The Boy Who Built Houses

This story was originally published on Medium.

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The little boy’s hands worked quickly, leaning sticks against one another, patting mud on their bases, stacking, arranging, patting.

“All done.” He looked up with triumph. “Look what I made.”

No one had shown him how to do this. He just sat in the mud and figured it out all for himself. So young and naive, but he created a replica of a tiny house. Four exterior walls, and several rooms inside. All with nothing but sticks and mud.

“Oh nice.” The mouth let the simple words roll out in a drab tone. The eyes hardly flicked over in the direction of his creation.

“I did several rooms, just like our house.” The boy beamed.

“Mmhmm.” The mouth didn’t even open. Only grunts hummed through closed lips. The eyes didn’t look back, they already saw the creation. No need to look at the creation for longer than a second. What good would that even do?

“I’ll make another.” The boy got back to work.

He sat there, in the mud, for close to an hour. And eventually, he made another little house of sticks and mud. Bigger than the last one. More impressive than the last one. More rooms inside and more attention to detail.

More. More. More.

“Look, I made another.”

“Yes, I saw the little house.” The mouth expelled annoyed words.

“No, there are two now.”

The eyes flicked over. Indeed, there were two now.

“Oh yeah. Good. Just like the other one.”

“No, this one is different.”

“Mmhmm.”

There were more sticks in the woods, off to the boy’s left. He had used up all the sticks in this field. He got up and wandered over to the woods. He could get so many sticks from the woods. Bigger sticks. He could make bigger creations. He’d drag the sticks over to his area one by one. Or perhaps it would be better to just create in the woods. Why bring all of the lovely sticks in the woods to another location? Why bother? What good would that even do?

The boy stepped past the trees, instantly enamored with his surroundings. All the various sticks, large branches, enormous trees. This was a place to create, that was for certain. He found a clearing and got to work, silently. Though he was hundreds of feet away from the field now… his working in silence wasn’t necessary to keep him undetected.

Back in the field, a lazy wind swept through. The smaller of the two houses toppled over.

The eyes looked over at the sound. The mouth opened, finally ready to talk. “What happened with the houses again? There are two now but they’re different? Oh. One fell over.”

The eyes darted back and forth. The boy was gone. The mouth dangled open, but once again, it didn’t speak. It wanted to, but the air was stolen from its cavern. It was too late to speak now.

And now the houses were built in the woods. Big, beautiful houses. Log cabins. They were lovely. And they were far from the field. The houses were out in the open all along, but unseen. And now in the shadows of massive trees, all eyes were upon them. All mouths smiled down on them.

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