Chicken

The chicken didn’t know what would happen. There was no way it could have. All it saw was a mushroom, sprouting from the grass, looking as delicious as anything else around. In its natural drive to find sustenance, it instinctively found the mushroom.

The moment that mushroom entered its system, it saw a picture that its little chicken brain couldn’t fully comprehend. Oh, but what a beautiful picture it was. To the chicken, it was a world of endless potential, all the worms and seeds it could ever hope to devour. There were majestic chickens and roosters, all singing and playing and dancing. The farm was gone, as were the giants which took the chickens’ eggs. It was peaceful.

But there was more than that. For the briefest of moments — or perhaps an eternity, who’s to know? — the chicken could do whatever it desired. It soared through the sky, chased off predators, towered over the giants that had once given it sustenance. The chicken was ecstatic. Well, as ecstatic as a chicken could be.

It was only a few hours that the chicken could enjoy, those few hours it took for the mushroom to clear its system, but when it passed, the chicken felt no worse for wear. It didn’t remember anything that’d happened, and it didn’t think anything of the mushroom that had given it such a wondrous time. All it saw was the next morsel to peck at.

And the presence of something greater, larger than the giants themselves, watching over the world and keeping it safe.