The Pond

How it all started

The sun had manage to creep directly above the boy before he had time to even remember all the early morning chores he had left unfinished. He already knew that his fathers response would most likely not be to grim, "There'll just be more for tomorrow then," or "That just means more fresh cows milk tomorrow morning," or if he was having a particularity rough day it would be more along the lines of "Since you can't get it done in the time I give you, you'll be waking up at the crack of dawn and working till that sun goes down," but it was hardly ever option B and even at that his fathers words where never carried through.
His father had become more and more gentle with him since his mother had died. It was almost as if his father saw him as a winters lake, scared with each step that the thin layer protecting him from the deathly cold water would collapse with the smallest wrong step.

The boy had finished with the seeds of the cat-tail, when the sun was still hung at the back of his head and had slowly moved down to the stem, cracking it under his finger tips and letting it slide down his hand into the pond, but the fish had lost there appetite a while back, leaving a small gathering of twig and seeds to float on the water, possibly forever. Once he was done with the stem he had carefully lowered his body and stretched across the rock to snap another at its stem, to lazy to get up from the warm rock. He had worked his way down to the stem of his second cat-tail, and decided it was time to go for lunch and confront his gentle father about why all the cows were still bloated with milk.

He rose carefully from his comfortable spot, his legs a little wobbly because of the lack of movement during the morning. He firmly grasped his last piece of stem, steadied himself and threw his it as far as his arm allowed, which wasn't very far. His child's arm lead the stem to the very end of the pond where it landed on the water with a hardly noticeable splash. It floated gently on the water and the boy observed carefully for a few seconds before slowly turning away. He had already started heading towards his house with was only about 3 elephant lengths away, when he had the sudden urge to look back at his days resting spot.

That's when he saw it, the last piece of stem he threw was rapidly sunk under the water, from that spot a small ripple in the water formed and slowly parted creating a small blast of water headed towards the bundle of cat-tail as if something was swimming quickly underneath, the boys eyes followed as it reached the mess of seeds and stem, and they were all pulled underneath anything unlike what the fish where capable of doing. A reasonable adult and maybe even an older kid would have thought it odd but came to the quick conclusion that it was simply the fish or perhaps even an otter had found its way into the little pond, even if it was way past the time fish and otters usually had their meals. But the boy was not an older kid and not an adult, he did not believe that any sort of fish or otter could have done what he just saw. The only reasonable thing to do in his curious mind, was to investigate.