The rain pattered against the windowpane with a hypnotic monotony, a gray and constant rhythm that seemed to envelop the house in a bubble of melancholy. It was one of those Sunday afternoons when time seems to stretch, becoming thick and slow. Inside the living room, the air was heavy, not only with the dampness of the approaching storm, but with a dense, almost tangible silence that filled the space between two generations sitting just a few feet apart, yet separated by an invisible abyss.

Grandfather, Don Manuel, sat in his favorite wingback chair, a worn leather piece that had molded to the shape of his body over the decades. In his gnarled hands, marked by years of hard work, he held a book. It wasn’t just any book; it was a large volume, hardbound with red cloth covers and gilt lettering that time had begun to fade. It was a treasure from his own childhood, a portal to worlds of knights, dragons, and hidden treasures. The scent of old paper and vanilla that emanated from its pages was, to him, the sweetest perfume in the world.

Facing him, curled up on the sofa with her legs crossed, was Lucía, his seven-year-old granddaughter. But Lucía wasn’t really there. Her physical body occupied the space, yes, but her mind traveled at the speed of light through circuits and remote servers. She held a tablet in her hands with an almost religious reverence. Her face, bathed in the artificial, bluish glow of the screen, was expressionless, save for the occasional micro-gesture triggered by what was happening in the digital game. Her fingers slid frantically across the cold glass, oblivious to the texture of the real world.

Manuel watched her over the rim of his reading glasses. He felt a pang in his chest, a dull ache he knew all too well. It was the loneliness of the spectator, the sadness of seeing how childhood, that stage he remembered filled with scraped knees, climbing trees, and stories by candlelight, had transformed into something static and silent. He wanted to connect with her, wanted their worlds to collide, even if only for a moment.

—Lucía, darling— said Manuel, his voice a little hoarse from lack of use in the last hour.

The girl didn’t respond. She didn’t even blink. The sound of her name bounced off the “invisible wall” of technology and fell to the ground unheard.

Manuel cleared his throat and tried again, this time with a little more energy, raising the book as if it were a shield or a peace offering. “Look what I found on the top shelf. Do you remember this one? It’s the book of fables you liked when you were a baby. It has the story of the fox who wanted to fly.”

Lucía made a guttural sound, a vague and distant “mmm” that meant neither yes nor no, but simply “I’m busy.” Her eyes didn’t stray an inch from the garish colors exploding on her screen.

The old man sighed, letting the book fall onto his lap. The weight of the volume suddenly felt unbearable, as if it carried the weight of a forgotten era. He felt obsolete. In that modern living room, surrounded by blinking routers, smartphones, and smart TVs, he felt like a typewriter in a computer store: a curiosity, a relic, something that no longer had any practical use.

She remembered how her own grandfather used to tell her stories. She remembered the thrill of hearing the human voice, the nuances, the dramatic pauses, the shared fear and laughter. Had all that been lost forever? Was Lucía condemned to receive her emotions through algorithms and pixels? The helplessness turned into a bitter resignation. Perhaps, she thought, I have nothing left to offer her. Perhaps my stories are too slow for her fiber-optic world.

She looked out the window. The sky, which had been a leaden gray, was rapidly darkening, taking on a violet and menacing hue. The treetops in the garden began to shake violently, as if trying to tear themselves uprooted and flee. The wind began to whistle through the cracks in the windows, a low, steady howl that rattled the panes. Nature seemed to be angry, gathering a furious energy that contrasted sharply with the digital apathy inside the house.

Manuel felt a chill. It wasn’t cold; it was a premonition. Something was about to break. The atmosphere felt electric, charged with static. He looked at Lucía once more, so fragile under that blue light, so disconnected from the real storm brewing just a few feet away. And then, the sky opened with a roar that shook the foundations of the house, as if a giant had struck the earth with a celestial hammer, and in that precise instant, reality as they knew it that afternoon was about to change drastically.

The thunder was deafening, but what followed was even more shocking: absolute silence.

With a sharp crack, like the end of a life, the electricity died. The constant hum of the refrigerator, the flicker of the router, the ambient light from the lamps, and, most critically, the hypnotic glow of Lucia’s tablet—all vanished in an instant. The house was plunged into profound darkness, broken only by the lightning flashing furiously outside, casting long, ghostly shadows on the walls.

