Oh, who’s crawling over there, quietly rustling the grass that is still green and leaves that are already dead? Who, without choosing the path, disappears under a huge maple leaf to then climb up to a beautiful lily? These questions can be addressed to two little snails crawling towards each other. They look completely the same – eyes-beads, tentacles-antennas, shells-houses. Who is who? Except one looks cockier, while the other has a soft look. Here they are: two usual but at the same time amazing for the snail folk creatures take their time crawling towards each other.
Normally, it’s not typical of snails to be in a hurry. Have you ever seen a snail running fast or jumping excitedly? If only this snail is deeply in love. But no one’s ever met such a snail because snails are very modest and they don’t like to show their feelings. Charming slowness is their rhythm of life. Calm caution is their style. And now it’s fall that makes them feel sad too. It still makes them happy with the brightness of light and diversity of colors, but it’s going to become dolefully grey soon. And then infinitely-long winter will come. They’re going to have to go into hibernation. Luckily, they don’t need to look for a place to hibernate – they always have their small but comfortable house that is their shell on their back. All they need to do is to find a convenient and safe location for it.
But what can they do about this importunate sadness? They feel it every time they think they’re going to have to fall asleep, and especially wake up, in complete loneliness. That no one’s going to stroke them gently with a tentacle and say in a quiet voice,
“Good morning! How great it is that you’re awake already!” A meeting. It can be pleasant and unpleasant, but it always has some meaning. You just need to understand it. If a meeting is pleasant, it fills your life with new interaction experiences, joyful emotions and warm memories. If a meeting is unpleasant, you obtain valuable experience, namely how to turn bad into something good? But there are meetings which change your life once and for all. They make the world around you wonderful and joyful, filling it with color and music. That’s exactly what happened.
Without seeing each other, two little snails almost missed each other. But the strange, barely noticeable trembling of their tentacles made them slow down. The pleasant heaviness in their body made them stop, turn around simultaneously and look each other in the eye. “Oh! Who are you?” they asked in unison, their voices blending with each other. “How could I fail to see you and pass by?” They were standing there, looking at each other. There was no shyness, no confusion. Time has stopped. How long has it been? Where are they? What’s been to them before? Having come to their senses, the snails started to move slowly in different directions. Their former life seemed to be unwilling to let go of them that easily and was swallowing them back into the regular whirl of events.
This fairy tale was filmed at a botanic garden near Berdychiv by Vyacheslav Mishchenko http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vyacheslav-Mishchenko/425528437562422