Vanilla

Prologue

The trembling of a branch, low and shaken by the wind, shed leaves that were yellowed and crimson—rolling as they fell, cloaking the barren land in a shade so warm, he could not feel the bite of the breeze.

They cracked under his weight, the leaves did. Brown and dried, falling apart into flakes and crisps that resembled the texture of a pastry his mother used to bake. He couldn't seem to remember the name and while the boy was a head above his peers in language, there remained limits to his four years of life and a description of something intangible, merely tasted in something akin to a dream, was not yet within his capability.

He could, however, describe the distant shouts of mirth and joy coming from the window, directly above where he was seated, legs-crossed with a book in his lap. They were squeals of excitement and surprise, pitched high enough to belong to children and those with a heart younger than his own.

Had any of the teachers at his elementary school seen a four-year-old with his head buried in 'The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde', they would have assumed he was flipping the pages for pictures. Miss Julie was the only one who'd done otherwise, asking the boy what the book was about and receiving the most delightful, intelligent response she'd ever heard a child utter.

It was then that she'd asked where he'd gotten the book from, and there, she'd met his uncle.

There were things that the boy did not quite understand at his age, and one of those things was the way in which one stranger can come to love another. For there to be a string despite the absence of ties—familial, blood—was, to him, incredulous. It was absurd.

From where he was seated, he could hear the squeak of the teeterboard in the playground. He quite liked the sound. It meant that there were people playing. One seated on the left end and another on the right. Only then, there would be a sound.

He closed his book and peered up at the open window where the whisper of the breeze came through. Along with it, a strange disharmony of voices and shouts from the school's backyard, where the playground was and where the children played but he—was he a child?

The concept of play; the very thought of there existing a form of sating a heart that was young felt to him oddly distant. He stood on his toes, eyes barely making it past the windowsill even with an elevated viewpoint, taking in the land covered in leaves and the sound of them being crushed under moving feet.

For the boy, each and every component of the playground had its own purpose to serve. While the sandbox was reserved for imagination and creativity, the metal slide had the ability to sweep one off their feet in a fleeting moment of speed; the swing, a way to grow a pair of momentary wings and the monkey bars a test of courage but the seesaw.

The seesaw was special. He could, just by observing, tell that it was the most popular pick and to attribute a reason for this took him a week of consistent observation and another to confirm his conclusion.

"Do you want to join them?"

The boy turned, startled by the abrupt interruption of his thoughts as though he'd forgotten that he wasn't the only one existing in this world. He stared up at the teacher who had called out to him, lowering his toes that were tipped.

"I'm okay with just watching, Miss." He smiled and returned to his book that was on the floor, lowering himself into a cross-legged position and flipping open to the page that he'd left it at.

His school teacher took one look at the book that was almost three times the length of the boy's palm and words that she could not make out from where she was standing. They were far too small for human eyes.