Once upon a time there was a boy. He had a rugged beard and icy blue eyes. For his whole life, he lived in a cave on the side of a mountain.
In the morning, he would wake up, brush the sleep from his wild eyes and look for the colors of the rising sun. Watching as they played across the grey stone of his cave’s floor.
As the beginning of the day unfolded, he would stretch his taunt muscles, tight from the night’s sleep, and walk out onto the smooth grey stone of his front porch.
He would flatten out the soles of his feet to the cool stone, trying to feel the solem face of the rock. Wanting to connect his rough skin with the life flowing from the mountain. The boy spotted something unusual. He bent over to pluck the treasure from the ordinary stones. It was a dark oval stone that wasn’t like the other stones, this rock was special. As he picked it up an examined it, he saw it was in the shape of a rough heart. Holding it up to his careful eye, he studied the crystalline veins of eons and ancient myths. In that moment, he contemplated the lives that had passed, knowing those sights couldn’t be released from this little figured ignant heart.
Yet he wished for a greater understanding of the past, so he creates it in his mind like the rising and falling ebbs of civilizations past and his understanding resembles something like faith.
Playing with the rock in his weathered fingers, the boy sat on the edge of a mossy log beside the green forest. The trees were stoic as petrified ivory giants and statues of grey fallen gods. He knows there is a universe lurking within the grim branches and he likes to think that his dreams are hidden.
Right where it’s densest, darkest, and deepest.
He’s safe but alone. In that moment, he throws the heart shaped rock into the trees, just to watch the evergreen branches envelop the eons. He thought it would give him comfort but the sight seems silly to his crystal blue eyes, so instead he tries to return back to the calm of the forest, as the wilderness shakes her night’s slumber.
A badger pokes her head from the burrow below and he wishes she would whisper, “Good morning young forest Warrior”. His hearing sharpens with the activity of the day, and he refuses to be deaf to the chance of relief even though there’s an emptiness that he can never satisfy. A deep seeking step forward and his foot breaks a twig.
(Snap!)
A almost imperceptible sigh draws his attention off to the wilderness. A puff of cloudy air hangs above the edge of the lake and the sight of it robs the crystal blue color from his eyes. The loneliness breaks apart into an array of fragments as if to be lonely were merely a cloud of butterflies, ripping, ravaging, enveloping all of existence and then dissipating. He swears he can sees the very fabric of the universe unfolding before his eyes as a beautiful face floats into focus…