They found it curled between two pebbles. A mouse, eyes closed, hands curled, with perfect, brilliant blue fur.
Questions crowded their mind, the most important: was it okay?
When the mouse twitched, as if in dreams, they felt a sudden wash of relief.
They took it home and fed it crumbs and carrots. It explored with cautious sniffs.
Over time, it became swift and skittering. Its human learned the tickle of its whiskers on their fingertips.
They were happy together.
—
One of the earliest stories I remember writing, when I had just learned to painstakingly carve letters onto paper, was a story about an old man and his cat, who was magenta. There was nothing else fantastic about the cat beyond its colour, and the story was perfectly mild.
This is a bit of a callback to that story. 🙂