Out on the coast along the bay, there is a row of black huts, all with their gables out towards the water, and in the evenings the sleepy light from the small windows in the gables is reflected and reproduced in countless shapes in the dark waters, twisting and twirling like eels.
The Wise Virgins live behind one of these gable windows.
They sit beneath their lighted wall lamp in the spotless kitchen, where the kettle sings on the stove and the cat lies in a straw basket with its kittens.
They sit reading the Holy Scriptures. They read about the End of the World and the Last Day that is soon to come. No one knows when, for it comes “like a thief in the night”.
The Wise Virgins are poor and have nothing to live on except charitable gifts from good people, for they don’t work for their food, but simply sit reading the Scriptures. “For every day could be the last.” Now and then they draw the red checked kitchen curtains aside and look out to see whether there are Signs in the Heavens.
No, not yet. There is only darkness and the whispering waters and the lantern in the Redoubt.
It happens that a strange light can be seen in the sky, as though something very big is approaching bathed in light. But then it’s only the Moon rising behind the horizon.