“The weight of nothing”
“Tell me the weight of a snowflake”, a coal-mouse asked a wild dove.
“Nothing more than nothing”, was the answer.
“In that case, I must tell you a marvellous story” the coal-mouse said. “I sat on the branch of a fir tree, close to its trunk, when it began to snow, not heavily, not in a raging blizzard, no, just like in a dream, without any violence. Since I didn’t have anything else to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the next snowflake dropped onto the branch – nothing more than nothing, as you say – the branch broke off”. Having said that, the coal-mouse flew away.
The dove, since Noah’s time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for a while, and finally said to herself “perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace and justice to come about in the world”.
– from The Never Ending by Grahame Russell
