At what moment in your life did you feel the most proud?

[mute_clay]

challenge response

I don’t know. Maybe –

I can still remember the first carving I ever did. I can’t have been more than a handful of years, seven at the most, and I had worked at it for days. It was not the first thing I had ever carved, mind, just the first proper one.

It was a mouse. A tiny little mouse. Fit in the palm of my hand as if it belonged there. I would go sit in the spot I liked, away from the house but close enough that I could hear it if Ma called for me to come home. I’d hurry up, gathering kindling, so I’d have time. Time that wasn’t for work or sleep or prayer. Time that was for me.

And I made a mouse.

I knew I couldn’t take it with me. The good book says you shouldn’t make things that look like things and Ma was very strict with that. Besides, it was just a wooden mouse. It wasn’t useful. It couldn’t do anything. Not even feed the barn cat.

I put it down next to the log I’d been sitting on and told it to be a good mouse. Even if it wasn’t a proper mouse. It couldn’t squeak for one.

When I got back there, a while later, it was gone. Maybe the Forest took it. I don’t know. For a while I thought that maybe – it’d become alive and run off, like a real mouse would. Squeaking. But that don’t happen. Not when it couldn’t to begin with.

I was proud of the house too. The things I didn’t know how to do I figured out and when it was storming outside and you sat indoors you knew it was a good house.

I was proud whenever I made Callie smile. Especially the first time. She was so pretty. And I felt proud every time I looked at her. Because she lived with me. And I could make her smile.

But see – there’s the catch. There’s always one in these questions. Maybe they think I don’t catch on to them, because I never went to school. But I do.

They say it has to be one moment. And that isn’t right with these, cause there isn’t one moment when a carving just is. You make it and all the while you work with the wood is part of that carving in the end.

And the storm isn’t any particular storm. It’s more the idea of one. Like when you remember bad winters and they’re all bad winters you’ve ever seen and then some. In your head.

And even if I say I remember the first time I made Callie smile – you can’t just go and make years with someone into a moment.

So I think I have to say that I don’t know.

Comments

[nazarene-josh.livejournal.com]

*smiles easily, glancing briefly at the card -- he'd realized through the touch that something was different about this man, but doesn't say much of it*

You work with wood a lot? I haven't done it in a long time... and then it was mostly bowls and things, helping my father with his work. Sometimes I'd carve things for my little brothers and my sister, though.

[mute-clay.livejournal.com]

*nods* I used to work as a carpenter. I made houses and various repairs. And coffins. I still make those. *smiles because he has never meet other people who carved*
City People don't really appreciate word. It seems a shame.

*curiously* Are you from around here?</i<

[nazarene-josh.livejournal.com]

Oh, you build things! *smiles happily* I was trained as a carpenter and a stonecutter. My friend's father, he taught me about building houses.

I'm from... *chuckles a little, just the slightest bit self-conscious* Far away. What's called the Middle East now, I guess. I've been all along the Silk Road, through Afghanistan and China and India... studying, I guess you could say. I suppose if I'm from someplace, it's Nazareth. That's where I spent most of my youth, although we lived in Egypt for a few years after I was born, until it was safe for us to come back.

[mute-clay.livejournal.com]

Wow. *looks seriously impressed* That's a lot of different places. And far away too. *nods a little* I used to live in a Forest. Just me and Ma and Pa. Then me and Callie. There was a town there too and such but - *shrugs a little* I liked it there. But I like it here too. Even if it's different in a lot of ways.


(ooc - and midnight here - so I'll pick it up later)

[nazarene-josh.livejournal.com]

*smiles* Different, yes. But it's good that you enjoy it anyway. Too many people believe that enjoying the present is somehow disloyal to the past, in my experience.

It sounds like a beautiful place to have lived.

ooc: by all means, go, sleep. *shoos you off to bed*

[mute-clay.livejournal.com]

It was. *smiles* The Forest was wild and green and huge. There were lakes, and caves in it. And hot pools.

*shrugs a little*

Our home got burned down though. And we had to leave. It hurt. I'd helped build that house myself. But it's still in here so in a way - I guess it still exists. *points to his chest*

[nazarene-josh.livejournal.com]

*nods* Yes. Yes, you're exactly right. And the good things that you created there, the good things that you remember, those are far more important than the house itself, aren't they? Bad things too, of course, but -- it's the feelings that matter. In there. *reaches out, not touching Clay's chest, but his finger not far from his heart*

I haven't seen many forests in my life. Mostly desert. A few forests, in China. *smiles brightly* I'll have to do some exploring, I think.

[mute-clay.livejournal.com]

*nods seriously* You should. There is nothing like forests. At least, not the way I see it. *looks thoughtful* I never knew that so many people had never seen forests before I got here. Then again, I'd never seen the ocean. *smiles* It's a little like the forests, the ocean. Beautiful and free. I like that.