The tear- stained boy wandered through the woods behind his house, avoiding his mother and the task she had given him. His room was to be cleaned before his soccer game the next day or according to his mother he wasn’t going to go. He badly wanted to go but didn’t want to clean his room that in his mind was too messy for an eight year old to clean by himself. As he ambled through the trees, he found himself in a place between reality and dreams. He was neither awake nor asleep, and did not know exactly where he was. In fact, he was in a place without time or distance beyond the horizons. The procrastination of the past hours had sent him into a false sense of security that from the outside did not bode well for when the time came for his mother to check his room. However, everything seemed to just stand still, breathing in the moments and then releasing a breath of contentment reassuring the boy that there was nothing to fear.
The world he was in was a lot like the coloring books he remembered having as a small child— line drawings, flat and gray. He didn’t even seem to mind that there was no color in this world, because he still felt its tranquility. The place he was in was so serene and detailed that having color in it might just ruin the soothing effect. It had changed the crying boy’s entire disposition. He was no longer sobbing with tears streaking down his face. Any and all thoughts of his disarranged bedroom were pushed to the back of his mind.
The boy smiled to himself and leaned up against a tall gray birch. Time passed in the natural world, but it went uncounted in his, for time was on its own schedule there just as the wind makes its own pace traveling the world. The boy looked at his coloring book world and smiled. He was at home here and thought it quite beautiful as he snuggled up against the tree and began to doze off. His eyes fluttered once, but that was all, for he was soon fast asleep. All of his worries...