The Mice in the Kitchen

Preface

The first time he saw her, he didn't really pay any attention. He didn't know her, and the circumstances impelled him to focus on what was most urgent: making sure they were far enough away, and yet close enough.

There, they were.

And exhausted they also were.

Such a transformation is something inexplicable. Only someone who had gone through it would be able to understand the brutal process of adaptation these two creatures were enduring while, amidst such maelstrom, they also had to run away... In case their present punishment —perhaps irrevocable— might be commuted to a less tormenting, but definitive, destiny.

Therefore, the fact that, that night, the girl who sneaked into the kitchen, in search of some warmth from the dying embers on the hearth, went almost unnoticed, except for the necessary moments of alert — brief... they had already taken refuge in a hole in the wall when she arrived—, did not mean at all that he was to remain indifferent to her in the future.

Not at all.