The sun was burning. It was july. The boy was walking on a path outside of the village without purpose. There was neither a tree nor a plant for shadow, except some little bushes along side the dry stream bed on the right side. He looked at plateau on the left lengthning to the north, with different tones of red and grey as layers. Against all the discomforts of walking under a bright sun he was enjoying it. Stillness was giving him the feeling that he was in a no man’s land. When he would take the next step, he suddenly saw the mother snake with her five babies sleeping around a hole. As soon as the mother and two baby snakes had realised him, they quickly escaped through their hole. The other three did not change their position as if he was not there. All of a sudden something unexpected had happened and he turned into a snake lying down on the ground together with the others. One of the baby snakes has started hissing and shehe said “Come!”. One of them placed in front, the two others on the left and right side and the boy in the middle went into the hole and started creeping as a whole.
The hole was like a cool and dark tunnel. While moving in the hole, he saw some symbols over a rock on the left side and stopped. When he had stopped, the others stopped accordingly.
He asked “What is this? I have not seen such a thing before.” As soon as he had raised the question, one of the snakes turned into a lady as if she was coming from old times. She has started hissing friendly and motherly. “It says ‘EMPATHY’!” The boy asked with a wonder: “What is empathy?” She continued: “Shortly, Empathy is to put yourself into others position. As another way of saying: Putting yourself in other ones’ shoes. We do not have the shoes though, I think You get it! Empathy eases the communication and facilitates understanding…” He hissed with a little bit shame “I see…”
The boy was listening to her with empty looks…
“My last words will be about your prejudices about us. For years and years, you defined us (snakes) as an enemy, sneaky (it looks like you derived this negative word from our name), harmful etc… You may find our outfit scary, and you may not like us for being able to move silently or being cold blood animals. We are not bad at all, even sometimes we do some good jobs to fulfil our portion within nature’s cycle. Please look at yourself before us and try to understand that we behave as we are coded… A little bit empathy please…” The lady disappeared and they started moving again as four snakes within the same formation. After some time passed they came to a door.
Little snakes hissed “We came to the snake door.” The door was opened by itself. As soon as they left the door the boy became himself again. The baby snakes were on his shoulders and his head. When he looked to the left he saw the field covered with snow on which three babies crawling and three ladies walking behind them. While he was trying to figure out how it happened that one side is burning hot, the other side is freezing; he turned towards the cold area. Snakes altogether told him “If you cross over we will die!”, as if they understood his intention. He stopped. When he raised his head again he saw the plateau on his leftside. Then he looked down with sympathy to three baby snakes who were enjoying themselves in a hot summer weather…
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