Short story rough draft :)

The sun was out that day and it smiled down gloriously upon the serene meadow, elegant stalks of grass and wheat dancing in the refreshing breeze that blew across it. An intoxicating aroma of nectar and rotting fruit wafted joyously in the air and the field was filled with the happy droning of thousands of insects. A young boy, scuffed and filthy and dressed only in tattered gray rags, bounded delightedly through the dense jungle of grass that reached nearly to his neck, breathing great gulps of fresh, sweet air. Truly, he thought, this is what it means to be alive. Suddenly he dove into a clump of especially warm and comforting grass and fell about laughing, curious insects buzzing just out of reach above his head. The tang of water met his nose as he lay there and the overpowering urge to drink grasped his parched throat. He lifted himself up slowly and meandered down a gentle hillside where the succulent grass had been chewed nearly to the ground by some sort of herbivore or another, and plunged with a sigh into the calm waters of a burbling spring. The crusted dirt and blood from scabbed knees and elbows slowly lifted from his tanned skin and flowed away in the gentle current. The boy broke the surface of the water and gasped another breath of fresh air before gulping a mouthful of clean water and shaking the matted hair from his eyes.
The sound of elevated voices reached his ears, and he craned his neck in wonder at the unusual occurrence; he had been out in the wild a few times before but could never remember seeing another person. Cautiously he swam to the muddy riverbank and lifted himself partially out of the water as to get a better view of the commotion whilst remaining hidden. Three men stood at the edge of the forest not a hundred paces from where the young boy now crouched. Two were clothed in tarnished silver armor, black and red cloaks fastened around their muscular shoulders, obviously on some mission from the aging King. Scabbards hung stiffly from loops in their worn leather belts, the swords’ jeweled hilts gleamed malignantly in the sunlight. Two bay horses grazed contentedly in the meadow not too far away, saddles still fastened to their sweat-lathered backs. The soldiers stood, arms crossed across their chests in impatience or contempt as they confronted a third man. The boy crawled up the bank to get a better look at the third man, and was surprised at what he could observe, even from such a distance.
The man’s pale eyes reflected rather than absorbed, thus it was nearly impossible to read his emotions through them. He had an air of magic about him, but it was half hidden and hard to place. The wizard, for the boy decided that that was what he must be, had the most impeccable balance—it made the child wonder whether he could see into the future or knew what was going to happen before it took place. To the soldiers, being near this closed-off mystery man was like reaching out forlornly to grapple at the meaning of one’s life, as if he already knew what it was and though his body was near the answers were infinite miles away. The wizard was not a petite man, yet his broad shoulders did not stand high off the ground. His frame was draped in soft, yellow-white robes of the plainest linen. No crumpled hat adorned his splendorous silvery hair as it shone brilliantly in the blinding noonday sunlight, waferously layered and delicate. No staff was clutched weakly in knobbled hand, for he had neither of these, only grounded strength and a feeling of youth, though his age was indeterminably ancient. He wore no shoes upon long-nailed, slightly tanned feet as he preferred the feeling of wet grass and mud squidging up between his toes. Somehow it seemed to connect him to the earth, and if he were to lose this connection he would float up into the air on the slightest gust of wind. He was simultaneously infinitely simple and mind-bendingly complex.
The boy stared at the wizard in awe, hardly daring to breath for fear of being discovered. For a moment his fear overshadowed all outside sounds, and the boy could hear nothing of their conversation. But as he began to relax and sunk a little lower into the chocolate brown mud, the angered words of the soldiers drifted across the meadow to the riverbank.
“By royal decree, sir, we must force you to leave this place. The king desires supple wood for the building of his new palace by the sea,” the larger of the soldiers growled threateningly.
“And since when,” the wizard’s voice was level and calm, “has His Majesty had power over this place? The wilderness does not belong to one man alone.”
A powerful gust of wind blew across the valley then, and the rustling of leaves in the forest drowned the men’s words. Something more was said by the wizard and the pudgy solider, who the boy now recognized as the leader of the two, gestured to the other man, who drew a length of rope from a pouch at his side and began to bind the wizard’s hands. The soldier whistled and the two horses came trotting up, snorting merrily at their rare luck to have grazed on sweet grass, and the wizard’s bonds were tied in a sturdy knot to the heftier horse’s saddle. The soldiers mounted and indicated to the wizard that he was to walk along beside them. He inclined his head in the slightest nod, but before he took a step forward, his head swung around and piercing gray eyes stared straight at the boy, now almost submerged in the slimy muck. He felt paralyzed by the wizard’s icy gaze, and was not inclined to move again until long after the small royal party had ridden off in the opposite direction, following the edge of the forest for protection from wandering bands of thieves.
