There was only really one way to describe Jericho: Brave, perhaps to the point of stupidity. He had always loved thrill, nothing could scare the boy but even if there was, it would only make him more excited. So given this little adrenaline junky's lack of hesitation, it was no wonder that danger soon found a loyal patronage from him.
As a child he liked to climb an old abandoned traintrack that bridges over a river. It was used back in the early 1900s as a route for trains carrying coal from Pinelane which back in the day, before it became the sleepy village it was now, was a thriving town where miners presided. The rusting iron of the archaic traintrack hovered over the Miller River which due to the mining activities was not much of a river anymore, once it was a surging river that connected the Pinelane Bay to the Pacific ocean but now due to the rerouting of its paths as well as the clogging of the bay, it was nothing more than a passage of water barely enough to sustain aquatic life.
Jericho was an old soul however and used his imagination to see the river back to its former glory and imagined that the old traintrack was a fallen great tree that the nomads walked from to get from one high ground to the other.
He climbed the rusty rails if they were monkey bars and pretended that he too was a forest nomad, the son of the chieftain on his way to seek habitable land for his people. He loved how his heart beat faster as he climbed, how the flow of water currents from below seemed to gasp in awe of him, and how his feet dangled just above it.
Jericho was a happy child and when he told people his wild stories, they would listen; half intrigued and always disbelieving but still held in rapture of the boy's childish but excellent story telling. It was like reading The Chronicles Narnia as an adult and finding a sort of odd entrapturement to the naivety of it all.
One time when Jericho was telling his friends of another tale of the Forest Nomad's adventure above the Miller's River it dawned on his mother with chilling clarity what her little boy was doing. When she scolded Jericho, he stared at her with a betrayed look, clearly he found nothing wrong with what he was doing - no matter how much she scolded him. He didn't argue but it was soon obvious that he was not listening. Mrs. Laeny was a gentle old baker who believed that the pen was mightier than the sword but for the first time she found no other option but to raise her paddle against her son. It hurt her to paddle her son, to hear the muffled whimpers of her twelve year old who took the beating with a resolute look in his face.
Jericho was grounded to his room that day without dinner but Mrs. Laeny with her soft heart quickly folded and baked her son's favorite: cheese bread with milk. When she softly opened the door towards his room, the boy quickly buried his face under a pillow, it was clear that the boy was crying but was too stubborn to show it. It crushed the mother's heart to see her boy cry and she hugged him with a tight embrace. Later on, when the two calmed down and as Mrs. Laeny was applying ointment around the areas where she spanked Jericho she took back all of his punishment, being overcome by the guilt and her love for her child. She did however state with rigid authority that Jericho must never come back to that abandoned railtrack ever again, and Jericho who himself was also feeling guilty for hurting his mother promised her. However, everyone who has ever met children will tell you that the one way to make certain that they will do something - is to tell them not to.
One day, brought on by a strong force pulling him back to the place that he must not go, Jericho came back and was no sooner was hanging over the middle of the abandoned railroad tracks. He was filled with this odd rush of rebellion as he recklessly climbed from one plank to another. Soon however he began to hesitate remembering his mother crying as she embraced him and also remembering the promise he made, he was not supposed to be doing this! Soon he shook and his hand began to slip and although a very strong boy for his age, a child's arm could not bear his weight one handed and Jericho fell. He would vaguely remember that day, not even remembering the pain of a few broken bones and several concussions, but what Jericho will never forget is the excitement he felt when he fell, having a body that loved to hear its own heart beat, instead of fear, if time was suddenly frozen the moment Jericho fell, people would see childlike bliss from this boy who nearly met death.
When that aftermppmJericho didn't come home, his mother with the same chilling realization as weeks before, knew where to check first. Dropping a kitchen knife from her hand and almost hitting her toe, she ran with a mad haste towards the abandonded railway tracks. As she was running she kept thinking how stupid she was to simply leave that boy alone, Jericho was a smart kid but he was very naive and didn't really understand the dangers of this world. She loved the boy but perhaps she pampered him too much, she only wished that she would arrive in time. When she arrived, the first thing she saw was her beloved boy unconscious, sprawled under the bridge with the shallow waters of the river being of little help to heal his broken leg and bleeding head. He was rushed to the hospital immediately and the doctor said that had Jericho fallen head first or if the mother arrived even an hour later, he would have died.
Jericho awoke a day later as if from a dream and the first thing that came out of his lips were "I dreamt I was a bird." His mother dumbfounded by her own child, couldn't help her laughter as she cried. "My boy" she thought to herself, "Is truly one of a kind."
