The Lost Child's Path Home
In a world of darkness, one rat’s promise will lead her to the light
A young orphan girl, abandoned and broken, crosses paths with a telepathic rat who promises her a life of love and safety. In the sewers of Paris, a journey of fate, family, and redemption begins
The Lost Child's Path Home by Glory Fink
In a world of darkness, one rat’s promise will lead her to the light
Pierre is a rat (Rodentia) living in the tunnels under old Paris. He can talk to humans, is mildly telepathic and can pick up languages with ease including non-human languages including other rodentia, the more vocal amphibians and birds and some mammals. Pierre makes a living buying and selling resources and commodities. His endeavors support a small (for rats) colony of familial rats. His rat family helps in the business by scouting for new resources in wormholes. To humans and younger angels/demons Pierre appears to be practically immortal since a normal lifespan for a rat is one to three years. In reality this colony of rats have evolved in behavior and selection to lengthen their lifespans to 5 to 10 years. The appearance of immortality is due to how the colony interacts with outsiders. There was the first Pierre who was brilliant and a strong telepath, he set up trade with a few of the more intelligent and reasonable sewer dwelling humans.
One of his offspring was also somewhat telepathic, intelligent and with effort could pronounce a few words. This line of succession has continued for scores of generations, every few years the rat with the most advanced communication skills is recognized as the new Pierre the Younger and is trained by the current Pierre to take over the job. A few generations after the first Pierre, a wormhole was discovered by the colony. This led to widespread scouting parties in search of new wormholes to exploit for additional resources and hideaways.
Pierre at the time was experiencing a new sensation unknown to rats, loneliness. One of these wormholes led to an abbey in twelfth century France where Pierre met a child in rags tending a plot of cabbages who was mentally expressing the same deep longing to connect with another soul. Pierre rushed up to the child, stared into her eyes from atop his perch on a cabbage directly in front of her. Their telepathic exchange went something like this:
Pierre, “Hello sorrowful, big pretty one. Your thoughts are like mine. What are these? My family has never known these feelings before.”
The child replied, “These cabbages remind me of my family's cabbage plot and I am very sad. I will never see them again because they are dead and they were the only people who ever hugged or touched me without beating me.”
With concern Pierre asked, “You have no one else who loves you here?”
The child slowly shook her head and then pointed at her club foot, “Not anymore. The cook says I'm wicked for walking slowly and that God doesn't love the wicked.”
Pierre responded, “I like you. You smell lovely, you smell like dirt and cabbages. If you want to be my friend you will be loved by me and then we won't feel this way alone anymore.”
The child smiled, “Being your friend will warm my heart. I want to touch you gently.”
Pierre bowed his head and enjoyed the petting. Suddenly a voice in the distance was heard yelling “Clotilde! Clotilde!”
Clotilde startled and became scared for herself and Pierre, “Hide or Cook will see you and kill you!
Pierre,”If Cook will kill me then you are not safe here. I will take you to my home of Forever Safety and you will live with me!”
Clotilde paused for a moment and weighed her options. She decided that if she was damned to hell for eternity already because that's what Cook had told her then she probably couldn't do worse than running away from the nuns to live with a rat family.
Clotilde, “Let's go fast before I'm caught and beaten again.”
Pierre shot off like a brown bolt of lightning to return to the wormhole with Clotilde scampering as fast as she could muster behind him.
Once Pierre and Clotilde returned to Pierre’s home in the sewers of Paris, Pierre introduced Clotilde to her new home. “Hello family, this is my friend. She is going to live with us, we will be her new family. Smell us and know how far we have journeyed.”
Rats are very social creatures and they enjoyed the smell of Clotilde. She sat down on the edge of a pile of straw and wood shaving bedding material and several of the more extroverted rats climbed into her lap for delicious top of the head and under chin scritches. The pettings soon relaxed Clotilde so much she fell asleep on the bedding. Several of the younger rats took a nap with her curling up on her or next to her. Pierre’s mother led an expedition to find more bedding materials for the girl while Pierre and a different group went searching for fresh human foods that Clotilde might enjoy.
Pierre’s mother, let’s call her Dottie because she has a white spot on her throat, and her group brought back several things. They found a discarded woollen horse blanket found in a long forgotten shed, a ball of yarn from a trade with a bored house cat who loves bells, a doll pillow and several pop music magazines from the 1970s and 80s “liberated” from a storage unit filled with a middle aged woman’s teenage dreams and mementos from her childhood bedroom.
Pierre and his group brought back a box of Frootie Tooties breakfast cereal some of the family are fond of that they found in the back of a grocery store warehouse from the 1960s, a half eaten leg of mutton that it took 6 rats to lift and abscond with while the tavern master argued with his landlord about the maintenance of a gutter, two oranges and one cookie (only slightly nibbled on by Gizmo) left out on an alter by a gentle little old lady (two shiny coins and a pretty hair clip were left in exchange), and two beautiful baguettes because Pierre and his family are French and fresh bread is life, after all.
When Clotilde woke up she was presented with all the treasures her new found family had brought back. Pierre showed her the blanket which she immediately wrapped herself in and sat down to eat her first meal in her new home with Pierre and his family.
After the meal, Clotilde became curious about some of the things the colony collected. Among some of the younger rats bedding she noticed a teen pop music magazine with a color photo of a young man with a fluffy bright red haired mullet on the cover. She picked up the magazine that had only minimal nibbles and scratches on it and sat down to admire the beautiful pictures of the early 1970s popular music scene. The people in the pictures looked so strange and lovely. Their clothes were so brightly colored and form hugging that she wondered where the far off land must be where townspeople dressed so very fancy. Nothing they wore looked rough or scratchy or loose like it had been worn and washed by half the village over the past 20 years. She relaxed and Clotilde’s breathing softened as she admired the images. Several of the rats snuggled up around her and in her lap for a post meal nap while other ones went looking for more pretty papers to show Clotilde. By the time she finished consuming that first magazine she noticed a short stack of various other magazines and thin booklets some of the rats had dragged over to show her as well as a half used blank notepad and a slightly nibbled charcoal pencil.
Clotilde was familiar with charcoal drawings from when her father did occasional carpentry work. She picked up the notepad and pencil and started to sketch one of the sleeping rats curled up by her knee. Then she drew a ruffled jacket over her sketch similar to one she’d seen in the magazine of one of the music performers. Her sketch looked so adorable and ridiculous to see a rat wearing a jacket. It made her smile. Her face felt stiff. It had been so long since she’d felt like smiling. “Yes, this was the right decision to go with Pierre,” Clotilde concluded as she snuggled down for a nice warm nap. Clotilde had found her home.