Little Star

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Behind every face was another face, behind every sentence uttered, dark motives lurked.

Fear clutched at her heart. She was a small person cast out into the universe, and she knew nothing about anything.

She felt quite still inside, apart from a slight feeling of shame in her stomach which was not dissimilar to vertigo.

She lived in the world of humans even though she had been swapped in her cradle, and really belonged to the dark, wild forest.

It was just like on the internet: all it took was a few clicks, a few words in the right place and in seconds there were twenty people busy expending far more time and energy on responding than it had taken her to write the comment in the first place.

And the stars gaze down and keep their counsel.

She liked what was known as elegiac mood in poetry. A persistent, imprecise longing for what had been, even if it hadn’t been particularly good.

We are invulnerable, thought Teresa. We are the wolves.

As she looked at the big metal box, the screen and the keyboard, she thought she was looking at a source of infection.

But in spite of the tears and the need for comfort, the underlying feeling was one of happiness. A different kind of happiness. A happiness so great, so piercing, that it had something of grief in it. Because it couldn’t last forever, it was far too intense for that.

To think that people can walk around on this earth and not be aware of what is around them.

‘We are the wolves.