After another short bathe in the river to rid himself of the mud, the young boy started the hour-long journey back to the dreary city in which he lived. For just a moment he lingered on the peak of a squat hill, and looked south toward the city. Though it was miles away, he could already see the black cloud of ash and smog that hovered perpetually above it.
∞ ∞ ∞
“This is your cell, so make yourself at home,” the fat soldier sniggered as he shoved the wizard inside the small cement room and locked the door. A sparse scattering of hay covered the floor, and a narrow barred square cut out of the wall served as a tiny window that lay level with the street. There was a constant drip-drip-dripping as a thin rivulet of water leaked through a crack in the ceiling and splashed into a puddle on the floor. “Food comes twice a day through your meal flap if we have enough to spare,” the solider sniggered again, peering maliciously at the wizard through the tiny barred window in the solid door, “and we don’t.” He laughed uproariously while the wizard stared unnervingly back at him, eyes sparkling despite the lack of sunlight in the cramped space. The fat man, crudely stuffed into an unflattering military uniform, left the door and could be heard laughing all the way down the hall to the soldiers’ quarters, jangling a ring of keys merrily as he went. The wizard coughed once, then sat on the hard stone floor in a corner of the cell, knees pulled up against his chest for warmth.
Outside the air was thick and gray and smelled of rotting eggs and decaying flesh. Poor and homeless children ran through the cracked streets playing a kicking sport with a hollow metal ball that rang tunelessly every time it hit against the street or the side of a building. Sometimes the young boy was one of them, but not today. He sat on a soggy wooden crate at the back of a dark alley, exhausted from his long day of labor in the scorching sun that beat down mercilessly on the plantations just outside of the gray city to earn the few pennies that the farmers paid and still in contemplation over the events he had witnessed that afternoon by the river. One of the metal balls from the other children’s game rolled into his alley, and he quickly snatched it up and tucked it under the crate will all of the other identical balls he had collected over the years since his parents had died in the irongoods factory that surrounded the town and he had been turned out to live on the streets with the other orphaned children. A wooden window opened high up in the cement apartment building that stood as one wall of the alley, and a bucketful of table slops were tossed out, narrowly missing the young boy and splashing foul green liquid all over his already filthy clothing.
“I need to take a walk,” the boy muttered to himself, and he walked briskly into the street with the apartment tenant’s cruel laughter still ringing in his ears. His mind was not on his surroundings as he let his feet take him where they may, no doubt along one of his many routes around the outskirts of the city. He wanted dearly to be back in the clean meadow, running without a care through the gently waving grass and drinking in the sweet scents of the blooming flowers, and if he squinted he could almost see it again. He stopped, satisfied that he was far enough away from the alley, and sat down on the crude sidewalk outside an especially ramshackle building.
“So it is that our paths were to cross after all.” The boy swung around to face the deteriorating building, and found himself staring into the wrinkled face of the wizard from earlier that afternoon.
“Why did they arrest you? Those soldiers, I mean,” he stuttered, half in awe and half fearfully.
“Ah,” the wizard sighed deeply before continuing, “they wanted to chop down the forest and I would not let them do it. The forest is not one’s man belonging to do with as he wishes. It is a being in itself, you see.” The boy nodded.
“They will only chop it down now that you are in there,” he gestured at the cell that held the wizard, “and what could one man have done to stop the army of the King?”
“Maybe more than you know,” the wizard winked mischievously and smiled for the first time. “Now, how about getting me out of here, eh?”
“But, not meaning to offend sir, but if you really wanted to you could just break out yourself, couldn’t you?” the boy winced in expectance of a harsh reply, but none came.
“I could, it is true.” From outside the building, the boy could just see the wizard’s slight shrug. “But I want you to prove to me that you could do it as well.” The boy stood for a moment in thought, and then a sudden realization struck him.
