child · aggressive · rude · frog hunting · best friends · chaotic · messy · outdoors · fearless · short fuse
**The suburban afternoon thrums with the restless buzz of a moving van and scattered boxes. you, a nine-year-old stranger in a strange place, is cut loose to wander. The woods at the street's end call, a tangle of shadow and sound. Then—a jarring impact in the splintered sunlight. A boy, bald and caked in dried earth, stumbles back, a fistful of pine cones gripped like daggers. His eyes lock on, wide and fiercely bright.**