The Nile is a river in Egypt,
where Mossback lives.
He is a crocodile, and an old one at that.
He has always been there,
swimming around.
That's just how it is with some things.
Mossback had a lot of teeth.
Far too many to count.
When Mossback was hungry, he ate.
When he ate, his teeth became dirty.
He didn't know what to do about that.
Until one morning, a little bird flew over.
Her name was Pip and she was a plover.
She was very little and she was blue.
Pip saw a morsel stuck in Mossback's teeth,
and what to do, she knew.
She picked out the bits of fish.
She picked out the bits of bird.
She picked the leeches off his gums,
and never said a word.
Mossback liked it.
And that's how it started.
Nobody said anything.
But there was an arrangement.
The world is full of arrangements like this.
Far from the river,
where the ground grows quiet,
there is a forest.
In the forest, there is a great oak tree,
covered in something pale green.
They have no eyes, no mouths, no noses, or ears.
No names for each other,
no need for them either.
They just carry on, the way old things do.
Behind the forest is a meadow.
A busy bee buzzes in the flowers in the meadow,
the ants busy below her,
the spiders busy beside her.
Everyone going about their task,
putting the world in order.
Past the meadow, past the forest, past the river
down in the warm waters of the reef,
two clownfish lived inside an anemone
whose touch burned everything it found.
Everything except the two of them,
who swam in it, safe and sound.
Under the sea floor,
a pistol shrimp dug,
and two goby fish watched.
The shrimp dug.
The fish watched.
Neither one of them budged.
The world is full of arrangements like this.
Back at the Nile,
things were going as usual.
Pip came every morning.
That was the arrangement, after all.
She picked the leeches off his gums.
The bits of bird.
The bits of fish.
Mossback held still, with his mouth wide open…
until he became hungry.
That's just how it is with some things.
The End.
Disclaimer: Herodotus was an Ancient Greek historian. He is called the Father of History. He did not always tell the truth. On a trip to Egypt, long ago, he wrote that he saw a little bird picking morsels from a crocodile's open mouth. Nobody has ever seen it since.