💾 Archived View for anjune.lol › gmi › boyandmonument.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 15:21:36. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-09-08)
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The boy and the monument stand on a dreary, sun-baked plain.
Just out of sight, the villagers wait; their expectations fill the dusty air.
The monument is a massive “T”, roughly hewn from brown rock. The boy is supposed to topple it, then return. It is his rite of passage: a quasi-symbolic test of his man- and adulthood, meaningless to no-one but himself.
It is not his first attempt, either.
Should he try at all? Oh, there would be brief relief and awkward celebration. But it’d so much easier to wait until it’s too late. Wouldn’t it?
Time grinds on. The sun sets. The boy stands rigid, paralysed. He knows he is failing again. The invisible spectators’ expectation extinguishes itself, and he is left alone.
“If I did it now,” he thinks, “it might as well have fallen over by itself. No-one would even believe it was me.”
Grey twilight washes out the horizon. The boy sneaks home.