Conditional Reality

We uncorked all the bottles and left them out in the sun. Our neighbors watched at their windows, drawing back the curtains just enough to reveal their frightened faces. We waved at them. The curtains dropped back to their original positions. We brought out more empty bottles, filling our yard with them. Then we waited. In a few weeks the days got a little less bright and the nights stretched just a little longer. We recorked the bottles and took them to our neighbors. We didn’t understand, they said through barely suppressed tears, but thank you. Thank you very much.