Ocean
The wind in the Temple is cool, and laughter floats along the breeze until it reaches his ears. The boy should be playing right now, a group of friends stand on wooden poles and wait for him to join, but today he doesn't feel like fun.
Today there is an ache in his heart, and he instead sits by the pond and stares at it for a long, hard time. The passing monks leave him be, assuming he is trying to meditate, or imagining himself with arrows marked along his body as many young boys do, but the thoughts of this child are not so innocent.
The thoughts of this child are greedy and ungrateful, though he doesn't know it. The thing he wants most is not to meditate, or to picture arrows he knows he will one day earn, but something with much more longing and sorrow, something that would offend the monks so badly he doesn't even tell Gyatso.
But the teacher finds out anyway, because he can hear the boy speak in his sleep, mumbles through tears of wanting and needing and hearing voices call to him, and him following.
When you have a bison, Gyatso would tell him, then you can follow, but for now you stay with me, at the temple, with the air.
And the boy loves Gyatso, and he loves the temple, and he loves the air, but what he wants more than anything is to see the ocean…
Note: This will be a mini drabble series I'm creating to fill the void in my heart that the loss of Kataang ABA caused…
