More or Less Up and Down So Far

"I don't know what I'm doing!!" Jerry screamed at a small yellow shrub unfortunate enough to be near at hand when he finally snapped. "I hate this place! I don't know where I am! I don't know where I'm going and I don't know how to get there! I don't know anything!!" the frustrated and distressed young bull stomped in a small circle while making distressed and frustrated sounds and waving his arms in aggravation.
Seed rot, the shrub sighed mournfully to itself. This always happens to me. I wish I were somewhere else.
Jerry had been traveling for roughly three days and had made virtually no progress. He was in an extremely hilly area; he had passed the first rolling slopes two and a half days ago, several hours after leaving the waterfall. Before too long, he was surrounded by hillocks and knolls, and the road he traveled sometimes climbed and spanned them, other times meander around with little apparent reason or preference to either method. On some of the higher hills, Jerry could spot a forest in the distance, and there were times when it seemed he was getting quite near to it, but on the very next hill it appeared that he had turned completely around and was moving back toward the waterfall. Mostly though, upon cresting a ridge, all he could see was an ocean of grassy mounds. For a day, this is expected and normal, except of course for the oddly confusing way the road would about-face without changing direction. Even after a couple days of walking, although unusual, it might make sense to perceive consistent topography. But after three whole days of journey on foot, surely there had to be some sign of a change, and without it one might become severely discouraged and burdened with thoughts of returning home.
"I wish I could go home," grumbled the bull, "If I only knew which way it was." With a profound sense of defeat, Jerry crumpled to the ground, his legs sprawled out and his back slumped against a steeper rise just off the road. "I didn't even want to leave the waterfall in the first place," he said, letting his head fall heavily onto the grass. "And I don't even have anything to eat. The only thing around here I've seen is bushes." Hearing this, the shrub fervently began to pray for itself and its family. Jerry sighed and let his eyes wander around. Clouds lazily crawled along the bright blue sky. A light breeze sent a ripple through the grass and Jerry's floppy ears. A small but brightly colored butterfly danced past. It was a nice day.
"Yeah, but I'm still lost," Jerry said, continuing that annoying habit of talking to nobody and being negative instead of just appreciating the wonderful weather. He snorted and slouched deeper into the grass, looking grumpy. The butterfly floated by again, and Jerry watched it go. It was a petite thing; the insides of its wings were a soft pink color, while the performance sides were bright blue and glossy emerald green that glittered in the sunlight; Jerry felt inexplicably content while he was observing it. The little insect twirled and fluttered on the breeze, alighting on the road or some blade of grass or the shrub.
Please go away, thought the shrub desperately. Don't draw more attention to me. I'm just a shrub, I'm not doing anything.
After a while, the butterfly decided it was time to move on from that place and flitted off down the road, disappearing over a hill. Jerry watched it go, slightly more peaceful than he had been minutes before. His eyes lingered on the ridge while his mind wandered, and he began to feel lethargic from the warm sun. He decided that he would take a quick nap. No sooner had his eyelids begun to droop, however, than a movement on the road snapped him back to the present.
It was a greyish-white something that was moving down the hill, smaller than the bovine but similar in shape; as it came closer, he saw that it was a young female sheep, not quite old enough to be a ewe, but mature enough that she would no longer qualify as a lamb. She was skipping rather than walking, staring up at the clouds and singing in time with her skips as she moved down the path. Jerry listened to her song as she approached, which she appeared to be making up as she went along:

"From the top of this hill,
From the dirt on the road,
I look up,
And the sky is the same.

It won't move like the grass,
It stands still behind trees;
It is calm like the sea without rain.

It won't care if I'm smart,
It won't care if I'm cute,
And it won't even ask for my name.

If I walk for an hour,
If I frolic all day,
I'll look up,
And the sky is the same!"

