Lauren--Part Sixteen

Splog # 56

Sixteen

   He would take off his clothes and lay them on a shelf that projected from the wall beside his bath. He knew that when he woke in the morning the clothes would be lying, clean and neatly folded, at the foot of his bed. He would climb into the pool, mounds of bubbles floating around him. When he scrubbed himself all over with them, they made his skin tingle and his whole body feel as though it were shining. Gradually, the bubbles would evaporate and he would play with boats and submarines and toy whales and jellyfish, and the water in the pool would eddy and whirl around him. After a time, the water would drain and then currents of air would blow on the boy from the sides of the pool and he would shake himself and execute war dances that would divest his skin of any excess dampness. Dry at last, he would put on his pajamas - they were laid out just where he would find his clothes the next morning - and then climb into bed. There was a library shelf above his head and, before settling to sleep, he would choose a book to read from until he felt drowsy. As his eyelids lowered, the book would close and lie beside him - when he returned tomorrow the book would be on the shelf over his bed - and he would fall asleep, music drifting through the room. A voice would begin a lullaby.

   Sleep and soon the day will start again/You are safe until the morning/ Dream your dreams but heed this warning...But the boy was always asleep by this time and so he never heard what the warning was.

   The boy wasn't sure how long he had been here but he didn't think about it much. There was a window on each level of the tower and he particularly enjoyed looking out of them for each one showed him a completely different view and the prospects were constantly changing. The window in his morning room faced the east and looking out from it he could see a short stretch of lawn on which the tower resided and then a wide shallow stream, or it might have been a small river. The lawn and the stream were the same from any of his four windows, although the stream had a different appearance depending on the height he was seeing it from. But beyond the stream...

   In the morning from his east window, he would look out onto a wide plain of grass that stretched in every direction. There were occasional clumps of trees or bushes, but it was, by and large, an expanse of flat land with grasses of varying heights waving in the breezes. On most days there would be statuesque clouds floating lazily across the sky. He would see animals placidly grazing among the greens of the earth. There were horses and deer, buffalo and goats, rabbits, gophers, squirrels and chipmunks, among others. There were also flocks of birds wheeling through the sky. And the sun rising over it all, bathing the scene in a golden air, unless it were raining.

 

   The window on the second level of the tower, where he ate his midday meal and his trains made their runs, looked to the south. There, across the stream, the land started to rise abruptly in low mounds and foothills that gradually burst into a full scale mountain range.

Reviews

[TLK]

It's really hard to follow the writing of these chapters. There's very little for a reader to latch on to as important.