Exploring

Exploring

Gabriel looked at his Uncles pocket watch marked with letters rather than numbers and pushed it back, snug in his pocket. He liked to look at the moon glow of the mother of pearl face in the sunlight. There was a door in the face that showed the day and he wondered what other secrets might their be, what lies beyond the door. He dreamed in cogs and spirals, in jewels and springs and constant changing circles.
He removed his school boy trousers, torn at the knees and layed them on the lichen dappled stone by the loch waving at his little brother wading in his short trousers a little way off. He could see the ripple of wind on the water which was otherwise still. This was a place for the innocents and they had more joy from here than anywhere or anything else on the Isle. It was hard to believe the loch could be so glassy, reflecting a perfect inverse image of cloudy skies and bog myrtle banked hills when the salt sprayed up in silver sparks on to the rocks of the bay just half a mile away. Frank threw a pebble out into the loch and watched as circles almost impossible to count radiated outwards into the clouds reflection.
     " I'm going to the cave," he shouted,"coming?" His brother did not respond, engrossed in his own game involving a water beetle acting as a water beetle's bouncer. Frank wrote a note 'follow the snails' thinking he would not make it easy but joyful for Fergus to follow him. He would leave a trail of snail shells behind him for his brother to follow should he wish. There was no penchant for greed or malice in these boys. Everything they owned they shared, everything they did, they did together. They were like twins, everybody said so, except they were a year apart.
        Frank left Fergus to his beetle taunting and headed off to find the glow worms in the cave. It's easy to get there, or so he'd been told but this was a lie for you have to enter your body into the deep pool and pass beneath the thunder of the waterfall. You would dive in if you were brave, get it over with, one short sharp shock. The water was too cold for that today and Frank stepped gingerly on the crisp edges of ice not wanting to be plunged into the depths. Circling the pool without entering the water is almost impossible but it is worth the effort to get to the glow worms and watch as they glimmer in the dark and tease you with a promised time of secrets.