In the hollowed out pasture, where Philo’s beloved cows rested and frolicked on the fresh green grass that always grew each passing year, for some time, off to the side, there rested the huge sun-bleached skeletal structure of a member of their herd who had met its final day, long ago. Yet, still its immense whitened horns protruded double-pointedly upwards, still visibly intimidating to those of the living. Philo had taken notice of them before one day while milking and wondered how they had gotten there. He wasn’t quite sure, but he could grasp on an intuitive level that what he perceived in that jumble of white thick sticks recumbent on the grass with dandelions growing through and around, were once a part of a living cow, just like the ones he adored. But, with no way of proving his speculation, he could never be sure.
On his return from the village though, he paid no attention to this mystery that lied at his feet and walked on, over towards where the herd had gathered in the waning sunlight.
Lumbering his feet, he languidly met head-on one of the big black-and-white animals and threw his arms around its huge neck, holding it tight for some time. No reaction from the cow, as it continued devouring the mushy blades in its mouth, aside from a few flicks of its tail.
He released his arms from its pulsating body and gracefully stroked its thick, warm hide, admiring its kindness and beauty. These animals had taken care of the boy for all this time and had asked for nothing in return from him. For that, he was eternally grateful. He resolved he would do whatever he could to somehow return the favor.
Feeling a little bit better, yet still struggling, he left his herd and headed over the ridge, down to the shinning library below. Before returning to the toy room and visiting his wise, old mentor, he stopped off in the reflection room and began observing himself in the display.
He looked over his face. Familiar, yet unfamiliar. Similar in ways to his mother. Piercing, blue eyes that he wasn’t quite fond of looking directly into for too long. Thick, heavy stack of leaves resting on light brown hair, which had gotten quite long and covered his ears. A bit of dirt on his cheek. Sunburnt nose, with a few patches of freckles. Downwards lips like a fish.
He tried to make a funny face like he always did, but couldn’t.
Seeing himself look at himself did not help in the slightest, so he retreated from the shadowy room unto the main part of the building, and made his way to Albert. There he stood in front of his sleeping teacher, taking off his book and replacing it back on his head almost immediately. By his actions, celestial light emanated from the body of the bear, casting the surrounding blue fur with a faint glow.
“Wonderful… let’s begin!”
Picking up another book from off the floor, Philo settled himself with Albert on his lap and began unfolding its leaves. This book was one of many that he had stumbled upon and caught his attention enough to separate from the others. He had gone through a decent amount of the shelves in the library already, just having Albert tell him what the front words meant. But, so many of the books had concepts that were far from the boy’s comprehension, so he could do nothing but throw them aside. However, the book he was now having Albert go through and speak the words out loud greatly interested him, even though it was about places and things he had not experienced, or really understood.
The front of the book, spoken out loud, said the Old Man and the Ocean, and from what Philo could understand, was in fact about an old man and the ocean.
Back in Philo’s village, the elders always greatly fascinated the boy. His mom had told him once that they were the ones who really made the decisions for the group–not Bing or the younger adults–yet usually they remained silent, keeping to their stones and families. There was a great power in the elders the boy had yet to understand and see. Perhaps that was the reason why this book he held in his hands had captivated him so. That, and maybe his obsession with a mysterious place called ‘the ocean’ where there’s nothing but water, water, and more water.
The sky, he understood, was water. And he knew there was a man on the moon, who must be pretty old. But he wasn’t so sure it was quite the same.
The story went something like this: on the edge between where the great body of water known as the ocean met with the ‘dry land', there a was village where an old man resided by himself in a small hut. The old man made his living by occasionally taking his boat out onto the waters and throwing long string down below, using it to draw out fish from the deep, unseen bottom, which he would then provide to the village. Because he was so old though, sometimes, in order to get this done, he would need the help of someone else, so he would take a young boy who also lived in the village with him. One day, the old man and the boy took the boat out onto the ocean to throw out the string and look for some fish. At first, they had no luck and couldn’t find any, no matter how hard they tried, and eventually, the old man started to become sad. He worried he wouldn’t have anything to give to the people when he returned, and was just about to give up, when suddenly a huge tug pulled him and the boat forwards on the water. For hours, the old man and the boy worked together to bring in this huge fish, and after lots of struggling, they were finally able to do so and brought it up onto the boat–almost. The fish was so huge that they had to tie it to the side so they could bring it safely back home. Though, this turned out to be a seemingly disastrous decision because, on their way back, these huge monster-like fishes with long sharp teeth came up from the water and tried to eat the fish they had just caught. The old man, who had struggled so long with his fish, was so worn out that he didn’t have the energy to fight off the monster-fishes. But luckily the boy was there, and after an intense battle where the adolescent brought down oars on top of the sharks’ heads as hard as he could, he finally was able to scare them off, which allowed them to successfully return back to the village with the huge fish still intact. And then, everybody was happy. The End.
