That Boy

I went walking today. I saw the strangest sight. I saw a boy of no older than 12 sitting on the pier to the river that leaked into the ocean. He sat there, his elbows on his knees, looking out to the disappearing sun, as it slid into the river and fell into the vast pacific ocean. Now as he did this, he would take a bite of food from some food I could not see exactly what, and HAND it to a seagull. They were so close to I'm, but they did not make any noise like they usually did when someone was close with food they might be able to have.

When one of the birds had gotten a piece, it would leave the boy and eat it, and another creatures would hop up next to him for their turn to eat. All this time the boy stared off at the sun like he may never see it again...not finding it strange that seagulls of all being were being polite.

If a fight broken out between any of them, he would get up, break the piece of food they were fighting over and hand it back to them. Even more surprising was when I finally realized he was done. He patted the last one on the head, and got up to leave. As his feet touched the ground, all of the birds got up at once and flew off to sit on the river.

The boy walked over to a sketch pad I had failed to see earlier and began to paint the picture of the sun sinking away, but as I watched the movements of his brush, I some how knew he wasn't painting the sun NOW but painting the sun as it HAD been, because the sun was almost gone, and there was little light left in the day if any at all.

One of the seagulls he had been feeding sat beside him and as he finished painting he held up his arm and the bird sat upon it. That was how I saw him walk off. A sketch book in one hand and a seagull on the other...