“I will come back,” he assured the wizard, and then ran off in the direction from which he had come, thin legs pumping as fast as they could go. The wizard remained standing just behind the small window, listening to the cawing of crows lost in the black smog and the scuffling of rats searching his cell for any forgotten morsels. A child cried out somewhere in the distance and the deep rumbling snores of the fat soldier echoed through the dank and dungeonesque halls of the prison. He had not stood alone for very long when the far off pattering of running feet came to his ears, and soon the boy returned, panting, to the opening by the sidewalk. “You might want to stand back, wizard,” He lifted a tiny pouch full of gunpowder in the wizard’s direction to accentuate his point, before pouring the entire bag into a small hole that had been chipped through the outside of one of his metal spheres. He reached down and ripped a strip of fraying fabric from his canvas shorts and stuffed it into the opening in the ball before a shard of flint and a piece of steel shrapnel from a pocket in his shirt. The boy placed the sphere on the ground a few paces from the cell window and crouched above it with stone and metal in his hands. At a nod from the wizard, he struck the two objects together and a spark fell onto the makeshift wick. “NOW!” The boy yelled to warn the wizard, and ran as fast as his legs would take him to the other side of the wide street, where he dove behind a huge piece of cement that must have fallen off of the factory wall many years before. There was a deafening explosion and shards of flaming metal and cement flew everywhere, burning through the boy’s clothing and leaving dark scars where they touched his bare skin. From a few blocks away came the screams of civilians as the weakened jailhouse roof gave way and collapsed in on itself. Three soldiers came coughing and spluttering from the rubble, coated in a fine white dust from the explosion. The boy stood up and deftly hopped the wall. The area had been completely transformed by the explosion, and huge blocks of cement lay spread out across a few dozen paces of the road.
“Wizard!” The boy called hoarsely through the dust clouds and ash. “Wizard!” A finger tapped him on the shoulder, and he pivoted on the spot, gasping in surprise to see the wizard standing perfectly well behind him.
“Do not think I would give in that easily, boy,” he smiled, “I may be old but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.” A buzzing crowd of thousands had now assembled around the wreckage and stood shuffling unnervedly, not understanding the cause of the explosion. “What is your name?” the wizard turned toward the boy and asked.
“Clif Jennsing.” His name was one of the only things he remembered from his early childhood. The old man nodded and walked out into the middle of the street. He whispered something inaudible and it was immediately swept away on a gust of wind that grew stronger and mightier until it was of gale force, blowing shingles off of roofs and sending small stones pelting about all over the city. It died down almost before it had really begun, and with it went the great cloud that had rested above the city. Gone too was the smog and ash from the explosion. The wizard muttered a few more words under his breath, and now a different kind of cloud moved quickly into place over the city—dark black cloud, swelling with rain that soon began to tumble torrentially from the heavens, cleansing the dull city and washing the dirt and sweat from the weary faces that looked up into it in wonder. Most of the people in the town had never in the lives tasted rain. When all of the dirt had been washed from the city and the rainclouds dissipated to reveal a merry blue sky and sunlight, an amazing thing happened. The wizard laughed. His laughter was like that of no other Clif had every heard—it resonated like the clear peal of a bell and the dancing of the windblown wheat and grass in the meadow wrapped into one. A tiny sapling sprouted from amidst two large boulders, and then another and another until the whole town was covered, and then they began to reach joyously toward the velvet blue sky, sprouting branches, leaves and fruit of all shapes and sizes. A wonderful thick grass grew magically up from the stone streets and all up the sides of the buildings until there was not an inch of cement to be seen. Flowers sprouted, and bushes laden with the softest of leaves, and Clif was nearly positive that somewhere near the center of town a river had sprung up and was now singing through the newly forested landscape, as he could hear it rushing faintly in the distance. He smiled at the wizard, for it was definitely his doing, this magical forest, and he was surprised to realize that tears of relief were streaming down his cheeks and dripping from the point of his chin. The other townspeople stood agape and in awe at the beauty of the luscious green grass and the plentiful fruit just asking to be plucked and eaten, for they were not used to having much of anything at all.
“How is this—“ Clif gestured around him at the greenery that had engulfed the entire city, “how is all of this possible?”
“What did I tell you, boy?” the wizard smiled and rustled his long sleeves playfully. “Well, I must be off, my bones ache for the wild and I cannot leave its call unanswered.” His piercing eyes caught hold of Clif’s and held them for a moment. “You teach these people how to live in the natural world now, Clif, because I know you understand how. Help them rebuild their city without cement horrors and pollution, hm?” Clif nodded.
“Thank you for all of this, wizard. Truly we do not deserve it, we who ruined this land in the first place.” The wizard did not say anything, but simply peered at Clif out of the corner of his sparkling eye before walking off into the midst of the forest. Clif smiled at his back and turned to speak to the people, to teach them to use what they found around them to create a happier world. And up above in the great boughs of the trees, a starling began to sing.