Once upon a time, at the edge of a dark, foreboding jungle was a small, spare, one-room structure. Beyond this structure was the vast expanse of impassable, arid desert where nothing grew.

The one-room structure at the edge of the jungle served as a telegraph station. Stories handed down from the ancestors advised the creatures of the jungle to check every day at the telegraph station for a message. As there had been no messages in living memory, most creatures no longer checked the telegraph station, considering it both foolish and futile to do so.

There were a few, however, who continued the ancient practice, who every day entered the bare structure to check their message box, and who every day returned more dejected than the day before. One of these creatures was named Megalump. She was similar to others of her species, with long dark hair covering her body, a slow, shuffling gait, and a back so bent that it seemed she soon might become four-legged. She felt akin to the ancient mastodon; yet she knew that she was not, for she could remember that she had been born upright with a spring in her step. She could see her former self reflected in the young ones, but even they were no longer light and bright – they were becoming encrusted too.

Then one day when Megalump wearily entered the telegraph office, she found a message addressed to her. It stated that she would soon return to her Source and that she would travel, like electricity, through the telegraph lines to get there. But for that to happen, she must become very fine, very pure, very light. Keep coming every day to this telegraph office, the note advised, to check for further messages.

Megalump was initially elated and cheerfully checked her message box daily for some time. But as the days turned to years, and as she considered her encrusted state, her hope faded into the despair of grim reality.

Here she was, a thick, heavy beast who daily acquired yet another outer layer, a crust, merely by living in the jungle. You could not walk through the jungle without becoming dirtier and more encrusted. Despite everything Megalump tried to do to lighten herself, every day she found her mind and her body more ossified, and she knew with increasing certainty that she would never be light enough or pure enough to fit through the telegraph lines.

Yet, she continued to plod each day to that barren telegraph office at the edge of the jungle to check for the message that never came. And so the years passed.

The day came when Megalump could barely haul her bulky frame through the door. She was about to resolve not to come again when she noticed a thin piece of paper in her message box. The message read: “Your time has come to return home.” And as her thick mind started to object that this was not possible, she began to realize that she was melting from the inside out. Each trip to the telegraph office had been softening her, transforming her from the inside. Each encrusted layer started sliding to the floor, as it melted, until there was nothing to hold the extreme outer layers, and they fell from her in one piece, of their own weight. Megalump emerged from her shell to find herself light, fluid, and able to fly, like electricity, through the telegraph lines – which she did.