There is a fox, he’s sly and snouty, he wanders the woods every night around two.

With all that he knows and all that he is, he goes along the muddy paths, moonlit silence looming over him, listening out for a neigh or a meow or a silent woof or any other animal’s sound. He goes and walks and trots and jumps all night, but he never happens upon any other breathing being. And then the forest gets light and dawn starts to break. It is day and the horizon turns pink and fox must hurry to sleep. So he crawls back into his burrow, exhausted from a night’s worth of disappointed hopes and he falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.

As soon as his eyes close, the first rays of sunshine fall upon the soil outside his burrow and the eagles come out, and the mice, and the deer and the bears and the hares and all the other restless animals. And they dance and play and neigh and meow and woof silently until the wood falls dark again. When they return to their little nests and dreams without leaving a trace, the fox’s eyes open up, shining a beam of light into his burrow and he will spend another night searching for something that he will never find.

And I wish I could tell him that sometimes, the world and its cosmic dance are to blame for our static unhappiness and that

sometimes, it is not our fault and that

sometimes, the forest is full of animals and

sometimes,

it is not.