    â€œAnd that …” began the cloud, tentatively indicating the elephant’s trunk.
    â€œFishing pole.”
    â€œYou don’t —” The cloud paused, then repeated with some surprise. “Your fishing pole?”
    â€œYes.” The elephant nodded his head with enthusiasm, splashing the cloud. “I put it in the water and wriggle it back and forth like a worm. It’s even the right colour.”
    The elephant tried to wipe some of the water off the cloud but found it a futile venture.
    â€œSorry.”
    â€œRight colour,” agreed the dripping cloud. “But rather the wrong size, don’t you think?”
    â€œLight refraction,” said the elephant. “Things look smaller in the water.”
    â€œNot if you’re in the water with them,” pointed out the cloud.
    â€œOh.” The elephant paused in thought. “Yeh.”
    â€œYou don’t even eat fish.”
    â€œYou know,” the elephant spoke with some exasperation, “for a God who so admires logic, you made an awful lot of illogical creatures.”
    â€œIt might be said,” said the cloud, “that a fishing elephantusing a segment of its body as a luring apparatus goes beyond the realm of even the illogic.”
    â€œWell,” said the elephant, “I wouldn’t have said it.”
    â€œYou see, something cannot be created without creating its opposite.” The cloud seemed to be warming up to the subject. “Nothing can be understood, without the existence of its opposite.”
    â€œLike life and death,” suggested the elephant.
    â€œPerfect example.”
    â€œYou can’t have one without the other,” said the elephant.
    â€œI believe it has even been put to music,” said the cloud.
    â€œSo.” The elephant spoke with