He's lying. He doesn't like to lie, but sometimes it is necessary. Sometimes it is right, or so his mother tells him. But then, he's never really trusted her.
His mother's never made it easy for him.
When he was younger she'd tell him bedtime stories, tell him legends about a screaming, red-faced goblin- child: unwanted, unloved, abandoned on a hillside to the wolves. Tell him about the child cursed by fate, the child so uncared for that his own parents handed him without qualm to his death. The child who had so inconveniently survived. The child that she neither needed nor wanted, the child she had happily given up to death. The child she hated.
He's never really trusted her since she told him who the child was.
He used to think she was lying – that she was just angry and wanted to make him feel bad. But she was telling the truth. And he's lying now. It's a role reversal.
She was telling the truth. The truth, the only commodity that tastes sweeter when diluted. The truth, the obstacle, the barrier that's been there all his life. The truth, that's stopped him in his tracks every time he's tried to make something of himself.
The truth, a privilege he gave up long ago. And he's not yet ten years old. And it's bittersweet.
'Did you like her, son?'
'Yes.'
He's lying.
He didn't like her. He thought she was pretty. And he liked her rings. And her hair. And her eyes. But he didn't like her.
He's lying. And his mother knows it.
He's being insincere. And it doesn't suit him.
Watch the sky.