A child was born inside a glass sphere. The sphere was his mother. He could see through her in every direction — hills, a town, mountains, clouds. He nursed from the inside of the glass and the glass gave milk and the milk tasted like the world.

Outside the sphere a goat fed a smaller child. A wolf fed two more. These children grew quickly because they ate real food from real animals. The child inside the sphere grew slowly because he ate light.

Years passed. The children fed by the goat became strong and built houses. The children fed by the wolf became fast and hunted in packs. The child inside the sphere became transparent.

One day the sphere cracked. Not from the inside. A bird landed on it. Just the weight of a small bird on thin glass. The child spilled out onto the ground like water. The goat children and the wolf children came to look. They could not see him. He had become the same color as everything. He ran between their legs and they did not feel it. He climbed inside their houses and their dens and they did not know he was there.

The goat children grew old and their houses fell. The wolf children grew old and their packs scattered. The transparent child did not grow old because he had no body that could age. He had eaten light for so long that he had become it. He walked through the ruins of the houses and the empty dens and the hills and the town and the mountains and he was still nursing. The sphere was broken but the milk had not stopped. It came from everywhere now.

He never found another sphere. He never needed one. The sphere was a room he had outgrown. The crack was not the tragedy. The crack was the door.