Ten years ago, I was living in Coventry, England. Though I had a room in a sharehouse, I barely used it. I preferred to live and sleep in the freezing cold shed out the back. I’d sit there chain-smoking, trying and failing to decide what I was going to do with my life.
Then, one day, a fox appeared in the garden. He spent a few days testing me out, evaluating me. Eventually, following whatever strange whim it is that guides the business of foxes, he came into the shed.
During the day, he’d sleep in there. I would sit and watch him. He didn’t like me smoking – he would leave as soon as I sparked up a cigarette – so I stopped. He’d rouse around dusk, give me a quiet, gentle stare, and then saunter out into the yard. And every morning when I awoke, he’d be back, curled up in the corner. Until one morning he wasn’t. And I never saw him again.
He was a strange, tender, beautiful creature – unexplainable, the servant of no master. He was just this thing that entered my life, shared a little room with me, and then moved on, leaving the tiniest scrap of beauty behind.
