The Old Man and the Cow

 

The glowing orange red embers of the fire sparkled slowly in the darkness emitting a strange light across the stone floor but the old man seemed too preoccupied in his own thoughts to admire their curious beauty.

Something was not right and the old man was determined to get to the bottom of it.

It had all begun a few days ago; the village had observed a spectacular display of light and colours during the final hours of sunlight but it had been nothing like anything he had seen before. The sky had turned into a myriad of strange colours that had left him breathless, producing a rainbow that seemed to stretch across the eternal skies to the lands beyond. It felt like the birth of a new era. At any rate, it had definitely been the birth of … something.

The old man leaned forward wearily and poked the fire with his walking stick causing it to splutter and crackle, forcing the last waves of heat to flow over him like a warm blanket. For some reason, he could always think better sitting here on the porch of his house but his daughter always warned him that he would burn the house down if he insisted in lightning a fire so close to the home. ‘They grow up so fast!’ he muttered to himself absentmindedly and gave the firewood another frustrated poke.

It was then that he noticed the shadow. There was a creature standing a few feet away from the house on the corner of the pathway intersecting between the village homes and the fire was elongating the shape of the shadow of the creature to such an extent that it was impossible to make it out. The old man leaned forward off his chair and moved forward squinting to get a better glance at the strange figure that seemed to be slowly moving towards the home.

It was a cow. It clip clopped its way along the street before stopping a metre or so short of the fire, where it decided to pause to take a long look at its surroundings. And then it noticed the old man. Turning his head sideways, it stared at the old man with a distant intelligent look in its eyes.

The old man stared back at the cow. To describe the situation as ‘odd’ was an underestimation of epic proportions. It was beyond that; it was not everyday that the old man was confronted by a cow that had decided to go for an early morning stroll through the residential area of the village. In his bewilderment, the old man forgot to poke the dying embers of the fire more and with a final crackle, the fire died sending the area into blackness. The only thing he could see was the glimmering white moonlight outlining the silhouette of the cow a few metres in front of him.

He had had enough of this. Wearily the old man leaned forward off his chair ready to retire for the remaining hours of the moonlight when the cow suddenly decided to disagree with his actions. ‘Moo!’ it said.

The old man swiped at the cow with his walking stick trying to scare it away but the cow just blinked at him, a bored expression on his face. It then proceeded to push at the burnt wood in front of him with its snout before proclaiming a loud ‘Moo!’ once more.

‘If you think I am going to get some more firewood so you can get warm by it, you had better think again!’ growled the old man to the cow. ‘You just go back to wherever you came from; I have to get some sleep’.

The cow just continued to look at him hopefully. Who could blame it – it was a cold winter’s night and the poor thing must have been freezing. However the old man was unperturbed and turned his back to the cow, proceeded to take a step inside his porch towards the entrance of his home. It was then that he realised that his walking cane had different ideas. Small pink and blue sparks seemed to be dancing at the bottom of his cane, sparkling in the darkness seemingly holding the stick in the air. The old man tugged but to no avail. Then the stick was flung out of his grasp and stuck itself hard into the middle of the burnt out woodpile.

The cow stared at him and blinked expectantly.

‘How the heck did you do that?’ gasped the old man in amazement and terror. The cow just stood there continuing to chew on whatever it was chewing.

Suddenly new pink and blue sparks starting fizzling at the bottom of his wooden walking chair, which also proceeded to fly across the air and deposit itself on top of the walking stick. This startled the old man who fell down onto the floor on his porch shielding his arms in front of him. In answer to this, a blinding flash of light seemed to light the skies and was immediately followed by a searing a burst of flame that seemed to fly right down from the heavens themselves. The flames struck the chair and the stick setting them on fire relighting the woodpile.

The cow now satisfied, mooed pleasantly and settled itself in front of the fire where it proceeded to fall asleep.

The old man sat there on his porch in shock for the remaining hours of the night, half in complete shock and half blinded by the fireball. In the morning his daughter found him still on the floor in the porch having finally fallen asleep. She recalled later how her father had rambled on about heavenly fires and sacred cows but she had never found any trace of such things; only the remaining embers of the fire. Course the chair and stick had been missing but the old man probably accidentally knocked them in and scared himself silly. No more night time fires; from now on it was going to be early nights for the old man.

And with that, she proceeded off for work that beautiful winter morning.

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