Lost Angel

Chapter 2

Austin

The leaves were blooming beautifully. The thick layers blocked most of the sunlight from beaming directly onto them, but Austin loved looking up into them as they were lit up from above. The forest was alive around them, buzzing with life and energy. Austin could feel the air vibrating around him, reaching to him and begging to be felt. It danced in his hair and against his face. 

"You're starting to go distant." 

"I'm still here. I promise. I'm just taking it all in." Austin loved the smell of the pines, taller than most of the buildings in the city. The needles jutted out and into the canopy of oak leaves. Everything about it smelled like Heaven to him. He could smell the dirt under their feet. He could smell the different trees, and the gentle hint of the wildlife that surely scattered as they moved noisily through. "Isn't this the most wonderful thing? Can't you feel the life around you? Do you feel anything?" 

"Sweaty and lost. Are you sure you know where it is?" 

"Of course. We just have to find the creek and then past the lightning tree." Austin had felt something tug inside of him when he first saw that giant. It reached out all over and looked bare, but pulsed with something Austin couldn't identify. The wind had blown through and the branches almost looked like tentacles reaching for something. 

Austin took a moment when they reached the creek. He showed David how to cup his hand correctly to take a drink without picking up sand and rocks with it. Although it was shallow, the creek seemed more refreshing than any bottle of water had been. Austin reached in after a moment and handed David a sharp stone. It was clear that he didn't feel as excited to hold something so old and fashioned from the power of water. Austin thought it was so beautiful to think about what that one stone may have been through. They sat for a while and Austin talked about the formation of stone and how this rock could have eroded from a boulder down to the palm-sized stone it was now. David was as lost as ever. 

"It's just a rock." David turned it over in his palm, not seeing the possibilities. 

"It isn't just a rock! This is history that you are holding in your hand. Imagine this: The stone you hold starts its journey fifty miles away from this spot. The first person to see it sits against it to rest while they walk to where they are going. Maybe there's more than one person. They have a conversation, maybe an argument, maybe they proclaim their love next to it. Animals have sniffed it, rubbed against it, slept on top of it, perched on it. The rain and weather erode it over many years. Someone breaks it somehow. They throw it into a stream. Maybe its picked up and carried. Do you see where I'm going with this?" 

"No, why does this matter?" His face portrays his frustration too easily. 

"I suppose, to you, it doesn't. To me, I see so many lives being observed by this exact stone. It has been through history. It is a part of the world we never knew before we were born. Look at the small lines on it that look like a ripple in water. Is that not kind of cool to you?" 

"I guess?" He shrugs, and that is when Austin decides to leave the thoughts to himself. 

The boys take another drink before finishing their journey. The great barren giant stands before them, towering like frozen lightning. This being, the energy it emits, pulls at Austin somewhere deep in his gut. 

"This is it." 

"It's a dead tree." 

Austin put a hand to David's chest to keep him from going closer and ruining the feeling. Austin felt the instinct as easily as he could feel David's heart racing from the hike. If his friend kept speaking or touched the ground around the tree, it would leave.