Are We as Mayflies?

The hot Texas sun beat down on the two people sitting outside the root beer stand. Bob and Stormlight looked at the cars driving down the street and the people walking along the sidewalk.

Stormlight had always enjoyed people-watching, especially now that the people smelled and looked so different from himself. Here went an older puppy or whatever humans called their offspring, her dry whiskerless nose buried in the screen of one of those glass rectangular communication devices. Next came a man in his prime, thick brown fur covering his upper lip and hanging down from his chin. Then an older woman, head fur white and face wrinkled, hobbling along with a walking stick to support her remaining good leg.

By her scent she could have been seven dozen years old, but Stormlight had a good five dozen on her, and he was still young as monkey foxes reckoned it.

Stormlight turned to Bob, regarding his bald crown and wrinkled face. He grabbed his tail and began running his claws along it as though brushing out a knot.

Bob looked up from his drink and noticed his fidgeting. "Well go on and ask. You do that whenever you're fixing to ask me an awkward question."

«Does it bother you that we live so much longer?»

"If I'm honest, maybe sometimes, but Earth has trees that live for millennia and brainless jellyfish that can live pretty much forever. It's not like humans were breaking longevity records until y'all came along. Besides, we already live twice as long as our closest animal relatives. I'd say that's pretty nice."

Bob took a few sips of soda. "Does it bother you that we don't live nearly as long as you?"

«You're not getting any younger. When you're gone I'll have to find a new human friend, then he'll be gone before I know it. We finally found bone not of our bone and flesh not of our flesh, but we never counted on that bone and flesh being so ephemeral. It's all like trying to hold water in my paws.»

After a few moments, bob said, "It hurts to say goodbye for the last time, and y'all are going to be saying a lot of last goodbyes as long as you hang around us humans. But think of it this way. You're already a big hit with my grandkids. You can help them grow up, and again with their children, and their children's children. You can tell them all about how their great great great grandpa Bob got to be the first human to shake hands with an alien. You and Iris and Tod and Sunshine and Lodestar and Pascal can be the one constant in their lives, the one thing they can count on to be there no matter what. They'll have to say goodbye to me soon enough, and by and by their parents, too, but not you. Y'all can be the one thing they'll never have to say goodbye to. And after you've said your last goodbye to me, you can pray for the repose of my soul, or speak my name among the living, or do whatever it is you critters do for as long as you feel like doing it, which will sure be longer than any human will remember me.

"But I'm in good health. I've got at least twenty years left in me if my family history is anything to go by. That might not be very long for you, but it's a while yet for me. Don't go mourning me until I'm actually six feet under.

"It's a wonderful day out, if a little hot." Bob added as Stormlight noisily lapped up some soda. "Let's just enjoy the day."

Stormlight tilted his ears back, relaxed his jaw slightly, and let his tail hang loose again. «Thanks, Bob. Sometimes I worry so much about the future that I don't appreciate the present.»

The two looked back at the cars driving down the street and the people walking along the sidewalk. "It sure is a nice present," said Bob.