the clearing

The ambition of a boy is equivocal. Its surety races in its rising and setting, but the whims that propel it are unbeknownst to anyone who is not an equivocal boy of ambition.

He ascended up tired rungs of the old iron-wood ladder, and, upon reaching the flat precipice, caught sight of two tilers. Not yet having caught their sight, the boy waited, wishing that their stolid gaze would shift direction and lie into him.  In this way, he would not have the terrible duty of bandying forth a greeting; he was dirty, his aunt told him, and you do not deserve things if you are dirty. But he hated bathing time, so he left her.

The boy waited, then descended the ladder, then rested the legs.  He looked up to the sun and turned about, now facing the south and east.  The old man who had passed through the town the previous sowing season had done that, halting in his far travel and depositing his lips on the ground.  The old man muttered “devil curses,” but he later seemed pleased with his quiet efforts. 

The boy hiked his trousers above his caps and did the aforementioned pattern while replacing the mutterings with the silent prayer he learned. His aunt’s church said that when you prayed, you sometimes got something. The boy wanted the attention of the workers. So then, he prayed. So then, the boy’s ears heard something.

A mocking bird had settled next to him while he was quiet, and she began to warble at him.  When he turned about and faced it, the bird took wing to the north and west.  The boy got up to give chase.  Mocking bird eggs were lucky unless you sold him, but the boy had been meaning to find a stowaway to keep lucky things for some time; these would be the christening items!  He chased her to the nearby tree-line in a jutting fashion, the bird landing once it put distance betwixt her pursuer and then leaving once the boy approached. 

With the pine trees enveloping him, the boy looked back at the workers, but they had left anyways.  He moved on into the forest, coming into a clearing that began to bend and burn.