In The Tree Top

Crying he threw himself upon the gnarled roots and began to dig. Somehow he would ensconce himself here, burrow a den for himself in a crook of the the rolling branches where he would be safe. But the earth was tough, and the boy's fingers tender. When he could no longer dig he scrabbled helplessly at the oaken trunk and his misery broke open all over again, for she was impenetrable. The weeping child coiled at her feet and no boughs embraced him. He took handfulls of dust and cast them haphazardly upon himself, dragged them through his hair and down his face and torso in a nonsensical display of mourning that he wouldn't have been able to explain to himself or any grown up passing by as he lay there in the dirt.

At 5pm his mother found him. Embarrassment and relief at the sight of him competed in her heart as she stooped to collect the abject and filthy weakling from the ground. When she lifted the half-dreaming boy he thought for a moment that perhaps he was ascending to the branches above to be granted permission into Heaven, but the clinging gravity of her embrace at last brought him into full wakefulness. He was by this point too exhausted to cry.