nny | (no subject)

It sits just beyond the end of the world, in the space before anything else can start. A small wooden box with 'trust' carved into its sides in every language of man and of beast, and a few more languages besides that.

Well, every language but one.

Inside the box live a mouse and a cat, and they want for nothing at all. There is light and there is heat when it is day time, and at night the mouse runs in his wheel so there may be light and heat then too. Through the day time the cat keeps watch over the space beyond the world's end while the mouse sleeps all tucked between her paws, and through the night time the mouse runs and runs and he watches, too. And in the spaces between the day and the night, that is when they tell each other stories and tales and jokes and fancies, and the worldless space is full of voices and laughter and half-light.

"And that is why ours is a great friendship," the mouse declares. "For you need me, and I need you."

"I fear that is only half right," the cat says, and the mouse casts a look at the wheel in the corner and smiles the half-hidden smile of the useful and important.

"But it is nothing to me that you are less useful," the mouse says. "For that is friendship, and that is what matters most."

"Perhaps," says the cat, "perhaps." And she smiles the secretive smile of a cat, for even in the space just further than the end of the world, cats are mysterious beasts.

For that is where it sits; just beyond the end of the world, in the space before anything else can start. A small wooden box with 'trust' carved into its sides in every language of man and of beast, and a few more languages besides that.

And inside the box live a very useful mouse, and a cat who can see in the dark.

(Every language, of course, but one.)