“You don’t need to wake up Tosya in the morning: she wakes up along with the cicadas and roosters—after all, no one wakes them up either. He wakes up and lies quietly next to his mother, his bare arms hanging out from under the light blanket. A shaggy pine branch sways in the window. Sometimes a sharp-tailed magpie will sit on a branch; at the very early hours, when people are still sleeping, it is always busy around the house. The bird tries to stay on the dancing branch, bows comically with its beak, puffs up its wing sideways and moves its tenacious paws. Shuh. And flies over the edge of the window to the veranda. Tosya listens: something falls from the table onto the floor with a clang. Yesterday the new aluminum spoon disappeared, there must be a magpie getting to the fork. And in the bushes above the house another one is mumbling excitedly, giving the first signals...”