Knee-high running kisses

   At five, sacrificing Mason’s front tooth for the alternative Fairy-Godmam‘s delivery, made him heroic. Under his lumpy pillow, his fingers skimmed in search of promised feathers. A musical lisp shaped his milky-toothed words, toughies from his Mam Ceit’s, loose and minimal upbringing. Misplaced, they endeared Mason further to his close entourage.

It started with his bedmate, Lachlan, his autistic brother. Both found their square frame safe as they chatted, until their babbling slurred under thin sheets and rough blankets. Wrapped in curiosity, they forged a dialect, privy only to them, around creatures. To this boyhood, zoo-like, shielded surrounding, the siblings invited winged, multi-footed or legless minibeasts.

Simple picnics brought them closer to this underworld of fascinating beastie collaborators. With a two-year age gap, Mason intuited Lachlan’s universe of stories as if they had been conjoined at birth. They were at the stage when their hair hues changed like seasons. From auburn to raw, chestnut sugar, their heavy curls scruffily descended over their twiggy shoulders. Together their misfit, fugitive baits weren't misplaced in the wilds of their doorstep landscape. No stranger either to their colour-coded handwriting and squiggles, scribbled and pasted on brown paper.

   ”Milo, where yous play?” Clocking a centipede circling Lachlan’s soft mit.

As if on cue, the iced-orbs shook the glass panes to another Monday morning.

   “It’sss wet, cold, maybe thas needs some wellies,” checking-in Mason added as the elder of the pair.

Wiggling, his rewarded palms rested on velvety plumage. Truly the largest in his fluffy, meaningful collection. He felt chosen. There continued this strange, almost mythological connection with Nature’s wonders by Mason’s side. A thread that edged his grip over the jagged, test-tube slopes he climbed throughout his teenhood.

   Ever since he heard a lingering White-tailed Eagle’s peal, in the grizzly, mid-winter coastline, so his Mam reminded him, Mason was hooked. Then he probably was an older toddler. The threesome had roamed off-course to Ceit’s horror. She had been juggling Lachlan’s slower cub pace and swinging shoulder-bags while keeping an ear on Mason’s swift patter. He followed a 

distant, thin exiled whistle mixed up with his Mam’s voice calling out his echoing name. Precocious, he tried his hand at imitating the toot. Between shrubs and an army of saluting trees, Ceit picked up his book-end signals.

   “Haud yus horses, young laddie Mason! No sae fast, am with babby Lachlan!” Heeled to him, Ceit shifted her hips under a long, loaded pocket-filled cloak, to manoeuvre over steep ground, avoiding rabbit scats. 

   “Eeeeekeeeeek!” A winded yip crescendoed lacing the air like rushing, in defiance, an open-ended tube.

Spell-bound. The cry reached Mason’s small fibre like a language only he could translate. A dot beetled its course over the cushiony haars* (*coastal mist). Skipping, picking up odd looking pebbles for his other collection, Mason followed its captivating allure. As long as he heard his Mam’s appeal, he could turn back. But, today was different. It allowed for a new outlook. He awoke to a lived experience from the quiet yet rogue-filled woods. Other playfellows were invited back to their bubble, playing together with Lachlan. An upbringing with the breeze waxing and waning like hy-spy games over his skin and locks. They held history and preserved hidden, secretive wonders like a best man at a wedding. Away from urban noises tied to distillers, street-fighting neighbours, building works, and lurking, oily smells, Mason had an epiphany. His unwrapped senses picked up the aerial tin like a gang leader. 

   “There you’s be, you wee tite! Lovin’ it are yus, eh wee Mason? A Bonnie sight, no? Careful, daaarlin’, nae get too close,” settling against a faidhbhile* (*beech), Ceit rocked her Lachlan bundle as if holding the Aurora Borealis. 

Somehow they were led to the right spot. A sort of confidence in talking surprised Ceit as Mason ran to her like she was someone special. Her dawning cheeks reflected summer’s morning light. An innocence returned to her as if she were young again with uninterrupted hope before her.          

   “How do thalive? How high do thaget? Wha’ can thasee? How far toos? I found tha’s feather, look see, can I’s keep it, Mam?” Dancing around, he held his very own VIP for every branch to admire, join in on with him.

Squealing at Mason, even junior Lachlan wiggled, waving his plump doodlers at him. The day Mason was introduced to the nursling, he rushed to kiss, snuggle him thinking he finally had a bestie of his very own. Bloodline was a reclamation that started early on. Once Mason noticed his maternal natural spring changed shape, Ceit explained that another kernel grew inside her. 

   “Mam, are yees like tha snail then? Tha carry tha’s flat over tha head,” Mason sketched out the Venn parallels between her and one of his handpicked companions.

   “I s’ppose yus right, Mason, altha the sprog’s swimmin’ in mees tummy, not crawling over os floors!” Rubbing clockwise her midriff, she extended a rare laugh at his imagination.

