Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

dressed as the grim reaper. Haha! Can you imagine that? Poor bastards. Could have easily killed someone.

..Saying that though, I wonder how many do die, on Halloween, when the costumed kids come to the door?”

“You really don’t like old people, do you?” I said.

He laughed heartily. “No comment.” He smirked at the ground.

“Oh!” he added. “And in Glasgow somebody nailed a memorial to the bench in Kelvingrove park. Do you know how people make those little plaques to their loved ones in their memory? Well, this one said- Sadam Hussain, R.I.P, Nineteen-sixty-three to two-thousand-and-three. HAHAHAHA.”

“I bet people were happy with that.”

“Oh, naturally. They were delighted.”

A red squirrel cut out across us from the undergrowth, and scurried up a tree, stopping halfway to look around, then running up again. We watched it for a good ten minutes, until we couldn’t see it anymore.

“So beautiful.” Harry commented.

“I know.”

The valley was silent but for the water. As we stood there together, complicity taking in that quietness, while looking up into the trees for another glimpse of the squirrel, it felt like we were sharing a special moment.

“You know why he didn’t come across from the river?” Harry said seriously.

I shook my head, and looked at him earnestly, prepared to be imparted with some more knowledge of his, or a quote from some philosopher.

“So that he didn’t get his nuts wet.” Harry laughed.

We were soon approaching the oak tree I had climbed. “That’s it there,” I nodded ahead.

“Cool! It’s stunning.” He looked with admiration, though we were still about forty steps away. “So, you said you had that dream, about coming down from a mountain? And people were going down a path, that you thought they chose? Coming from and going back to God, you said, right?”

“Yeah.” I confirmed.

“Well, do you think we are born with personalities then? Like Solzhenitsyn said. Like, you meet people from the same family, brothers and sisters, and from an early age they are so different. I know you don’t have brothers and sisters, but.”

“Yeah, I guess so. They didn’t tell me that, but yeah, I think we do. Our own personalities. Our own souls.”

“Going through endless rebirths?”

I didn’t say anything.

“And how do we stop these rebirths? Can we say “Hay! Stop it, God! No more entertainment. Leave me be?”

I chuckled. “You can ask the tree that too.”

We stopped before the oak, at the big branch that hung down to the ground. I didn’t feel like climbing it again, but Harry did, agilely tiptoeing up the branch then leaping up to the next one, catching on, and swinging himself higher. There were less than about twenty yellow leaves left on the branches and as he maneuvered between them some broke free and drifted to the ground.

He came down and we moved on, passing the mushroom patch where only a couple rotten ones remained. We stopped at the river’s waterfall source, which dropped from the cliff-face. I pointed Harry up the direction we had to go.

“You climbed that! Alone?!”

I nodded.

“RESPECT.” He said, Ali G style.

But it wasn’t so hard, and with me leading and him close behind, we were up at the top in about fifteen minutes. The rainbow had disappeared, and the sun shone down on both glens.

“Looks nice.” Harry said.

“Yeah. You’ll be wanting to move the tent here then, at some point? To keep away your restlessness. We could?” I suggested.

“Nah. It’s okay. I will keep myself busy. But maybe in a month or two, we can see. Doesn’t look like much fresh water though. Is there a stream?”

“I don’t know.” I said, as I entered the dark forest for the second time, the narrow pine avenues blotting out the sky. I spotted the line of yews ahead, and before them, to the left, the tree that I had first spoken to.

“That’s the one.” I told Harry.

We walked up to it and stared at the face-shape in the bark. “It really does look like an old man.” Harry noted.

I didn’t say anything. We stood side by side.

“Hello, again, Aisha.”

“Hello.” I replied, in my head.

Harry was still looking at it, then he looked at me, and walked away.

“This is your friend.” Said the tree.

“Yes.” I said. “He has helped me a lot. He’s a good person.”

“He will find this more difficult than you. He has a lot in his mind, and is a bit more closed. A bit more cynical. But he just needs to work.”

I felt a bit edgy. I wanted to walk around instead of stand there.

“Go on. Go off with your friend. I will always be here. Come back any time.”

“Thank you.” I said. “I love you.”

“We love you too.”

I turned away and headed down the hill. Harry was standing in the middle of the forest plot- amongst the fallen birches, the twisted oaks, the scattered rowans. But it didn’t have the same feeling today, or at least I couldn’t feel it. It didn’t have that same energy.

“It’s really cool here,” Harry said.

“I know. Do you feel anything?” I asked him.

“What like?”

“I dunno. I felt there was an energy here before, but it’s not the same. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe it’s me.” His brows furrowed underneath his beany hat.

“No. Don’t be daft. It’ll just be the weather or something, or the time of day. Did you see the yews?” I changed the subject.

I led him over to the grove that filed down the hill, the huge roots poking up everywhere.

“Wow! They’re stunning! Imagine how old they must be!” he enthused. He clasped onto one of the huge roots.

“How old do you think?” I asked.

“Well, you were saying you felt an energy here. And this is a grove- this place could