Morning all, ready to dive into the morning prompt? As I have been knee deep in editing this week I am kind of looking forward to fifteen minutes of just story, so timers set and off we go.
I like the fish out of water idea I just need to see the shape of the story. Like the character though, or the potential of him I should say.
Thursday, March 26th: The sunlight shone through the window leaving a pattern on the floorboards.
The sunlight shone through the window leaving a pattern on the floorboards. He watched the diamond shaped light shift across the dark wood, warm yellow white light bright against the dark stain. They shifted about in irregular motions and he noticed some of them had a slightly green tint that would flash as they moved. Looking up at the window he could see the tree outside. He didn’t know what sort of tree it was as trees had never been a particular interest to him.
He knew trees were important but they weren’t really a part of his life in their natural state. He saw them lining the streets and grouped in the park. The park he generally saw at a distance and the ones lining his street were spindly little things, tall sticks branching out and officially getting small long and thing leaves like flattened almonds. They didn’t stay green long. In facet when he saw them in their flash of green it was always a surprise.
Optimism over experience. The green leaves unfurled and then the tree realized the air was too polluted and the sunlight to dim to bother. They then turned brown and fell off. They were added to the other litter on the street, occasionally swept away by the wind and more often getting caught in corners to rot with the other trash.
These were different things entirely. The leaves were large and broad. The green came in shades that alternated with the wind. Looking at them he could see they were trees that might have names. Elm, Oak, birch. Here his list of tree names ran dry. He assumed there were others, he just didn’t know them. They were vastly different from the things he called trees.
‘Everything is vastly different,’ he thought.
He watched the wind blow through the trees, shifting their leaves and causing the light that fell through the diamond shaped window panes to dance light across the floorboards. He tried not to fidget. While the uniform the school provided was another element in a sea of strange, he was finding the periods of inactivity stranger still.
He was accustomed to quiet, but it was stillness of the body for a reason. A pause to take in the scene before him while still concealed in shadows. The search and identification of predators. Remaining motionless to avoid notice or because it was a required part of completing a task. Those sorts of stillness moments he understood. He could go still enough when he felt the need that others here could forget his presence completely. That part was useful at times.
What he was having a harder time adjusting to was the required stillness with no discernible reason. As he sat in the chair waiting for his turn in the headmaster’s office, he wondered if it was the required stillness or the lack of activity in other parts of his day that was the true issue for him.
He could go statue still for as long as needed, but then there were long bouts of frantic activity. Of pushing his body to its utmost limits. Here the activity was limited, and the inactivity longer. He felt consistently off balance as he tried to adjust.
‘It’s not all bleak,’ he reminded himself. He had enough to eat and a warm and comfortable place to sleep. He had gone without both often enough he didn’t discount them.
Ten til Midnight 