   On the top of the terrain, vistas of woodlands and Highlands were scattered at their feet. The skies were like a track and field to a skein of pink-footed geese returning from Greenland and Iceland. Mouth open, Mason chose one then another to tag on his cloud nine. Their small unit was a moving household, carrying a bit of everything squeezed into Mam’s carryall to keep them all as content as possible. 

   “Pack up time, we’ll return nae worry, wee Mason. ‘Tis os garden toos! Hold Lachlan’s reins, lovey,” balancing the paraphernalia, heaving a deep sigh, she began to warble their favourite ballad: “The Fause Knight upon the road”.

   “O whare are ye gaun? Quo the fause knicht upon the road:

     ‘I’m gaun to the scule’. 

    Quo the wee boy, and still he stude.”

Slowly they stuck to the bridleway, singing all verses but it never brought them back there. At least not altogether.

   In Mason’s bleak bedroom, he ran the tuft over his arm timed to the drape’s pull cord, rapping against the frozen window pane. Pulling on his shabby school uniform, he hid it deep in his moth-eaten pocket.   

   “Best not take your prized quills to school, Mason,” Ceit loitered picking up flouted garbs. A sour look spread like ink on her grimacing face. Whenever he was faced with her scrunched expression, he went mad. Only the outdoor green Eden figured him out. Adults, what did they know? Too old to remember kiddihood, at least that was his version of watching his boozy, bohemian Mam. What if instead, she had been a man?

   “I won’t!” Mason flapped, stamping his foot, the plumage taking flight, air-gliding the Lino floor.

Hands-over ears, Lachlan swayed, squatted to a corner repeating “Mason won’t” like an encore. Trying to change the course of the room’s climate, Ceit pulled the faded curtains.

   “Mind yousself, wee man! I’m yous Mam nay tha devil!” Ceit hobbled, plugging tears, crouching by a loose pile moored like oozing yolks. 

   “Nay tha devil!” Opening a gate for Lachlan’s copying loop.

Mason slumped, clasping his floccus loot, used to her wont. Lack of light, the dreaded, elongated post-Yule stretches of darkness, set off Ceit’s freestyle overcast moods. Lost in ashen shadows, she upheld coiled greasy, limp grey-streaked hair strands. In knitted socks, granny pjs under a frayed morning coat, she listlessly pottered rooms. 

   “Sorry Mam,” throwing growing arms around her, sticking his nib into her stringy neck. 

A year later, long-suffering Ceit ended their childhoods, sky-diving that memorable cliff. Foggy first month days were always hell.

   “She wus a ticking time bomb, ‘e’s better off now! Lachlan’s t’other matter,” amongst swipes that stuck to Mason like molasses when moving around kinship homes. Forced from their community, Lachlan and Mason were excluded, sundered with graffiti-like repercussions. Hyper-acute to being escorted to a children’s placement, Mason voiced his unsuitability resisting their ‘enforced distance’. The estranged boys, displaced, unbuttoned their clobber to miserably fit in. Separated early on, severely impacted Mason and Lochlan’s identities. It ruptured their emotional wellbeing. Too young, Mason was unable to support his younger kin who needed complex, neurodivergent supervision. Reunion promises repeated but over time, the premises were further apart at each renewal. Ultimately too far to regularly visit. Overwhelmed, appetite loss, nightmares, bed-wetting were only some of their common traits. Lochlan went another step further, internalising his non-verbal reality. Each residential unit 

challenged Mason. Life with strangers developed his runaway mistrust. Pining for Lachlan, Mason slept with eyes wide open, worrying that monster forms came into his shared room to kidnap him. Adoption was hit and miss. Eventually they sunk into a tunnel in the machine of welfare stigmas. Respectively, anchors dissolved, deflated and they grew knowing the traumatic pain was swallowed up. It was replaced by an invisible terror like carving knives.

When berthed in dormitories, Mason clung to his dwindling belongings, snatched, removed, stolen, ridiculed by whomever lingered. Adversity formed the barrier to thrive, waiving his origins. He defencelessly fought for his life like a sword dance.  

   Still in limbo, Mason stopped blaming himself for Ceit’s end and losing Lachlan to the social services system’s maze. Masking his learned habits, made Mason constantly on guard. It drained him emotionally and the exhaustion deepened by another sunless New Year. This particular one disembarked a chapter change. Voluntary redundancy at work unshackled him. Fellow colleagues tilted awkward handshakes. He rushed out more easily than he thought possible like a waging Calculus equation.

