Louis looked down at the dead fox as if he were watching a line of ants. He crouched by it with his hands balled up in the pockets of his jumper as winter whispered through the trees. His breath came out in wispy streams of smoke on the air and he cocked his head to the side. The sound of trees rustling filled his head. He couldn’t even see the house from all the way out there. It was as if he was in the middle of nowhere. It was if he was the only person in the world.

Did you get yelled at again? the fox suddenly asked.

Louis watched the breeze ripple in the fox’s fur. He liked how soft it looked, how warm it looked. He imagined it was what a hug was meant to feel like. “I don’t know what I did this time either,” he answered.

You were a good boy?

Louis nodded. “I am a good boy.” Black lashes of his fringe brushed and blew around the top of his eyes, but he paid them no mind. He was watching the fox’s mouth, but it did not move. “I do what I’m told. And I do my best.”

Then why did you get yelled at?

“I don’t know,” Louis said after a moment. He thought about the day’s events, but even though the yelling was fresh in his ears, he couldn’t tell what it was he had done wrong. “There are a lot of things they say I do wrong,” he added. “But I don’t understand any of them.”

The fox seemed to sigh at Louis, a sound that he was very familiar with. But there was something less harsh about the fox’s sigh than when it came from the adults. They don’t understand you.

“Papa doesn’t have the time. He was a doctor before he was papa,” Louis murmured, his cheeks and nose reddening from the cold. “And so, he is a doctor before he is a papa.”

But his son is hurting. Isn’t his job to fix people?

“But maybe he can’t fix me.” Louis paused. He pressed his fists closer to his stomach through his jacket, as if expecting to feel some sort of pain. But he just felt a little cold. That was all. “I don’t feel like I’m hurting. Do you hurt when you’re broken?”

I don’t know. I just feel cold.

Louis thought that the fox looked warm against the thin carpet of snow, but he knew how it was to look one thing but be another on the inside. “Mama is always cold.” He curled himself a little as the crisp air started to press into his face. It reminded him of her hands on his skin, making red marks appear on it like the cold did. “She’s busy. They’re all busy.”

But you’re hurting. Can’t they see that?

“Maybe it’s because I am small. Maybe they don’t see it,” Louis mused. He took his right hand out of his pocket and started to draw a circle in the snow, his little leather glove picking up white flecks. “Maybe I need to get bigger.” He retraced the circle once, and then twice, and then thrice.

It’s okay Louis, I can see you.

“Because I am bigger than you.”

No, I can see who you truly are. Because you’ve shown me.

“Mama and papa told me not to do that,” Louis whispered. He stopped drawing in the snow, but didn’t take his hand away, letting the cold build in the tip of his finger.

That’s because they don’t understand you.

Louis looked at the fox. Its body was becoming stiff now and the red matting on its belly and neck was preventing those patches of fur from moving in the wind. Its dark beady eyes were less shiny, and it made Louis wonder if his own eyes looked like that.

But I understand you.

Louis nodded. “Maybe I need to do to them what I did to you. Maybe I need to make them understand me.” He straightened up, snow crunching under his little boots as he moved, and pulled the bloodied scalpel from his left pocket.