Ralph and Jackson woke to the sound of tapping on their windows. Jackson stood out of bed and walked over to the front window. There was nobody there, just the usual Butterfly bushes and oak saplings. He walked over the the side window, and there was nobody there either. The wood pile was unabused, and no one was hiding under the rabbit hutches. He turned back to Ralph and shrugged.
As he was sliding back under the covers, another tap came at the window. He jumped out of bed and rushed over. He saw a slight flash of color sliding away and peered as far down and to the left as he could. There, on the ground, were the four neighborhood boys, giggling with their hands shoved over their mouths. Jackson sighed and pointed at them, so that Ralph would know what's going on. He smiled and then jumped off the top bunk, crossed the room to the closet, and pulled out a couple baseball bats from the sports bin.
Jackson grinned, took a bat, and they lumped up their pillows under their blankets and snuck out the back door. As they sneakily crept around the house, they had to avoid a variety of obstacles, including the mutt (bull terrier/shepherd/boxer/labrador/shar pei mix), the occasionally squealing rabbits (they mated far too frequently for comfort.. or sneaking), and any and all small animals that inhabited the wood pile. The sun, high in the sky, gave barely any hint of shadows around the brothers' feet, as they quickly traipsed up behind the neighborhood boys. Jackson peered around the corner near the window of their room, and identified the four pranksters.
Billy, Bobby (their mother had no imagination), Chris, and Kris (unrelated, fortunately). He turned back to Ralph and whispered, "Intimidation." Ralph grinned voraciously, and nodded. They both gripped their bats, took a deep breath, and burst out from the corner, swinging their bats around and screaming their heads off. Billy and Bobby flipped their lids, screaming and running. Billy ended up running directly through the patch of oak saplings, ripping his clothing on the annoyingly strong twigs and getting stuck on them before he could make it out the other side with his momentum. Chris and Kris bolted after Bobby, yelling in terror.
Jackson and Ralph started beating the trees near Billy (not the weaker ones, of course. they both knew what would happen if they broke one of the trees) while shouting, and the noise was all it took. Billy wet himself in fear, tears and snot running out of his face. It was at that moment when the twigs holding him broke off their limbs and releasing him to run, terrified, crying, and soaked of pants, back to his home.
Jackson and Ralph laughed long and loud, congratulating each other on a practical joke well returned, and proceeded to got inside to change into their day-clothes and eat some breakfast. Afterward, they decided to continue finding a way to make an easier path to their paradise. They headed to the storm drain and then crossed the road into the 'wilderness' once more.
The brothers wandered back and forth along the edge of the woods nearest the road, looking for some way around the cliff they knew they might need to climb down all too soon. Unfortunately, their paradise was far enough into the woods that any trailhead they created would need to be moved and changed and manipulated heavily to actually lead where they wanted to go to. Ralph had eventually randomly chosen a spot and started beating his way through the underbrush. It was at this point that Jackson had an idea.
"These thistle-patches and briars and weeds, they reminded me of a maze," he started. Ralph stopped trying to beat a path out of a particularly dense briarpatch and took a well received rest while listening. "And I discovered the secret of easily solving mazes. People make them difficult on purpose, and their difficulty is designed from a certain direction. The best way to solve a conventional maze is to start from the finish."
Ralph pondered this for a moment, identifying the problem. "Yes, but humans don't design the wilderness. That's sort of the definition of a wilderness, right?"
Jackson paused, perturbed by the thought. Maybe he shouldn't have been so gung-ho about it? He responded, "Yes, but it might work better than what we're doing now. The path we've made so far is really - windy - ."
Ralph acquiesced, and they made their way back to the road, walked until they were perpendicular to the road, across from the storm drain, and trekked to their paradise, clambering through underbrush and spending a significant amount of time making their way down the cliff again.
It was nearly noon by this point, so they sat with their feet in the frigid water and ate the sandwiches they had prepared after breakfast. As they ate, Ralph pointed out areas that would need to be altered to match a much more civilian-friendly sort of theme.
