"And every day, she dreamt up new excuses for the scratching in the cellar, and every day the sound grew fainter, until it was no more...." ...a doodle.... This was supposed to be an ink drawing with white acrylic highlights, but when I opened my closet, I realized I was (gasp!!!) out of paper. The writing on the image: The upper character is "shu" (rat), and the one on the peach is "shou" (longevity). The quote is from the script of a comic I'm (slowly) working on. It's from a short episode where a young bride moves into her husband's grandfather's home, but she is disturbed by the sound of a rat scratching all night. In the morning when she complains about it, she is told that the rat is lucky, and has always been in the house. But she doesn't like the rat, so she catches it and throws it in a fruit barrel in the cellar. Every day, the rat scratches, trying to get out, and every day the grandfather wants to know what the scratching is. But she says it's onions drying on the rack, or a dog sniffing around for food, or washing flapping on the line, always making excuses. Eventually, there is no more scratching...and then people start to die.... ...and to cut a long story short, in the end she opens up the barrel in despair, having lost everyone and everything, but there's nothing there but a little pile of bones.