Closet Work

Baloban Boys: Part 1

The baloban boys treaded into the muddy marshes, skipping over every last remains of puddle before they froze in winter. The desolate plain was without soul and their clumped presence was just a little movement in the whole forestry.

"Ahooooo!" The boy in front hooted, the lonely trees tall, grim and mute at his call. The boy couldn't hold onto the frustration about their failed luck. He furrowed his brows at the pale blankness of the afternoon light.

"Ahoooo!"

"Stop it!" Another of them snapped, stepping forward,"You'll scare them away" he reasoned and his eyes searched the woody barren branches.

There was nothing.

"If there's anything to scare away that is" Somebody mocked from the back, shaking his head at the futile attempts of his hunting party.

There was a very faint sound of a woodpecker and the clicking of squirrel. Everybody looked up. The blue sky pale and lifeless in a hazy blue. There was no sign of a fowl for the least.

"You got to be kidding me"

The boys with the bags thumped down on the ground to shun the knives. It's always about shunning the knives when luck isn't favouring them.

Marion, Sillo and Tollon had their optimism high still staring at the sky. There got to be something.

"I bet we just put up fire and sit the night" Eliot proposed whittling away curls of wooden ribbon from a twig. He was already set on the business of putting up a fire. "Night will hit soon" he strengthened on his idea.

The front three didn't flinch as they stood steady looking out at the sky.

"You know I say we just give up and leave!" It was the gritty toothed Epsol, he's annoyance and distress visible as he scoffed himself on the ground, clutching tightly on to his hand bag. He was bold on his opinion- the first of the boys w/o suggested merging with the bigger wolves- skiminson's band. Those folks had guns and gunpowder and if Lord was more unfair, then also live baits to put up traps. The fourteen year old simply idolized them. Sure, the guys themselves were a little rough with greeting and encounters in general but they said they needed a hound and the exasperated boy saw no shame in being just that.

Eliot smiled as he put the woods together. "They really need a pig don't they? You can sign up for that"

"Better than going hungry" Epsol muttered in a low whisper to himself.

"That's a kite" Tollon hoped looking at a sweep of brown in the pale blue.

Maybe that wrong kind" Eliot joked, eyes still on the woods.

"Hell no" Tollon aimed his crossbow. "That's it"

An arrow was fired and it aimed right for the sky and then took a curve across it. The rest of them looked up from their sitting positions stopping whatever they were doing for a second. They watched the slim skinny arrow go for the sky and be swallowed in its vastness in the afternoon light. The stain of expectant brown with it.

Three silent seconds passed between them.

"Well..." Eliot turned back to his campfire. "That was nothing" he got back to getting a spark.

Tollon still watched the sky, everything bleak about it.

The others behind him already made themselves comfortable sitting down and sharpening their tools. Epsol in the back was trashing his hunting knife at the thickets of an unbothered bush. He was fueled with unknown energy.

Elliot glanced back and cracked a smile. 'What's with this chimp?'

'Just his unadulterated anger' Marion went back to shunning.

Soon darkness fell in and the riots of the owls can be heard. The small hunting party pulled their beds around the scheming fire, eyes alight with sleepy hopes. They lay awake to the sound of the cracklings.

'There are owls in the forest' Tollon suggested looking away from the fire and into the dark deep trees, his eyeballs moving everywhere to find out. 'More than a hundred' his voice becoming greedy.

Eliot heaved a sigh, 'You will find none if we go looking now'

'Seriously do you want another rattle snake soup?' Marion barked from his bed. He wanted to weigh in the possibilities of owls in the woods.

'No' somebody answered dryly.

'Skiminson's don't have to' It was Epsol who was absorbed in the pattern of the stars in the sky.