Sunday 12 February 2023

Flash Fic Challenge: The Mouse Who Lived in the Sun

 The Mouse Who Lived in the Sun

A mouse lived in a junk yard. His hole was tucked in between a vintage tv set and a pile of old newspapers. He particularly liked the copies of the Sun newspaper because they were easy to tear apart and turn into a cosy bed.

One night, a fox came sniffing around. "Hello, little mouse, why don't you show me your home? I'd like to meet your family."

"Oh, well, I..." The mouse stumbled over his words as he frantically tried to come up with a suitable lie to turn the fox down. "I sleep in the Sun," he tried. "I can only go there when there is light."

"Oh, I can move around in the light too," said the fox, licking his lips.

The mouse looked up where the sun would be in the daytime and saw the security light on the building. "Please," he mumbled, "come this way then." He raced off towards the beams that triggered the light to come on, knowing that while he was too small to for them to register, the fox was not.

The fox trotted easily after him and hit the beam.

The light came on, flooding the area and dazzling both creatures whose eyes had become accustomed to the darkness.

The mouse, however, had been expecting it and dashed silently down a crack into an underground passageway to recover.

When the fox's eyes cleared, the mouse had vanished. All the fox could think was that the mouse had been telling the truth - that he really had come from the sun!


Moral: Sometimes truth is the better deception

1 comment:

Jeff Baker said...

Oh, that is good! I wondered if I'd gone too far with copying an author's style and setting it on the Sun. You really rose to the challenge! I love it! I would never have thought of the newspaper angle! And it's a perfect fable! Thank you so much!
----jeff