Lucia’s reaction was visceral. It was as if her oxygen had been cut off. She dropped the tablet, which was now nothing more than an inert, black piece of glass, and shrank back on the sofa. “Grandpa!” she cried, her voice trembling, filled with genuine panic.

For her, darkness wasn’t just the absence of light; it was total disconnection. Her world had gone dark. She felt blind, deaf, and alone. The fear of the unknown, that ancestral fear that technology had dulled but never eliminated, resurfaced with force.

Manuel, however, felt no fear. For him, darkness was an old friend. He had grown up in times of scarcity, in times when candles were a necessity, not a romantic decoration. His eyes, though tired, adapted more quickly to the dimness. He felt a sudden calm, a mental clarity he hadn’t experienced all afternoon.

“Relax, my love,” Manuel said, his voice sounding incredibly firm and confident in the darkness. “I’m here. Don’t move.”

She stood up carefully, her feet memorizing every obstacle in the room. She walked to the antique sideboard, opened a drawer that creaked softly, and her fingers recognized the cold, metallic feel of her old pocket lantern. She also picked up a couple of thick candles and a box of matches.

The sound of the match striking the sandpaper was loud and comforting. A small orange flame appeared seemingly out of nowhere, dancing in the air. Manuel lit the candles and then the flashlight. The room was transformed. The harsh shadows of the lightning softened, replaced by a warm, golden, flickering light that turned the modern living room into an ancient cave, a refuge outside of time.

Lucía remained on the sofa, hugging her knees, her eyes wide open, reflecting the candle flame. She was no longer looking at a screen; she was looking at her grandfather. And for the first time in a long time, she truly saw him. She saw the wrinkles on his face illuminated from below, she saw the quiet strength in his posture.

Manuel sat down again, but not in his armchair. He sat on the floor, near the white wall that had been left free of decorations. He strategically placed the flashlight on the coffee table so that the beam of light struck the wall directly, creating a bright, perfect circle, like a private full moon inside the house.

“Are you afraid?” he asked gently.

Lucía nodded, unable to lie in that revealing light. “There’s no internet. There’s no electricity. I don’t know what to do,” she confessed in a small voice.

Manuel smiled, a mischievous smile that made him look twenty years younger. “Ah, but we have something better than the internet, Lucía. We have imagination. And we have shadows.”

He raised his hands toward the beam of light. On the wall, two dark shapes appeared. Manuel flexed his fingers, adjusted the position of his wrists, and suddenly, the shadow ceased to be hands and became the head of a rabbit. The long ears twitched, the nose seemed to sniff the air.

Lucía let out a small, stifled gasp of surprise. She leaned forward, momentarily forgetting her fear.

“This is Pimpón,” Manuel introduced, voicing the shadow rabbit. His voice changed, becoming higher and faster. “Pimpón is a very brave rabbit, but he has a problem. He lost his way home in the middle of a big storm, just like this one.”

The grandfather waved his other hand and a bird appeared, flying clumsily. “And this is your friend, Mr. Crow, who, although he’s a bit grumpy, knows all the secrets of the forest.”

Lucía got off the sofa and sat on the rug next to her grandfather, her eyes fixed on the wall. “Is the wolf going to eat him?” she asked, anticipating the plot, completely engrossed.

—Ah! That depends— Manuel said mysteriously. —Do you think Pimpón should hide or should he run?

“Run!” Lucia shouted. “Make him run fast!”

And so, the magic happened. Manuel didn’t just move his hands; he acted. He made the sound of the wind blowing through the trees, the crackling of dry branches, the distant howl of a wolf. His hands transformed with astonishing fluidity: now they were a barking dog, now an old man walking with a cane, now a majestic eagle swooping down.

The white wall ceased to be a wall. It became an infinite canvas where the story came to life. There were no 4K graphics, no stereo sound, no computer-generated special effects. There was only light, shadow, and the voice of a grandfather weaving a universe for his granddaughter.

Lucía was fascinated. Her mind, freed from the passivity of the screen, began to work at full speed. She imagined the colors of the forest, the texture of the rabbit’s fur, the cold of the rain. “Grandpa, watch out!” she suddenly shouted, pointing at a shadow that seemed threatening. “Make the river jump!”

Manuel obeyed, making the shadow rabbit leap spectacularly from one side of the circle of light to the other. Lucia laughed, clapped, and in a moment of pure emotion, raised her own little hands toward the light.

“I want to help!” he exclaimed.

