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My left thumb is bleeding. The band-aid fell off earlier and I started picking at the skin at the side of the fingernail again. I picked up the band-aid, of course; it’s in my pocket.

I start sucking the blood off my thumb, while I keep on watching the cows. It’s getting cold, so their fur is growing out and they look fluffier again, although you can still see the ribs on some of them. I come here so often, that they’re no longer scared of me. The big black one with the horns – the dad, I think – was slow to trust me. He would always stand in front of the rest and stare me down and even later, when they became used to me, he was always keeping an eye on me. Now he’s eating grass in the corner of their pasture. Most of them do. The calves are great though. They’re red-brown and really shaggy and very trusting. Sometimes, I feed them some of the tall grass that’s growing right outside the electric fence.

I like coming here and just watching the cows. Even though they are just walking around, doing nothing much in particular, it soothes me. I like seeing the mom caring for her calves; I like watching the little ones play; I like watching them lounge around and enjoy the sun.

There’s no sun today, though. It’s cloudy and windy. It looks like it’s going to rain. I wave the cows goodbye and head down the hill. After a few meters, I turn around, wave again and quietly say “goodbye”. I don’t want to leave them, but I don’t want to get caught in the rain and get sick, either. I hate it when my clothes stick to me.

I take the path behind the houses. It’s overgrown and there’s a steep slope on one side with trees that have never been trimmed, I think. The other side is people’s gardens. Some have little gates in them, so they can also get on the path, but no one ever does. At least, no one I ever met.

I stop. On the ground, there’s a mouse. It’s dead. I bend down and look at it. Its gray fur looks sticky and wet, and it’s torn and bloody in places. It looks like it’s screaming. Its paws hang in the air. I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes. Why did it have to die, out here and all alone? What will its family think, when it doesn’t come home?

I take a little twig that looks a bit like a cross, but really more like the letter Y, and put it in the ground next to it. I have to twist it, so it sticks. I pray. I don’t know how to do that, but I just think really hard about the little mouse and its little mouse life and I hope that it’s safe and happy, wherever its mouse soul is now.