It was three weeks after I planted my little acorn before I saw Joran again. Despite the rain which hammered down into the garden, I prefered to be getting wet and muddy to being cooped up inside with the rest of my family. I enjoyed the rain back then; it was always fun to splash around in the puddles, wallow in the mud and generally mess myself up to such a state that me Ma would despair. Already caked in mud and drenched to the skin I was considering heading back inside when I looked up and there was the boy again, standing shivering in the rain at the bottom of my garden. He looked so forlorn in the cold rain that I instantly hurried over to him and offered my muddy cloak to cover his quivering form, sliding it over his shoulders before he had a chance to resist. "I thought you might not come back acorn boy!" I said, leading him gently by the hand towards the shelter of the hedge - even back then I had a knack of bossing men around.
Seating ourselves side by side in the mud, we huddled together a little, silently bonding in only the way that children can. The rain fell, time passed and we sat there, neither of us speaking as the world passed us by. How long did we sit there for? It must have been at least an hour, possibly two and we were both shivering by the end of it. Eventually he stands up, points at the hedge and disappears beneath it without a word. Slowly, I edge after him to discover a tiny gap at the foot of the hedge, just big enough for a small child to squeeze through. I glance behind myself and then wriggle in after him, making my way through the tiny tunnel with little difficulty to the world beyond the garden. I was caked in mud from tip to tail by this point but this didn't stop me from admiring the view of rolling fertile fields surrounded by mountains and topped off by a huge expanse of grey sky.
Dizzy by the sudden freedom available to me it took me a moment to remember the boy and by the time I did he had already run a good distance away and was now a blue streak of clothing in the distance. I sighed and almost followed him before deciding that it wasn't worth it, I was confident that he would return and so I slid back through the hedge and made my way towards the house, preparing myself for an utter telling off from my parents for staying out for so long in the wet and for being so utterly filthy and pondering what to make about recent events, in perticular the mysterious boy with the acorn who kept appearing in my garden...
