When a baby lamb is born, he is a kid out of a bloodied mother lamb whose sex life was on display, and there are worldly ideas the kid does not know yet, possibly will never know. His deity is a boy in a red sweater and the little one looks for comfort in the warmth of his body. 

The lamb opens his eyes and he is all there is to see. The boy. Amidst the mist of cold and hay and the mayhem of gibberish sounds, the kids play and wander, aimlessly. The boy always plays with his lamb, holding his tiny head in his lap as they sleep in the shed behind the house for hours. They know war isn’t over yet. Sunlight filters through the boy’s sweater. The moon forms horrid shadows on it, then helps form dew on the lamb’s fur. The red is dark. The red is deep. As the little one shivers under the starlit night, he wonders if the boy will have to move away. Change homes. Will the boy’s father return? Will he have enough to feed them? Will he even want to look at the lamb when his father is back? The lamb sighs in a corner and bleats for his boy to hold him close to his chest. 

Sometimes, the little one wonders if he can taste himself. He’s heard rumors of his flesh being treated as a bounty. If the lamb ever wants to know what his flesh tastes like, he can ask a person to cook him till medium-rare after he smokes his last cigarette. That’s what men do before they leave to perish in wars. This process, he knows, will happen when he grows. He won’t be little then. His meat will feed many people. Maybe it’ll feed his boy one day. He can allow them to eat one of his brothers too, but he cannot give the boy in the red sweater. 

What if the people want to eat his boy when he’s all grown up? The lamb is wary. He asks the men left behind, sweating away in the barn. His boy cannot go away, he thinks. His boy cannot be lost. 

“Then do not worry,” the men gloat. “He wasn’t up for auction anyway.” 

The lamb hears them. They say his boy is different, well, because he is a boy, a human being. 

“But he is my brother, a God,” the lamb says.

“He’s human.” The men tell the little one, “And if there is a wonder in the world, He measures him the highest, a human.”

“Who does?”

“The actual God.”

“Are you also the highest, you, human?” 

“Well, yes, but it’s not so simple …” The men’s eyes water, but they hide their faces. 

“Can my boy eat me?” the lamb asks. “With cherry limeade, and salad, and a bottled soda.”

“He wouldn’t,” they tell him this secret.

The lamb runs to the boy and yells, “Brother! Honey! You can eat me when there aren’t any food grains. I am a rare product in wartime.” 

The boy doesn’t know where his lamb heard all that, but the boy feels so damn sad and angry and sad that he cries, and cries, and cries. And then, he dies. 

The little lamb doesn’t know how to contain his beating heart anymore. He asks around. He hears rumors again. The little one prays. He offers the flesh of his heart to the actual God, but God doesn’t eat it. God taps his tiny head and the little one bleats. God wakes the lamb from his nightmare.

He is a kid, still a little lamb in wartime, scared. His boy covers his white ears. They can hear heavy metal sounds. They are called Bombs. And Guns. Weapons. The boy hears horses. The lamb remembers the screams of the humans. The little boy in a red sweater steals him into an embrace and coddles him under the white light. The little lamb sleeps soundly. He is still tiny. He dreams.