Robert Mitchell looks at the youngster on the examination table. His shirt is in tatters; dirt, leaves, and twigs covering the remnants of cloth. He looks back to the young couple, nervously standing in the corner of his small office.
"And you say he fell out of a tree?"
Johnathan Kent nods, the words spilling quickly from his lips as he hurriedly blurts out an explanation.
"Yeah, he was climbing out on the edge of the property and must have trusted a dead branch. Is he okay, Doc? Are there any internal injuries? He say's nothing hurts, but..."
The worried young man looks to his adopted son. The small boy yawns, it is far past his usual bedtime.
"He was climbing, after dusk? In the trees at your farm? The old pines that don't have any branches lower than 15 feet?"
Martha and her husband exchange a brief look, Robert smiles warmly as he continues.
"Don't worry, Nancy is gone for the day, and Javier is on vacation. It's just us here, you can speak freely."
"I was flying, and I couldn't figure out how to land."
The boy's voice is calm, as if he had just informed the aging doctor that he was catching fireflies.
Then
The phone rings, interrupting his slumber. He groggily flails his hand about on the bedside table, finally flipping the handset from the cradle. Rolling over, he holds the telephone to his ear, hoping to get back to his dream without too much hassle.
"Who is it?"
The panic in the voice on the other end of the line snaps him from his sleep.
"Hold on, slow down. What happened? Did you call the fire department, the police? Okay, calm down, I'm on my way."
His wife rolls over, lifting her sleep mask to watch as he rises from the bed, fumbling through his wardrobe for clothes.
"Where are you going?"
"Down to the Kent farm, don't worry, it's probably nothing. These kids get worked up about every little thing out in the country. Go back to sleep."
Lorraine is already snoring, the mask slowly slipping down to cover her eyes once again.
Later, he arrives at the old Kent farm, where white smoke rises from the unmaintained fields behind the recently refurbished farmhouse. Martha runs to the car, already waiting on the expansive porch, it's fresh lumber standing out among the aging wood of the house. He cuts the engine, opening the door to her frantic words.
"... he's out back, he said we couldn't call anyone until you got here."
Calming the frightened woman, Robert walks around the end of the drive. As he clears the backside of the house, the source of the steam comes into view. A silver metal cylinder, blunted at the ends, hisses under the spray of water from the old garden hose in John Kent's hand. The young man turns as he approaches, and Mitchell sees, for the first time, the infant cradled in the crook of the man's arm.
The rich blue blanket swaddling the child seems to shimmer in the light of the small fires as John continues to hose down the smoldering field. The boy sniffles as Robert approaches.
"So, who's this young man?"
John looks at him, his eyes tired, far beyond his scant twenty-something years. "We heard a crash, and came outside, and he was in this, this THING."
"Well, it's not the usual stork."
His joke falls flat, Johnathan staring at him blankly.
"Let's, um, let's get him inside, alright? I need to at least check him out."
The boy's vitals all seem normal, at least those that Robert can check. When he attempts to take a blood sample, intending to test it later at his office, the needle simply broke before it pierced the skin. Explaining to the young couple that occasionally a badly manufactured needle would slip through QA, he tried again. By the third shattered tip, he gave up.
Over the next few days, they gradually discover that the unearthly child is, seemingly, invulnerable. A fall from the couch when Martha's back was turned had sent the infant's head into the coffee table corner, but he simply laughed. The mysterious boy seemed to love being outside, smiling contentedly in the summer sun. Robert and the young couple found themselves perplexed, but nothing seemed dangerous, so he advises the couple to keep his odd resilience a secret.
He manages to push through adoption papers, as the only doctor in the small town, it wasn't an overly difficult task. Expediting the paperwork, the Kents adopt the boy only 5 months after the late night call, naming him Clark, after Robert's father. He is incredibly touched by the sentiment.
Now
"So, he's flying now?"
"Looks like it, we didn't know until today. He says he only figured it out this afternoon."
"First he lifts a tractor with one arm, and now he flies?"
Doc Mitchell kneels before the boy, smiling as he teases the child, barely past his toddler years. "What are we going to do with you, young man?"