At the evening of the day Jericho woke up, an odd figure appeared at the abandoned traintrack, the sillhouette was by the darkness but the wind blew and a thin cloth fluttered by the silhouette's side, it was an apron of sorts and from the little moonlight that shown, it can be seen that the figure was holding a mallet, one that was a quarter of the figure's body and by the way it rolled on the ground was obviously heavy.
At first the figure was gentle at hammering down on the poles that held the bridge together, but as time went on the blows became stronger, and the figure's breathing heavier. For an hour, all that can be heard in the silent woods was the heavy impact of metal on metal, and at times haggard groans. After that hour however came silence, and moments after that, a great fall. That night, a single person took down a whole bridge. When the morning came and curious villagers came to check on the noise, they could see that the once majestic bridge, followed the destiny of the river it was built on and was destroyed to the point that it lost its purpose. The bridge fell down and its own weight brought it down. Parts of the old lumber floated from the river and the rusted iron dyed the river in a stately brown. It was deemed that the bridge was destroyed due to natural causes but a rumor became popular on that town of a ghost of a mother of a miner destroying the bridge in a fit of grief from losing her son to the mines. Perhaps that story came to resemble a part of the truth but the mayor of the town strongly argued that it would have taken three strong men to destroy that bridge's poles and it was absolutely beyond the power of any woman.
As a month came by, although receiving miracolously minimal damage from his fall, Jericho had to be hospitalized for a month longer and with his legs in a cast had no way of leaving his hospital room. He shared his room with another boy a few years younger than him but somehow had the droll in his eyes that Jericho had only seen in adults.
For while Jericho and the boy only looked at each other, sizing each other up. Jericho observed closely the boy's long jet black hair, his sunken dark eyes, and the slight crease in between his cheeks. This boy was sick and not from any fault of his own was he in this hospital.
Suddenly the boy broke the silence and cough conspicuously.
"How did you break your legs?" The boy asked.
Jericho paused for a moment feeling the stinging of his feet behind his cast but no sooner did his lip curl in pain when he suddenly smiled remembering how the wind felt on his face during the time before his fall.
"I...tried to be a bird." Jericho looked away. Although not regretting having done what he did, he still felt embarrassed by the fact that he had fell that same bridge he has always climbed before, especially in front of this kid who probably has never even seen the inside of the mountain at all.
"How did it feel?" The boy asked curiously as he rearranged his position to face Jericho pushing a button on the sidearms of his bed to rise up the bad and make him sit down.
"Like my heart was going to burst out of my chest." Jericho's smile widened, he still shuddered when he remembered hearing the bones of his leg crack but the adrenaline from his fall had done significantly to numb the pain and even the mere memory of it served as an anesthetic to Jericho's aching leg and bruised head.
"Huh." The boy grabbed his shirt at where the heart is located. "I've felt that too but it didn't feel so good..."
Jericho shuddered at his own insensitivity, this boy wasn't in the hospital because of an accident...
"Heart problems?" Jericho asked concernedly
"Atrial Fibrillation was what my doctor said to mom. Apparently my heart beats more often than other people's."
Jericho then imagined feeling his heart beat fast everyday. "That doesn't sound that bad."
The boy smiled grimly. "I have to take so much medicine just to make sure I don't have a stroke or fall dizzy just from walking."
Again Jericho felt guilty and a little bit sad at how awfully wearying this boy's life must have been.
"Hey stop that." The boy threw a pillow at him with surprising strength.
"Stop what?" Jericho threw back the pillow but a little gentler.
"Looking at me like I'm a wounded puppy. I'm stronger than you! If I had been the one hanging on that bridge I would've just pushed myself up." The boy huffed challengingly.
Slightly embarrassed Jericho looked away. "So you already knew?"
This time it was the boy who looked away. "I listened to your mother tell mine when they thought I was asleep. Your mom said you're an 's' word."
"s***?" Jericho's eyes widdened.
"No!" The boy looked at him with disbelief. "...stupid..."
There was a silent pause as the two boys looked at each other knowing that they both knew a word that they shouldn't have. Suddenly they both burst out laughing, they went on for a while until the boy began wheezing and had to catch his breath.
"I didn't think...you were stupid though...I thought you were brave." The boy said coughing.
"Thanks um...I never asked your name."
"Alistair, but most just call me Al."
"I'm Jericho...Hey Al wanna be friends?"
Ali smiled at him. "Hell no."