Manuel didn’t stop her. With infinite patience, he guided her small fingers. “Look, if you put your thumb like this and bring these two fingers together… that’s it… very good! It’s a snail!”

“It’s a magic snail!” Lucia corrected excitedly. “And it’s going to help the rabbit find its way because its shell glows in the dark!”

For the next hour, the storm outside ceased to exist. Time stood still. They weren’t an old man and a little girl separated by decades of misunderstanding; they were two companions in adventure, two creators exploring a world that only existed because they were imagining it together. Manuel felt Lucía’s warmth beside him, her laughter vibrating in the air, and his heart filled with such intense joy that he wanted to cry. He realized he didn’t need to compete with the tablet; he only needed to invite it to play on his turf, the turf of the human, the tangible, the shared.

The story reached its climax. Pimpón the Rabbit and the Magic Snail were about to enter the Cave of Echoes to find their final refuge. The tension in the room was palpable. Manuel lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper, and Lucía held her breath, gripping her grandfather’s arm tightly.

—And then… when Pimpón looked into the darkness of the cave, he saw… —Manuel paused theatrically.

“What did he see? Grandpa, what did he see!” Lucia insisted.

In that precise second, reality interrupted the fantasy with the same abruptness with which it had left.

The ceiling lights flickered once, twice, and then shone with blinding intensity. The television reactivated itself, blasting a detergent commercial at full volume. The router began blinking its green and orange lights, signaling the return of the connection to the digital world. The hum of appliances filled the silence.

The flashlight beam became invisible under the electric light. The magical shadows on the wall vanished instantly, leaving only a dull, white surface.

The spell was broken.

Manuel blinked, dazzled by the sudden light. He felt an immediate weight in his stomach. The magic was over. The electricity had returned, and with it, he feared, would return the distance. He lowered his hands slowly, feeling the stiffness in his joints again. He stared at the floor, waiting for the inevitable moment when Lucía would jump up to check her tablet, to see if she had regained the Wi-Fi, to return to her isolated world.

The noise from the television was annoying, aggressive. Manuel prepared to get up and return to his armchair, to his solitude as a viewer, grateful at least for having had that hour of connection.

But Lucia didn’t move.

Grandpa looked up and met her gaze. The little girl was sitting on the rug, staring at the white wall where, just moments before, Pimpón and the Magic Snail had lived. Then he looked at the tablet, which was now glowing on the sofa, indicating that it had battery and was connected. A notification popped with a cheerful “ding.”

It was the moment of truth. The choice between what was easy and what was meaningful.

Lucía stood up slowly. She walked towards the sofa. Manuel held his breath, feeling his heart break a little as he watched her approach the device.

But Lucia didn’t pick up the tablet.

She walked past the sofa and went straight to the main light switch. With firm determination, she pressed the button.

The room was once again plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the candles that had not yet been extinguished and the beam of the flashlight that was still lit on the table.

Then she walked over to the television and pressed the off button, silencing the detergent salesman. The wonderful, knowing silence returned.

Lucía turned around and ran back to Manuel, throwing herself to the ground beside him with a smile that shone brighter than any LED screen. She took her grandfather’s hands, those old, wrinkled hands, and placed them back in front of the flashlight beam.

“You’re not finished, Grandpa,” she said, with a mixture of demandingness and boundless affection. “Pimpón was going into the cave. What did he see? I don’t want to watch TV, I want to know what the rabbit saw.”

Manuel felt tears welling in his eyes, but this time he didn’t hold them back. They were tears of pure happiness, of triumph, of love. He looked at his granddaughter and saw in her eyes that spark of human curiosity he thought was extinct, that thirst for stories that makes us human.

With a trembling smile, Manuel raised his hands again. His fingers, which no longer hurt at all, traced the rabbit’s silhouette on the wall once more.

“Well, you see…” he began, his voice filled with emotion. “What Pimpón saw in the cave wasn’t a treasure of gold, nor a terrible monster. What he saw was… his own shadow, telling him that he had never been alone.”

Outside, the storm continued to rage, and the world kept turning with its technology and its relentless pace. But in that small room, under the flickering light of a lantern, a grandfather and his granddaughter had discovered something far more powerful than electricity: they had discovered that sometimes it’s necessary to turn off the world in order to turn each other on. And there, amidst shadows and laughter, the story continued, written not on a hard drive, but in the indelible memory of the heart.