“Dissatisfying and discouraging,” says the lump of wool at the edge of the clearing, freed from the shackles of needing to maintain a presentable shape. “Every time I talk to someone who feels just as strongly as me in the opposite direction, my first thought is that they must be seeing something I’ve missed. I try to imagine what things look like from their perspective. I try to look for the missing piece. I get so far from my own thoughts I forget why I even had them in the first place, and everything I just believed in starts to look suspect. Nevermind that the other person could simply have been mistaken all along. It’s [i]work[/i] to hold onto a thought when you’re the only one in town who thinks it's important.”

He checks, periodically, on the curve of her back and the serenity of her face. It hasn’t shifted in any of the other hundred times they’ve chatted mid-meditations, but you never know about the hundred and first time. Better gaze at her a little longer. Just to be sure the mountain of fur and muscle and sunlight is as solid as it always was.

“She asked me why I wanted to get involved in politics in the first place. There was enough else to talk about, so I don’t think she noticed I didn’t answer her. Not really, anyway.” He shifted about, hugging his knees to his stomach and resting his back against a particularly comfortable rock. Making himself as small and as comfortable as possible. “She had a point; that’s the part that makes it extra frustrating. I’m one sheep in a small town on the edge of the Skies. I’m not anywhere close to levers of power or high office, and it’d be forward of me to act as though I’d ever get such a chance, much less that I’d be any good once I got there. All I have is a little opportunity to help with local affairs, and here I can’t do a thing until I’ve figured out how an entire Empire ought to be run. And all everyone in town can tell me is that things can only be the way that they are.”

He blew a stray, wispy curl from his eyes. “I don’t even know why I can’t believe that too.”