Riverside
They kept their backs to a stream where the water ran constant and clear like a current of glass smoothing a bed of stones and falling white faster than they could go. It was cold to the touch and pure in taste and it would satiate them on the trail when the hours drug and dried. They held to their order and rested and watered over a gray caucus of shore rocks. The bank was hemmed by a mud wall ingrown with conniving roots that bowed out upholding slanted timber that grasped at its life blood. Farthest down there the thin soldier bated and spoke almost nothing. The boy would glance at him brief every now and again. Curios. Never was his scrutiny returned nor any measure of acknowledgment shared. A pricked rod of quartz he was, his visage and his demeanor. He knelt with his weapon and put his hands into the sparkling folds of the mountain runoff and cupped them and rubbed his cheeks that against the granular padding of his palms sanded a short crop of chin whiskers. A goatee he wore nea...