There once was a little fox who lived in the backyard of an old house. His parents had been killed in a road accident, and so he grew up all alone, searching for food in the neighbors’ garbage, sleeping under a heap of cardboard boxes and broken washing machines. Children had played here, in times that he had not lived through, when the house had not been abandoned. Families had moved in, grown up, and died.

Before that, the house had not even been there. But then, men had come who talked to each other in loud voices, operating big, smelly machines. They had covered the grassy plains with concrete and asphalt, spreading gray cancer on the once blooming land. And what came before that, who could really know. The fox, in any case, was quietly unaware; for him, the house and the garden and his nest of garbage had always been there, and always would. Anything else was unimaginable.

The city was big and attracted many foxes and other animals with the rich mass of food that the humans brought with them. Some lived behind garbage cans, others in parking lots or scrapyards. And while they might not be welcome guests they managed to survive taking whatever they needed from the humans. And so, one faithful day, this fox, who was not quite that little anymore, came across a vixen in the street who was the most gorgeous being he had ever seen.

What happened in the humans’ world did not affect them much during those days. The two foxes lived in the backyard together, raising their pups in the den of garbage, and they were happy with just that.

But too soon the loud men came back, this time with bigger machines than before, even louder and smellier. They tore down the walls of the old house until there was nothing left but dust and debris. Then they poured even more concrete onto the ground, not only in the foxes’ backyard, but in the entire neighborhood.

The growing little fox family had to go on a journey for a new home, a journey that would be long and cost two of their pups their lives. They never came back, thus never witnessing the rise of skyscrapers and shopping malls and restaurants and night clubs. The generations that followed did not know anymore of the city that had once been their home.

Times changed. Foxes did not live in the city much longer; they either ran away, or were killed by humans, who became much more rigorous against them. The city had become a grave, and no fox ever set paw in it for a time that no fox could have counted.

But not forever.

The seasons changed. First, they got warmer, then colder again. At some point, the entire city was covered in ice. Even humans did not stay any longer. The cold took some of them, while most died by the hands of famine, disease, or war. Whether humans still lived elsewhere in the world the foxes did not know, but as the temperatures became milder and warmer again they came back. Plants were now growing wild in every crack and every niche in the concrete, hungry to reclaim the ground that had once been theirs, and with them came all sorts of insects and rodents and reptiles and birds.

The foxes built their dens in the ruins of fallen skyscrapers and hunted through what once had been shopping malls, and in one of those, a little fox found a place to stay. He could not know that in this exact same place, a long time ago, an old backyard had been, in which his ancestor had grown up. Still, deep inside, he felt as if he was returning home.