My Ántonia

by Willa Cather

Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Peter, his companion, was a very different sort of fellow; short, bow-legged, and as fat as butter.

Like my CAT

Overhead the sky was that indescribable blue of autumn; bright and shadowless, hard as enamel.

This.