More accurately, or so he had imagined, assumed, divined; not from an explicit prohibition (because that would require directness and unambiguity, both proven to be anathema in his family), but from his self-perception of irrelevance, ironically juxtaposed with what at times appeared to be an almost preternatural ability to affect his mother’s mood.  A slight change of affect, however imperceptible to him, cast ripples in her psyche, much like

*SPLASH*

the ripples of his latest, largest hurled rock, which to his momentary surprise had cleared the shoals and plunged into deeper water.  And he, seeing this effect, fearing it, felt his own psyche — a grownup word, one he had heard the adults say on different occasions, often tearful ones — quiver in fear at what the change, induced by his change, resulting in another, onward down into a spiral of tension.  His supposed “power,” his seeming ability to Get Through To Her in the most elemental of ways, felt like anything other than power.  He could not permit himself to speak, to shout, to declare himself worthy of attention, fot to do so would put him at the mercy of a far greater power; that of distance.  And so he kept quiet; swallowed, on most days and weeks and months and years, the sort of rage that had brought him, on this particular day, down a treacherous, hastily executed descent onto slippery rocks pockmarked with knife-sharp barnacles.

Today would be different.  It already was, in fact. In shouting his greatest threat, he had lit a fuse, and as it crackled and popped, the sparks edging closer and closer to the bomb that it served, it was becoming clear to him that tomorrow would be even more different.  And the days to follow; and the days to follow that.

He was holding a rock, the fifth or sixth that he had picked up.  The tension in his muscles felt dissipated, and his arms now quivered with exertion and, of course, running through his arms and entire body, fear.

He heard noise from the top of the hill.  Llewelyn was making his way down the incline.