Some very short stories

Fluttershy rested, meditating in the silence and solitude of the night after a busy day. Her daily expressions of kindness, though small, seemed large to the critters with whom she lived: Directing lost squirrels to their trees, safely delivering new baby bunnies, removing hazardous city trash from the waterways, planting new flowers to support a growing bee community....

Everything living needs sustenance. There is, on the cosmic level, a giving and a receiving. All living things need to receive from time to time, which often means they must take by force what they cannot otherwise get. A kind and generous giver, however, relieves creatures from the burden of having to take. The greatest gift of any gift, then, is the fact that it is given freely.

Fluttershy always gave herself totally and without reserve. In turn, she received gifts, precious ones, which remained hidden from the eyes of most but were more valuable than pearls. She stored them up in her heart, her private treasure-box, where they remained untainted and untouched by corruption.

A lone wolf, muddy and tense, limped hesitatingly across the threshold of Fluttershy's cottage. The red stain that began at its shoulder stretched almost to its tail. Wordlessly, without gauze or iodine, Fluttershy carefully dressed and treated the creature's wounds: the trauma of fighing, the horror of having to kill for food, the tragedy of constant solitude.

As long as some light shines, there will be no true darkness.