Moonlight

10 |Friends in the walls|

Bruno spent a lot of his time organizing the small room while Luna sat in her hammock. She switched from watching to playing with her stuffed animals. She borrowed Bruno's ruana to play Hernando, Bruno laughed when she attempted to do his deep voice.

A small squeak caught her attention, it was so small and quick that Luna thought it was one of her stuffed animals for a second. The squeak came again and Luna looked under the hammock to see two eyes staring back at her. She let out a startled yelp and jumped back, the movement caused the hammock to flip over and Luna fell to the floor.

Bruno jumped at the commotion before rushing over to help her up "Are you ok?" He asked, Luna pointed under the hammock "S-Something was looking at me!" They both hear the squeak and Luna is quick to hide behind Bruno as he inched his way to closer to the hammock. When he got closer, Luna covered her eyes "Is it scary!?" She squeaked, she heard Bruno laugh "No mija, it's not scary." He reassured.

Bruno bent down and picked up a small rat "It seems this little guy gave you a fright." Luna uncovered her eyes and saw Bruno holding the rat "Oh.." she looked closely and smiled "Piper!" The rat squeaked in acknowledgement "Oh..you two are acquainted?" Bruno asked. Luna takes Piper from his hands "She was the rat in the nursery! I haven't seen her in a while though, so I thought she must've went somewhere else."

The seer furrowed his eyebrows "Wait, was that the rat from your 5th birthday? Your tía scolded me for that and she wasn't even one of mine." He says, Luna smiled sheepishly "Sorry Papa..." Bruno crosses his arms "You should be, but I will forgive you...if you introduce me to Piper." He says. Luna laughs and holds Piper out "Ok, so this is Piper! I don't know how old she is but she really likes it when I draw and she loves cheese!"

Bruno laughed "I think all rats like cheese, mija." He says "Oh..well she really likes it." Bruno patted Piper's head "Well, it's nice to know that we have an amiga in the walls." A few other squeaks cause Bruno and Luna to turn around to see a few more rats sitting on the chair "Oh, maybe a few amigos."

Luna bounced a bit "Ooh Papa, can we keep them!?" She asked "Well Luna, they're not pets so we can't just keep them." Bruno says "But there's no harm with having them around." "Yay!" Luna jumped up and down from excitement. Bruno scratched his head "We're going to have to name them. So we can tell them apart."

"Ooh, can I name some of them? Please?" Bruno smiled "Of course mija." Luna squealed and knelt down to examine the rats "Hm..." she picks up one of the smaller rats "I want to name this one Queso!" She shouts. Bruno raised an eyebrow "Cause she likes cheese?" He asked, Luna looked at the rat "No, she looks like cheese." "Can't argue with that."

Bruno picks up a rat with dark brown fur "This one...looks like a Pedro." He says, "Like abuelo?" Bruno nodded "Sí, like your abuelo." Luna smiles "I like it!" She picks up a similar looking rat "And she looks like Dolores!" "Oh yeah, I can see that." Bruno says. Luna frowns a bit "Although...I guess she looks a bit strange without her bow." She mumbled.

Luna spent the rest of her time getting to know each of the rats while Bruno continued to fix the room so it was more habitable for each of them. She glanced up at Bruno when he stopped to take a break and joined to talk with the rats as well. It made her feel better that Bruno could adjust better to these surroundings and responsibility of keeping them from being seen with familiar friends he's surrounded himself with for his entire life.

Ironically, Bruno found himself thinking the same for her.

Perhaps the change can become a bit easier now that they made a few new friends.