Paris is a beautiful city. Me, not so much, mostly because I am not a city. But I'm not beautiful either. You see, I'm a rat. My name is Remy. And as weird as it sounds, I work in one of the finest restaurants in Paris. You may have heard of Auguste Gusteau, best cook ever and all... No? Well, he is the founder of this restaurant. But he died before I even got the chance to work here. That was one of the saddest days of my life.
Anyway, I work paired with this young man Lunguini. He is a little... hm... terrible at cooking by himself, so I have been helping him by controlling his cooking skills with his hair. To date, I still ask myself how is that supposed to be possible, but that doesn't really matter as long as it works, right?
What I would like to tell you about is something that happened couple of weeks ago, on my day off, I guess. (Linguini had a day off, so technically...) It started as a casual Saturday morning. I was walking right by the river Seine, with not too many people noticing me. Those who did, were mostly avoiding me. Few tried to hit me so that I would fall into Seine and drown myself. Ha, fail.
In time, I got on Pont des Arts bridge. (The one with all those padlocks, which fell apart.) I wanted to cross the bridge, but you know, humans were on the way. So I decided I'd rather not. Instead, I got up on the hilt and saw the most awesome panorama ever! I could even see the Eiffel tower from there. By this point, it was probably around 11:00 AM. It was somewhat cloudy.
Naturally, everyone around me was like: - Ew, a rat! - so they all ran away from me. But, someone hit me (accidentally) and I fell in Seine. That was not exactly non-painful, since the fall was from, I'd say, 20 meters of height!
I fell too deep into the water. I did almost drown myself! I took a really deep breath, but I felt like it wouldn't be enough. I was swimming towards the surface as fast as possible, and just as I was about to lose the breath, I got out. Good thing I was wrong about that breath.
So I was all wet, and I went climbing to the nearest concrete floor... and then someone grabbed my hand and pulled me over! And I just yelled: - Hey!
I hit the ground with my butt a little too hard.
- Ow!
- Sorry - said that who pulled me. So I opened my eyes widely to see who it was. It was a female rat. Much older than me, and brown. I did not recognize her from the rat clan I had been living in before going to that restaurant. She was looking at me kinda strangely, with a look that didn't seem very pleasing. At least not to me.
- Are you okay? - she asked me.
- Yes, thanks - I replied, to which she instantly continued:
- I'm sorry, I couldn't just stand there and watch you suffering and do nothing.
- Oh... - I muttered, still petrified from that near-death experience. - Thank you, then.
We looked each other in the eyes for a few seconds. It was awkward.
- I am Ella - she introduced herself. So I went the same way:
- Remy - and we shook hands.
