Before the River - A Fable

Three animals came to the river, each told to cross. None knew who had told them. The instruction had no face, so none of them argued with it. On the far shore was the thing each of them wanted, though none could have said what it was, only that it was over there and not here, and that the river lay between. The mouse came first. She feared the water, but she feared the bank more; to stand still was to die slowly, in full view of herself, and that seemed worse than drowning. So she lashed a raft from grass and pushed off before dawn. The binding gave at a quarter across. She reached a rock midstream, bleeding from something she never saw, and clung there, further from either shore than she had ever been from anything.