The Collector

The fox came over the fence just after midnight, the way she always did. The garden was quiet. The humans were asleep, and their windows were dark.

She moved across the wet grass without a sound. Her fur was thick and grey, and her tail swept low behind her. While the city slept, she was hunting.

Then she saw it. Something was lying on the path by the back door, and it was shining in the moonlight. It was small and round and smooth, and it threw the light straight back at her. She had never seen anything so bright.

She stopped. She lowered her head and touched it with her nose. It was cold and hard, and it tasted of nothing. It was not food. But it was beautiful, and she wanted it.

She picked it up gently in her mouth and carried it under the bushes at the end of the garden. There she had a small collection: a silver button, a piece of broken glass, a child’s blue marble. She had been gathering shiny things for years. They were no use to her at all.

She lay down beside them while the night grew colder. In the morning, a child would search the garden for a lost coin and never find it. But the fox did not think about that. She only knew that the world dropped beautiful things, and that she was the one who carried them away into the dark.