Singed Synapses and Deranged Dendrites

Free (#bouquet)

Shirley desired more in life–knew the wide world held more promise and adventure than the paradise she lived in. 

Frank, Sydney, Sherman, and Alice didn't understand.  

"Why are you so restless, when we have everything we could ever want right here?" Alice asked Shirley after finding her at the edge of their domain, staring off (yet again) into the horizon. 

Shirley remained silent. She had stopped trying to explain to the others the yearning she felt.

"It isn't safe out there," Sydney had exclaimed in a shaking voice the first time Shirley had suggested some of them leave their home to explore. "We'd die a horrible death!"

"That's all I needed to hear to make my choice," said Frank chewing on leafy green he had foraged nearby. "This place is beautiful and bountiful." 

"Just like you," said Sherman, so in love with Frank he would follow him to the ends of the earth if Frank wanted to go there. But he didn't, so Sherman was also never going to leave either. 

Alice seemed content to stay too but also understood, unlike the others, that Shirley wanted more out life.

"Every day is the same," lamented Shirley, "even if we have all the food we need and each other. I long to meet new people, travel, find a foreign lover who will buy me a bouquet of roses on the streets of Paris."

"What's Paris?" asked Alice.

Shirley wasn't sure herself but she swore she had heard voices talking about it, murmurs in the wind, when she stood looking out to the great beyond. 

"It's an amazing place to visit," she told Alice, her voice trailing off wistfully. 

"They need us here," said Alice. "We play a vital role in the work we do. This place would fall to ruin without us."

Shirley didn't disagree. While she appreciated that having meaningful work, healthy food, beautiful surroundings and others who loved you should be enough, she was a wanderer at heart. So she stopped complaining to the others and started planning her escape alone. 

Finally the night came where Shirley felt prepared to leave. She waited until the light grew dim and the others nodded off with full bellies. Determined, Shirley hiked up the ridge to the edge of the great beyond. The void before her was vast and uncertainty lay ahead, but she smiled to herself.

"Farewell to the only home I've ever known," she whispered into the breeze.

Larry and his sister Jenny sat curled up in their pajamas next to their mother Elizabeth on the sofa. She was reading them one of their favorite bedtime stories when they heard a loud crack.

"What was that mama?" asked little Jenny. 

Elizabeth set the book down and walked over to the kitchen.

"Oh, no," she exclaimed, bending down and picking something up off the kitchen floor.

"What is it?" asked Larry, padding over to his mother, his sister close behind him.

"I'm afraid one of the snails jumped out of the fish tank," said Elizabeth.

"Is it dead?" asked Larry, examining the cracked shell in his mother's palm. Elizabeth nodded sadly. Jenny burst into tears.