A Boy Appears
Some fiction.
Night again, and he is in the den, the cave, having hiked down to Mrs. Rickets, his hairy body covered in a civilian suit, and climbed back with the heavy flats of canned goods strapped to his back. When he returned in the afternoon, he ate, then perused the woods, finding berries, finding kindling, finding nettles. Now he sits on the rock at late dusk, the horizon a sweet, smoothly blended gray/blue/white color, the color of nothing else exactly, maybe some bird’s feather. He watches the wind, the clouds, and smells lichen, pine, and the stony tint of dry limestone. He sees bats chasing midges, feeding, hears the crack of a branch and returns inside, speculating on what animal had crept past his hideout.
Fire. The dark comfort, a known quantity that wisely circumscribes a distance with its stern warning of pain on the skin. His hide protects him from it. It’s not the same sharp sting as when he was pale and smooth. A man. A weak, vulnerable man.
He hangs the kettle above the fire, sits on the mat and looks at the two crates.
An indifferent, woolly face, one side of lit by the fire’s flickering flames. A continuous beard from the ears, down the jaw, to the neck. Abandon in the eyes. Mad laughter echoes off stone and out into the mountain night.
