A *Very* Different Time…
Mrs Fox woke, listened, and sighed. She had been half-listening for Mrs Cat’s footsteps on the stairs as she herself had drifted to consciousness, hoping to join her for an early morning walk to the village church, to sit with the dead people. Now, that might sound quite strange to others, but Mrs Fox and Mrs Cat were researching the families in Okeover Village and the connections that were surfacing (not literally, you understand) in the village’s grave yard.
It had been a day or two since Mrs Cat took her family back to the softness of Somerset, and Mrs Fox was missing the lively chatter, the deep connections and the sparkling energy of their creativity. She wasn’t missing the scratching on the stair carpet quite so much, but she understood that the Cat family were used to a more outdoors sort of life than they had enjoyed this week, what with the daily rain and the frequent hail that had nestled them inside Foxes’ Retreat by the snug log burner. A little scratching was needed, to keep a Cat happy and healthy. That was just one tiny part of their charm. Mr and Mrs Fox had odd habits at times too, they were sure…
Mrs Fox had tidied the house, with love put away the notes she had made during the Cat Residence, and now, with a deep smile, from the inside of her heart to the outside of her long fox mouth, she set off with her keyboard. There was much to be done; characters had sprung from her neatly typed pages, and into gladly embraced, heavy responsibilities over those wonderful six days with the Cats and their wonderful New Friend, who haled from a somewhat closer abode, by the way.
The differences perceived by outsiders that were between the Foxes, the Cats and their New Friend dissolved into wonder, as they found a delight in their similarities and their passions within hours of their meeting. A deep respect had flourished between the Six Wondrous Beings; one that Mrs Fox dreamily embraced as one that would last for a delicious period of time. There had been time for tasting, and now there was time for storing, preserving, maturing and then there would be tasting again. Just to check, you understand? Mrs Fox did like a good food metaphor.
Startling herself with the food metaphor, Mrs Fox sat back from her keyboard.
“Ooh!” exclaimed Mrs Fox, “Time for cake!”
[For those of you who are not so familiar with Mrs Fox: Mrs Fox does like a good cake. A good cake baked with delicious things, in her shiny big oven, right here in her kitchen at Foxes’ Retreat]
*Mrs Fox has slid into complicated sentences as her thoughts are racing and tumbling with delight at this time… her playfulness with the removal of -ly words, her knotty parenthesis, and her intrusive narration are all part of the current desire to explore and to break things to make them work with more depth and beauty…