The Rosebuds: November 2006

Everyone in the small company of travelers became so sleepy that they began to wither and, because it was happening to all of them, no one noticed that they were actually, physically getting smaller. So small that they became nearly invisible. When the man walked in he saw that everyone was gone. He took such a deep breath at that point that the small folks became friable and they all flew in, on this breath, into his lungs, and found a soft place to sleep, each in their own landing place. The smallest one, a foreigner, was attracted, naturally, to the rhythmic beating of the man’s heart and so the traveler found a soft spot closest in to the heart. The man fell asleep, being himself overcome by sleepiness and unknowingly persuaded by the sleeping boarders within. In the early morning, as the travelers began to wake, they felt themselves refreshed and yearned to be big again. They decided to leave so they flew out and away on a heavy exhale. The smallest traveler, however, overslept and upon finding everyone gone, decided to stay for a while.
For amusement, the little traveler began singing songs to the man’s heartbeat. This woke him because even though the traveler was so small that any normal sized human would never hear the little songs, the man could feel and hear them. But it was not very loud. In fact, it was so soft, that only some parts could be understood and some parts of the songs were not understood, but they made the man smile nonetheless.
This was years ago. No one knows now if the smallest traveler ever decided to leave the man because the man stopped telling people about the traveler when they became judgmental. Some would say, “If this is true, how long do you plan to keep the little traveler?” And some people would say, “I don’t want you to talk about the little traveler anymore because it’s strange.” So the man stopped talking about it. He stopped talking altogether and now he only sings quietly to himself.