Eeyore watches the others from the shade, head between his paws. They look awfully happy, he thinks. For a moment he wants to step out from under the canopy and play ball with them until he remembers what happened earlier.
Earlier, Christopher Robin had remarked that it was a lovely day to be outside. "Don't you agree?" he'd asked Eeyore, and Eeyore had sighed and tried his best to agree, but it must not have been enough because Christopher Robin's smile had slipped by degrees, slowly, which came to mean something bad and that's why he's here now instead of out in the sun with everyone else, because he's bound to turn their sunshine into rain if he tries to do anything but be what he's always been best at: staying unseen and unheard. Nothing good ever comes out of his trying.
His body is full of aches and his heart is tired of running itself into the ground. He feels cold, colder than he should be, not lovely at all like today is but unloved, lonely. A dry wind rustles through the leaves, bringing with it the sound of his friends' laughter and a touch of warmth and another smell, musky like the skin of a snake, like an ending and a beginning wrapped up together. It makes him wonder if they're happier without him. They probably are, he supposes.
The grass is so soft, cradling him against the earth, Pooh and Piglet and Owl and Rabbit and all their memories retreating to a far, dark place as he settles in. What he'd like most to do now is to lay down and sleep forever, to let Christopher Robin forget he ever existed, to be gone just like that.
You don't deserve them, a scritchy scratchy voice says in his head. You belong in the dirt where no one can see you. Eeyore thinks that it's someone else that's talking at first, before he realizes that it's his own voice, echoing through him over and over, endlessly repeating. We can't all, so why don't you quit while you still can?
It's a fine, fine idea. The finest he's had in ages. Resting his head against the gnarled root of a tree, Eeyore feels himself winding down, feels sleep overtake him at last and, he realizes, he's not the least bit sad about it.