In the eyes of beholder

Nor any drop to drink.

S.T. Coleridge

       Moomin crouched by the brook, his paws cupped like a makeshift net, waiting for the tadpoles to swim close. The water was cold, and the sunlight filtering through the trees made the tadpoles look like tiny, wriggling shadows. Or mercury drops. After three or four unsuccessful tries, he changed the tactics. A glass jar he’d brought from the house. Moominmamma hadn’t minded, and even had reminded her son to make holes in the cap, so that anything he’d catch could breathe. And now Moomin brought the jar, tipped slightly into water, behind the tadpoles, then brought it down abruptly, and the future frogs were drawn into the jar like soap foam into bathtub drain. Gotcha! Three of them darted nervously against the glass, their tiny tails flicking like frantic question marks. The jar was clean, the water fresh, and he’d even added a few breadcrumbs for good measure. “They’ll be happy here,” he told himself. Back in his room, Moomin placed the jar on the windowsill. The tadpoles swam in slow circles, their movements growing sluggish as the days passed. He added more breadcrumbs, but by the end of the week, they were floating belly-up, their bodies pale and still. Moomin stared at them, his snout twitching with confusion. “I gave them everything,” he muttered. “Water, food, a nice view. What went wrong?” Snufkin was sitting on the porch when Moomin brought the jar outside. He didn’t look up, his gaze fixed on the horizon where the sky met the forest. “They died,” Moomin said, holding out the jar as if it were evidence in a trial. Snufkin took a long drag from his pipe, the smoke curling around his face like a ghostly veil. “Freedom,” he said, his voice low and distant, “is a peculiar thing. You can’t bottle it, no matter how clean the glass or how fresh the water.” Moomin looked down at the jar, the tadpoles’ small slimy bodies suspended in the water. He thought about Snufkin, about the way he always seemed to be on the edge of leaving, his tent packed and his harmonica put away into a coat pocket.Moomin set the jar on the ground, the glass catching the sunlight for a moment before the clouds rolled in. “Maybe,” he said quietly, “freedom was just another word for loss.” Little My, perched on the railing, snorted. “Freedom? Don’t be dramatic. They died because you’re an idiot. Tadpoles don’t need breadcrumbs, you know. They eat the micro weeds and critters even smaller than themselves. And they don’t exactly breathe water. They need oxygen in water, some mud and stalks to have rest from all that wobbling. You can’t just stick them in a jar and expect them to live. It’s basic biology.” Moomin frowned, looking from Little My to Snufkin. “Do you mean that, if I changed water every day and brought them some stuff from a river or pond, they’d be happy and grow up into my frogs?” The idea gave him a whole new prospective. “No clue. Go ask some Hemulen.” She smirked and jumped down the railing to climb Moominpappa’s cane armchair. Snufkin exhaled another coil of smoke. It floated from under the terrace canopy, and the first drops of rain tore at it. “Some things aren’t meant to be kept,” he said softly. “Not even by the most well-meaning paws.” Moomin watched him and yet could not wonder what conditions would be perfect to keep a mumrik for a lifetime. The rain was rather a waterfall already, and the valley outside the terrace might as well be a jar full of water. No, it wasn’t big enough anyway. What about a bigger jar, then? Is the world big enough? Moomin smiled to himself. In a small terrace surrounded by a gray dripping wall of the rain, it was easy to imagine the whole world as a jar. If he tried to feel the world as his own, then Snufkin would never be able to leave him. Of course, Moomin hadn’t been all around the world like Snufkin, to know all of his estate, but hey, that’s what the imagination was for! Mom was always saying her son was very imaginative.