David is a Dooble and lives in the glass ball of Doobleville.

David and all the other Doobles can see through the thick glass of Doobleville at the giant world surrounding them on every side.

The Doobles are little. They have little bodies and little eyes and little ears and little brains. They live in little families and little communities with little problems.

Through no fault of his own, David was born with ears where his eyes should be and eyes where his ears should be. David sees the rustling of the trees and the chirping of the birds and the distant noises of bombs outside of Doobleville. David hears the pink in his mother’s cheeks when she’s talking to Caleb who lives across the street and the sparkling of the glass as rain falls on the outside of Doobleville.

Because of this birth defect, David can hear the size of the humans outside Doobleville, but he can’t see them. David doesn’t know that everything around him and in him is little. He does know the distant sound of bombs appears very large, but they are so far away that really, they appear very little to David.

The citizens of Doobleville have all the same problems as the world outside the glass ball, but they are little – the problems, but also the Doobles.

And so, when the Doobles all get together for the Doobleville gatherings, the uproar appears to David to be very loud indeed. The bombs, they say, are so loud. The rain, they say, is so wet. The neighbors, they say, are so rude. The babies, they say, are so helpless.

One day, David is outside, watching the rain patter on the roof and listening to the flowers be beaten into the earth. Suddenly, a particularly large and not-so-distant bomb came pummeling down upon the earth. The corner of it, only a small edge, hit the glass ball of Doobleville. The glass shattered and all the citizens of Doobleville were obliterated, either through little but sharp shards of glass, or through the little fire that sprang forth after.

It was only a little edge of the bomb, but as David lay on the ground, pinned by a little glass shard through the middle of his little stomach, he thought a little thought as his last thought.

They say it’s all so little, but I’m little too, and it feels like a very large piece of glass to me.