“What are we going to do about Jeremy?” His father asked.
“Why, dear, he’s only a boy full of imagination. There’s no real harm in him?” his Mother replied philosophically.
“That’s fine you saying that, but it wasn’t your bathrobe he stole and then dragged through the mud. I think you encourage him. You let him keep that pet rabbit. You should have made him release it back into the woods. You indulge him too much.”
“Oh, Dear. Can’t you remember being young yourself? Didn’t you have adventures? Climb trees? Look for buried treasure?”
“Yes, but I grew out of it and it’s high time Jeremy did too.”
“He’s only eight years old, for goodness sake! What would you have me do? Put him on a strict dietof boiled cabbage to curb his enthusiasm? Send him away to boarding school? As if we can afford that sort of thing.”
“No, I suppose not. I think we should both be a bit more watchful of him in future though. We can only guess what the little rascal’s going to get up to tomorrow on his school field trip.”
***
Jeremy woke the next day full of his natural exuberance and ecstaticat the thought of going to the seaside on his school trip, and blissfully unaware that his parents were watching him very carefully.
The school bus stopped at the entrance to the park where he lived, just like every normal school day, except this day, instead of everyone wearing their drab Navy and brown school uniforms, they were wearing clothes in a kaleidoscope of bright colours. Jeremy wore his favourite bright mustard coloured pullover, blue shorts and his lucky red hat. In his rucksack, his Mother had made him cheese and marmalade sandwiches, his favourite, and he had a bottle of blackcurrant squash. He liked to pretend he was drinking fine red wine, like the Knights of old, only he hadn’t managed to find anything that looked like a goblet or a flagon. Drinking out of an ordinary bottle was going to have to do.
As the bus pulled away with their little boy on it waving from the rear window, Jeremy’s parents couldn’t help worry about what he was going to get up to.
They were relieved when at five pm the school bus pulled up outside and Jeremy came running up to them. He was carrying something large in his hands.
“Look Mum!, Dad! I’ve found a magic rock!”.
Indeed, in his hands, he held a dark grey rock, the size of a cricket ball.
“I found this rock on the beach and the Teacher said it was a special type of rock, called an igneous rock.”
Just then, Jeremy tripped and the rock fell from his hands onto the concrete path and cracked in half, like an egg.
When he picked it up, he saw the rock was hollow but growing inside was a collection of purple and yellow crystals, glittering in the afternoon sun.
Jeremy looked up at his parents and said, “See, I told you it was a magic rock!”
Copyright: Kristian Fogarty 24/February/2019
This story was inspired by the following word prompts:
The Canteenloomed before him like an oasisin the desert.
His stomach rumbled noisily, his supervisor ahead of him looked at him and laughed.
He’d been on a strict diet for days and quite honestly he could have eaten the whole canteen, including the stainless steel worktops.
As he stood in the lunchqueue, he waited patiently for the line to move.
Then it was his turn and the lady behind the counter, looking glamorous in her hairnet and bright green apron, leaned over and said “What’ll it be, then? Come on, I haven’t got all day, you know.”
He took a deep breath and suddenly the button on the front of his trousers pinged across the room and landed in someone’s cup of tea.
