Orb 001

In the Book of Imaginary Beings, there's a entry which briefly treats the existence of spherical animals. Borges recounts Plato's beleif on planets and stars as living beings. Later, he says, Renaissance men would discuss the possibility of Earth as an organism far superior than animal and plant forms; a serene behemoth. Almost thirty years ago, Stephen King chronicled the story of two cosmonauts lost in a planet constituted by living sand.

I've stumbled upon a wide family of globular critters slightly bigger than a golf ball. As appointed by Plato, their movement is spontaneous and voluntary. They bounce and roll cheerfully in space without acknowledging anyone's or anything's pressence. I'll be referring to this round species as orbs.

This entry's exhibited specimen is not the initial orb encountered, but the first one that I was able to photograph and file adequately. It ressembles a limpid-green ankylosaurus surrounded by a petrified rain of multicolored diamonds.
 

In Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, a square describes its vision of a lower universe inhabitted by a single point which believes itself to be the only existing being (pitiful). Considering the orb's behaviour, it would not surprise me if  it perceived this existential plane as an accidental consequence of its own frame.

Maybe I'm the one who's unable to perceive the prehistoric lizard's surrounding space. Perhaps the orb is only a clairvoyant's  decomposed crystal.