Faithful Pebble
Part Sixty-Three
She had yet to speak. Two hours later, one hundred and twenty minutes later, Pebble didn't speak a word, not one since that morning when she stepped off the forest's trail and into its velvet foliage. But that was then, seven thousand two hundred seconds later, seven million two hundred thousand point zero-zero milliseconds later and now the trail was long behind them.
The foliage grew wild under his feet. Its flutter of leaves crumpled like broken butterflies beneath the soles of his boots. The wanderer frowned, looked through the trees and swallowed. Taking a breath, he followed the silent shadow strolling solemnly before him. He squinted observing when she stopped and when she started, when she turned and when she stepped forward. A half an hour in, he began to think they were lost. An hour after that though, when she stooped to tilt a rock, he began to notice a purpose in her actions.
It took a while, but he was certain he figured it out. Scattered between his subtle attempts to glimpse a tiny shadow draped in the forest's gloom, he believed he discovered it, her madness, not the boy, her method, her aim and path. The man smiled, using his hypothesis as an excuse, a means to test and provoke, he stirred up a conversation. "Violet means left and white means right. Am I correct?"
- Calla