John's mother was worrying about her son who hadn't spoken to her for weeks. She sent letters but no letters were sent to her back. She contacted the main unit supervising the work of his son, but they claimed that he was alive and simply busy doing his research. He must have forgotten about sending messages to her or the contact must have been temporary difficult. This made her feel better but still, she didn't know what made his only child so interested in the life up there in K. There was nothing there. The people living there were no people. The houses, if there were any, looked disastrous. The climate was just the same as in N., so what was the point of even leaving N. in the first place? Would she want her son to be a doctor or a lawyer instead? Of course, she did. When you have just one child you tend to put all your dreams and expectations on this tiny pink body and you watch it grow and behave in his own independent way. Would she have more children? Even though the first pregnancy ended in a caesarean section and due to drugs she barely felt anything at all, she wouldn't. She was supposed to have one child and she fulfilled her duty. What John was doing with his life was at the end of the day his own decision.
She liked spending her days in her garden and relax while drinking a home-made wine, looking at the setting sun. And when she was sitting on a white garden chair, comforted that her son hadn't had a serious accident in this horrible land, she felt something touching her leg. She turned her eyes from the book she was reading and looked at the most disgusting creature she had ever an opportunity to see. It was furry, it had a tail of its own and a horrible gray color. The woman had no time to scream. She simply fainted in her chair and woke up in the middle of the night, sure that it had only been a bad dream.
