Sheep had barely opened and closed the door, when he flung something inside the room. In it rolling our way, we saw gravity wrestle with cohesion and we saw it coming to a halt near our feet. It looked like square balls of fiery hot coal. It almost burnt our feet. ‘Here’, he said. ‘I don’t want it. I know it’s mine, but it’s totally uncontrollable. Besides,’ he said, ‘it can’t tell time, what am I supposed to do with it then, since I can’t escape time! It’s like continuously having to adjust my pace to a non-year old. It doesn’t age! And at the same time, as I age, it grows bigger! Here! I don’t want it!’

You can’t just make something that is yours not yours, the same way you can’t divorce your own voice. But we knew there probably would be a wiser way to say that. ‘Where did you find it?’ we asked.

Sheep shivered and moved closer to our feet. Not sure if he wanted to sit closer to us, or to the heat. In any case, his face was glowing. ‘I read about it in a book,’ he said. ‘If I hadn’t, I would have never noticed it, and it would have never bothered me.’

We wondered what sheep would do with his rounded squares. He hadn’t answered our question either. Where did he find it?

‘Apparently it’s an eternal and heavenly gift’, sheep grumbled, rolling his eyes. He dared not stamp on the floor, afraid that the hot coals would roll his way again. But angry he was. ‘Apparently it’s something like a boundary, the same as skin can be. But this thing seems to have a life of its own, I can’t control it!’

We looked at the coals at our feet. They didn’t seem to be minding nosheeps business, doing no harm, and the more they lay at our feet, the cooler they got. Their color was gradually changing rom glowing orange to grey-ish. It resembled charcoal. ‘I think I see what’s the problem’, we said. ‘You can use a gift in two ways, the right way and the wrong way, the same you can use your hands to hurt or to hug. The fact that you’re hurting, tells me that you used the gift the wrong way.’

‘No, I hurt because those sheepin’ balls got so hot,’ sheep said.

‘Those eh “sheepin’ balls” as you call ’em, are a part of you, so if they fire up, you fire up. See that they’re cooled off now, now that they’re at my feet?’

Sheep looked at us, then at his feet, then at ours, then at the rounded cubes. He suddenly remembered being born and receiving this gift. He was silent for a while. He thought why he never received a mähnual for it. Then he was sad for a while, thinking about how there had been a manual, but the sheep reading it spoke a different language. Some of them had misunderstood their gift and manual as well. Sheep felt tears welling up. Our heart went out to him; if he’d cried sooner, we thought, he would have cooled off his own sheepin’ balls himself. ‘Why did it have to come so far’, he asked.

‘So close you mean?’

‘Close to what?’ sheep asked.

‘Close to Me.’

‘Huh?’

‘I am the one who gave you this gift. It’s called anger and it’s a boundary. See how now that it’s cooled off, this charchoal can be used as a pen? If you let it write, it tells you and the other person what’s really going on. Sometimes it communicates to somesheep else, sometimes to yourself. But if you don’t use it, anger cannot release its energy and then all the energy gets stored up inside, making it as hot as you felt when you first barged in. And you are right: anger doesn’t tell time, it always lives in the now, regardless when it was born, as should you.’

Sheep took the charcoal away from our feet. He said: ‘I am going to let it write a story, and it will start with how I had barely opened and closed the door, when I flung something inside the room.’