The sheep hadn't yet seen Jerry when she was nearly to the spot where he lounged in the grass due to her focus on the words of her song and the sky. Not wanting to interrupt her musical bleats with his much lower and less pleasant voice, Jerry stood as she passed; to the sheep, her vision of the sky was suddenly invaded by a large, rusty head with a fat nose and big ears. "Oh!" she exclaimed, halting both song and skip, and turned to stare fully at the Bovinae bystander.
"Hello!" she said.
"Hi," said Jerry warily, having not yet encountered another speaking creature besides himself. Not that he was uneasy about the sheep; honestly, even the notion is ridiculous, as anyone who has seen a sheep stand near a bull would know. What he was feeling was a general sort of anxiety at a brand new situation.
"Are you a cow?" asked the sheep, looking Jerry up and down.
"Uh," said the bull, caught off guard by the question and, actually, pretty much everything else about life. "No, I'm a bull." He pointlessly shot a spiteful glance at the sky. "My name is Jerry, what's yours?
"I'm Dolores," said the sheep. "We don't have bulls where I come from. We don't have cows either, but I know what those are anyway, and you kind of look like one." Jerry wasn't sure whether or not to be offended by the notion that he looked like a girl, but he decided it wasn't important. And anyway, sometimes it really is hard to tell when looking at cows which gender they are.
"Where is it that you come from?" asked Jerry, shifting his footing and looking the slightest bit miffed all of a sudden. Dolores, who hadn't yet noticed that Jerry was crazy, looked back down the road from whence she came and shrugged.
"I don't know, really." Jerry noticed something in her eyes then; was it longing? A bit of loneliness, perhaps, and a hint of sadness? But only for a moment; the sheep looked back up at the bull and smiled, and all traces of negativity disappeared from her face. "I just know about cows for some reason. And how we don't have them. I'm a sheep, by the way!" She flapped her arms against her neat, wooly sides as if to emphasize the fact that she was fluffy and not like other things that weren't so.
"Yes, I see that," agreed Jerry, although he realized that he wasn't quite sure why he knew that, either.
"Do you have sheep where you come from?" Dolores asked, a touch of hope leaking into her question. Jerry shook his head, and for another second the sheep looked vaguely disappointed, but that, too, disappeared after a beat.
"I've never seen a sheep before," the larger animal explained. "And I don't know where I come from, too. I came from the waterfall three days ago," Dolores's face brightened up, "And I've been in this hilly place ever since."
"Oh, the waterfall!" Dolores bleated happily. "I came from there. I don't know when, but it was before now. It was wet, but then I came into the sun and I got all dry! And then it was kind of lonely but I made up songs and it wasn't so bad anymore."
"I heard you singing as you came down the road," said Jerry. "I thought it was really nice. It was about the sky?"
"Yes," the sheep smiled again, more shyly than before. "I like the sky. It's like, even when I move and the ground around me moves, the sky is always the same. It just sits there like a reminder that even when things change, some bigger things don't. That's what my song was about."
Jerry was about to respond when he was interrupted by a thought that maybe he ought to suggest talking while they walked, because stationary dialogue can get a little monotonous after awhile.
"Hey, since we're both traveling, why don't we keep walking while we're still getting to know one another?" suggested the bull, openly glaring at the sky.
"Okay!" agreed the sheep, who still didn't seem to notice the bulls apparent madness. "Which way are we going?" Jerry looked up and down the road. Thinking back on his journey so far, he figured it probably didn't matter in what direction they walked.
"Lets go this way," he gestured back the way he had come and the direction Dolores had been traveling. She nodded happily, and together they stepped off. After they had gone, the shrub heaved a sigh of relief.
"Do you ever hear... voices?" asked the bull after a bit, continuing to stare ahead at the road. "Like, from the sky or anything?"
"No," answered the sheep, looking up at him inquisitively. "Why do you ask?"
"Oh, no reason." said Jerry uncomfortably. "Sometimes, I just think I can hear someone talking about stuff that's happening."
"Like a narrator or something?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"Hm," Dolores put her head to the side, thinking. "Nope! I've never heard anything like that!"
"Okay," Jerry sighed to himself and put the matter aside. The two moved on without a word for another minute or so, and then it was Dolores's turn to break the silence.
"Jerry, are we friends?" she asked, stopping to looking up at the bull. She would be okay if he said no; after all, they had just met, and when you are one who wanders, others may stumble in and out of your life without thought to any real connection. She didn't know how long she might wander with Jerry, but she hoped he would say yes anyway. It was always very nice to have a friend, even for a brief season. Jerry looked down at the little sheep. He saw something in her eyes, something he could feel and appreciate, because it was a sentiment he shared, although he didn't truly understand it yet. He smiled, possibly for the first time since entering the valley.
"Of course we're friends," he told her. She smiled back up at him.
"Good," she said, contentedly turning back to the road with a little bit more of a spring in her step. "You're a nice cow." Jerry didn't correct her. It didn't really mean much whether or not she knew the difference between a cow and a bull, after all. Jerry was happy, and it was always nice to have a friend.