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For whatever reason, Philo did not know, he was drawn to this story and had Albert tell it to him countless times, hearing it so much to the point he knew it forwards and backwards. He went through the other books as well, but there was just something about this particular book that kept his attention more than the rest.
He thought about this story so much that on the night of his return from making an offer to the village, when he cuddled up next to Albert and slept in the toy room, he had a long, vivid dream where he was out on the waters of the ocean, sitting in the boat with the old man, helping him bring in fish, just like the boy had. He distinctly felt the uncertainty of being on such a structure that floated on vast amounts of water, constantly shifting and making waves, and imagined the rocking sensation it would bring, even though he never had been. He still didn’t even know if it was a real place. His imagination, vast and deep, just as the ocean, grasped onto these distant concepts and freely played around with such possibilities.
His dream shifted, and suddenly from the deep mysterious depths under his imagined boat, the sharks leapt out and snapped their huge jaws. With no large fish for them to devour this time, they tried their hardest to make meals out of the old man and the boy, flailing their massive bodies onto their floating craft. Philo became so frightened by the imagery of sharp teeth and monster mouths chomping, he forgot about the old man and forced himself to wake, rising suddenly from the floor of the dark toy room.
At his side, Albert with black eyes staring aimlessly at the walls, remained motionless. Philo patted his thick blue fur on the back of its head and then picked himself up, leaving the bear, and entered the moonlit main room, heading towards the exit.
Outside the library, upon taking his first breath, the fresh night air rejuvenated the boy’s waking spirit as the dreams faded from his foggy remembrance. Immediately, his attentions became captivated by the blazing pale glow of a prominent full moon positioned firmly in the sky, seemingly staring down at the boy. He craned his bookless head up and observed the shadowy black figures on its ghostly, round face, how they resembled people sometimes, animals or other things at other times. Like a coyote, or an upside down tree, or a man’s face. His interpretations were always changing with each new moon.
Tonight, however he observed something he hadn’t seen before. On the surface of the moon, he looked up at what he thought was the huge image of his mentor, Albert the bear, gazing down upon him, even though he could’ve sworn he had just left him in the toy room. He stepped forward unto the sleeping lawn and attempted to walk closer to the heavenly body. After a few moments, he could already discern its progressive plunging into the hill-rimmed depressions way below, soon to be out of sight, and he wondered, where exactly did the moon go when one couldn’t see it? It had to go somewhere. What was that place like, oh so far out, where the sky meets the earth? Could you even reach such a place? How far was it? This might be the biggest mystery Philo’s encountered thus far, and it’s been staring directly at the boy’s face all along, looming over him like a specter, though hidden, or soon to be hidden.
He began to watch the sloping ridges consume the luminous circle, slowly covering the bottom half of the shadowy image of Albert. Something inside the boy allured him to pursue this uncertainty and see how far exactly one could go to the edge. There was really only one way to find out.
By the time the moon disappeared behind the mountains below, Philo resolved he could no longer ignore his deep-seated curiosity and had promised himself that by the time the moon’s counterpart scaled the skies the following day, he would set off on another journey to the edge and finally figure what this world actually is.
Now with nothing but a collection of tiny, twinkling stars peaking at him from above, the lonesome boy turned around and headed back into the library and into the toy room, as the excitement of his decision began to dawn upon him. He couldn’t believe he was going to do what he was going to do, but he was going do it. His mind raced with possibilities about tomorrow, as he told himself that he needed to rest. The boy, being much more tired than he expected, promptly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep on the floor of the toy room, holding Albert snug in his arms.