Cristobal/Overview

Once upon a time, there was a boy blown in on dust.
He was dirty and threadbare, without a penny to his name. And when a young couple took him in, he said "I am hungry, and so thirsty," and so he ate all the food and drank all the water.
The young couple wrung their hands, and said, "What shall we do with such a child?"
And the old Padre said, "you must ask the Virgin Mary." So the couple scrubbed the boy and combed his hair, and took him to the church.
And the Virgin Mary said, "This is no boy, this is a cat hidden in the skin of a boy." And so she touched him and the skin fell away and the boy yawned and groomed himself in the sun.
And his parents wept, for though he was a strange boy, they loved him. But now, he was a cat, and they thought he was lost to them forever.
But the Virgin Mary said, "Be not afraid, for when something has been a thing, it can never completely stop being that thing. He is no longer a boy and so he cannot live with you, but I shall take him and he shall grow into both of his skins. Perhaps one day you shall see him again."