A Boy Named Gren
A boy named Gren. A beautiful, long limbed, willowy boy with wide eyes, a high smooth forehead, and a dirty blonde mop of tangled waves at constant war with gravity. A shy boy. Spirited and curious but terrifically shy. Quiet. Silent. He's a runner. He runs and runs and runs. A perpetual motion machine smelling of black licorice and bazooka gum, lemonade and peanut butter, and the earthy, pungeant odour of sweaty young boy. Wormy when the ground swells after sudden rain. Old wood crumbling into dust after years of age, splinters melting in his hands they're so soft from rot. Every day he makes up stories off the top of his head as he gallops through the trails of giant redwoods, scaling walls of verdant green moss, ducking under canopies of ferns and pine, imagining the backwoods his own private kingdom. He communicates with the birds and deer and frogs and spiders and tiny red squirrels and they animate his tales in play by play fashion. Gren can't tell who's leading w...