They would need to grow grass over the entire area, as it was mostly weeds and plants that thrived with less sun than usual. They would need to remove most of the bigger rocks from the pond, as it was shallow enough to result in major toe-stubbing otherwise. On the other hand, they didn't want to remove the crayfish homes, so they would need to just relocate most of the rocks. They should dig up most of the skunk weed (they didn't want their resort smelling of foul marijuana), and maybe find some more rocks somewhere to line the pond with. Their ideas kept coming late into the afternoon, especially after they realized they hadn't brought any tools for any actual work performing.
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At one point, Ralph decided he would explore more of the tunnel system, and he was gone for about an hour, crawling back and forth underground.
Jackson, in the other hand, decided to locate the perfect spot for a campfire.
When they felt that dinner-time would be soon, they packed up their gear, and this time decided to climb back up the cliff in an attempt to spend less time en route. As non-professional climbers, they decided not to risk it (after Jackson convinced Ralph to stop being an idiot) climbing straight up the cliff face, and instead went along the edge of the cliff, which was slightly less steep. About halfway up the cliff, they found a semi-hidden, mostly dry streambed coming out to pour down into the pond.
Happy with their luck, they decided to climb up this, instead of the cliff edge. This made their trip much easier, and when they happened upon the point where the stream came out of the ground, they climbed the two & a half meters up the embankment and and began beating their way toward the intermittent sound of cars. When the brothers reached the shrubbery closest to the road, they stopped destroying the underbrush for a path, in the hopes to have a hidden path to their paradise. They crawled out of the woods underneath the patches of weeds and bushes and made their way home, soaked and muddied up to their knees.
Happily dirtied, they walked home, Ralph whistling and Jackson enviously listening. When they arrived home, a different sort of scenario awaited them. Billy and Bobby's mom was there, angrily shouting at their parents. Their parents weren't saying anything in defense for them, but that was normal. The kids defended themselves. If anything, Jackson surmised, his parents were more frustrated over the fact that their children's friends' mom expected them to be constantly watching over their children. As if life wasn't already busy enough. Children can watch over themselves. At least, that's what he believed his parents' philosophy was.
Jackson and Ralph snuck around the back and through the bathroom window, straight into the tub, turned on the faucet, and cleaned their gear before packing it back up. Billy and Bobby's mother was still outside, haranguing loudly. They changed slowly, hoping she'd tire, but it was not to be. The slowly walked outside, knowing the whole while that this harpy was angry about what they'd done that morning. Apparently a really good counter prank is just going to far for those sensitive little kids.
As they opened the front door, their friends' mother seemed to pick up steam, as if everything before this had just been staging for the main event. She pointed at them, glaring, and spewed her vitriol. ".... and they need to be punished! It's one thing to threaten my little boys with baseball bats, but it's something entirely different to chase my little Billy into a briar patch and make him piss himself! And if you're not gonna make them pay for that first bit, you sure as heck are gonna make them pay for making him wet himself! and one more thing! they can't....." She continued for several minutes, waxing eloquent concerning her belief of their abilities as friends, children, and above all, humans, for thinking something so brutal and domineering was funny. She then turned her attention back to their parents, and laid a claim that they could not be true, good parents if they allowed these sort of incidents to happen regularly.
As she wound down, she finished with, "I'll be keeping my eyes on you two," toward Ralph and Jackson, and then spun and walked away with as much a veneer of dominance as she could, it seemed.
Jackson's parents watched her walk away, then turned to look at each other for a moment, and then looked to the brothers.
"So," his mother started. "What actually happened?"
Jackson grinned and told them the series of events leading up to the unfortunate demise of Billy's pants, and showed them where the twigs had been freshly broken off. He showed them the dents in the trees where they had hit them to terrify him, and noted to them the slight smell of urine in the air.
He explained that it had been repayment of an attempted prank, and they might have gone too far, but that they hadn't intentionally hurt anyone. He explained how they both came from the same direction, not boxing them in or anything, and Billy had just panicked in the wrong direction.
With these declarations, the hardness in their eyes softened, and their father said, "Alright, but be more careful next time. Most people can't handle the things you two and your sisters can. You've always been - more - somehow. So be careful, and next time, pull your punches. Keep that in mind, and be sure to limit yourselves, ok?"
The siblings nodded, and he smiled affectionately, then told them to wash up for dinner.
They ate and afterward, prayed and read Proverbs 12, and then went to sleep.