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A Fruit-bowl of Mice in the Corner

Every single Christmas since I can remember was conducted in the exact same way. Our bags had been readied the night before we left, which gave us, more specifically myself, a few precious hours to sleep before departing. We loaded the car and grabbed several sandwiches before taking to the road. After a few hours the highway cut into a certain hill rich in obsidian, and you could see the black shards glistening under the sun By the side of the road. On some years we would stop and I could pick out the sharpest, most polished shards to take home. By the time we arrived at the building, it would be dark. We climbed the steep narrow stairs to the second floor, were awaited a single wooden door. The doorbell rung with the chimes of Big Ben. A few seconds later the door opened, and we were welcomed by my grandmother and her sister into a narrow hall connecting both their apartments. It was then that an all familiar smell would hit me, a smell which to date I haven't been able to identify, and which I probably never will. But for me it suffices to say that it was the smell of home away from home. Mi grandfather would be sitting on the large armchair closer to the hall. In front of him a long wooden table with the week's newspaper piled at the end, and on top of that pile sat a beast of incredible beauty, my grandfather's adoration. Her fur was slick and lustrous, black as a night without moon. Her eyes two pieces of amber, burning with fierceness against the darkness of her coat. Her form was lean and elegant, a panther unexplainably shrunken but not slightly less majestic. From atop her throne of newspaper, she was the empress of the world. The next few days I would spend fascinatedly studying this creature, how on occasions she would abandon her throne and walk over to the corner, where a sculpted crystal fruit-bowl lay on the flor, overflowing with the endless toy mice that my aunts brought over with every visit. She would select one, after careful consideration, and commence her dance. It must have indeed been an incredible honour for any mouse to be her partner in that gorgeous ballet, where she flew ever so gracefully through the air and became a black streak, disappearing in a flurry of movement. When she decided she'd had enough dancing, she jumped back to the table and from there to the armchair and onto my grandfather's lap. Eventually, Christmas day would finally arrive, we'd say our goodbyes and would again be off to our city. Of course on the way home I couldn't help but think fondly of the days past, counting the days until next Christmas would come.