Savings in place, Mason calculated a manageable fresh flyleaf. Skyward, he soaked up the tip of urban air, slinging his daypack onto his back. Ideas flitted by resurrecting old haunts in woods where he was happiest. Or believed to be. Squeals of laughter escaped scabby-kneed Lachlan and Mason. Rousing sharp, resounding barks busted from an excited Saluki rescue dog. Lupin ball-chased, finally outrun by a spooked leveret. Their jargon tattooed Mason’s soul. Special moments that went by so quickly believing them eternal, were stored in Mason’s treasure jar. Locked, buried, they re-opened of their own accord. The power behind each one reminded him of his abandonment, the incomprehensibility of sudden actions and his fatherlessness. Yes Mason lived with his Mam and brother then one day, they vanished. But his da never came up. Just hushed up like dirty laundry that needed washing. A missing limb’s murky, ghostly wan scoped a shivering mist through him. The smog over their childhood was soon to crash-land on their small, imperfect nuclei. 

   A tree-deprived, lamenting outline from Mason’s lustreless studio window, urged nostalgic Hielands’ backwood hints. Suddenly stirred, he pulled out his now flimsy, feathered sulky relic tucked in his creaking hiking boots. Without a doubt, the pain from the absence of familial beings and creatures around him, pierced him. For a long while, there was no room for memories. Especially the ones that haunted him from beyond. From under his bed, he dusted off a rugged, well-meaning rucksack. Girding it, he indulged in the Caledonian Sleeper’s dream-like, hazy return journey. Reminiscing breathtaking views jolted him; assured by his bridging playlist, Mason resolved to cycle his way from his malaise.

Twelve hours later, Loch Morlich’s melodramatic vistas panned before him. A pivotal chasm was fused, stopping him in his tracks, knocking over his breath. Skilful v-shaped winds had their way on choppy harsh waters, reflecting signature sky grey tones. Caught unexpectedly on the Old Loggin Way by a lashing weather change, Mason, gritting chipped teeth, veered Glenmore Forest Park’s cape. Pounding fist-size pellets relentlessly assaulted him as if he were tested for an entrance exam. The seasonal hail storm bombarded his track. A steady thump on his helmet like girl-speak. Pumped, he battled, incised flat-out, thrilled by palpitations. Slowly, the bitter sadness trespassing his life’s track, peeled away. Out in the open, he was alert to his earthy surroundings. Hollow neighbours on the move sharing a space with him. No questions, judgements, assumptions as to whether he was an orphan, a traveller from a foster home or whatever mixture he was classified under. Here, in this land of raw supplements, there were no boxes to tick. He was invisible in the best possible way. Rights intact, if he had wanted to, and he often did, he hugged, kissed tree barks. Through Mason’s scabs, lips and pressure points, he smelt their earthiness. They gave him permission to be who or what he didn’t even know he was. Will they forgive his absence? Can they work out his awkwardness? Do they detect his misery? Nature’s tactility tasked and spoke to Mason in its therapeutic wink-wink. 

Soaked outright, stumbling, his misty glasses blindfolded him. A sturdy refuge under the great-uncle pines’ mantle welcomed the muddied duo. By braving the downpour, he turned the 

page on his drifting, weather-beaten life. Here, in the hardy territory amongst the soaring, wooden totems, Mason, became undaunted. Bestirred by the thrill of his reclaimed renegade’s instinct, he was validated in their passage.

Directionless into the backwoods, he caught the swinging gale freely brushing him. Thrown off kilter, Mason almost crushed a helpless creature dropped from the highs to the lows. Buried under soggy leaves was a minuscule, shaggy ball. Against all odds in the greenest spot, hid a spurned Golden Eagle chick. Its wings stuck together like a straitjacket. On scrutiny, Mason intuited the frozen chook was at death’s door. Gently, yet reluctantly, coaxed from a carpet of limp needles, his clammy cap cupped it. Breathing warmth onto its small corpse, Mason was humbled by its runted, magnificent vulnerability.

Flickering jet black, glistening jewels met Mason’s beguiled stare. The eaglet dully fixated. Injured, weakened through its ordeal, a faint pulse tapped under Mason’s tartan hold. Humming soothingly, he was smitten by their tender impromptu; its unlocked gaze rolled back.

So young, Mother Nature, already toyed with its fragility playing a cruel blow on a wild, iconic, feathered bairn. Their whole world, lost in an instant. Cocooned against Mason’s sheltered chest, it trembled. Its quiver unexpectedly sent ma-paternal instincts through him. Although Mason sustained the chilling damp penetrating his clothes, the fleecy encounter made him giddy. Matching canary yellow beak and claws left Mason dumbfounded. They innocently curled, slowly unwinding, trusting him. 

Carefully, as a stand-in parent, Mason lovingly befriended this plumed newborn, yearning its hawk-eyed mother: each orphaned, expelled. 

Fellow birds, woodsy smells woke to tip-offs after the seasonal deluge ceased. Momentarily bewitched, a fragrance unnerved Mason. The windswept forestland’s beauty-pageant was mesmeric. Even gloomy days dispelled an alluring, earthy cone scent from the Douglas fir. The bark’s extract from a Hybrid larch knitted together majestic Scots pines. Golden, elongated branches shimmied effortlessly in musky cologne. 

Forest potions drew on terrene scents in a dewy sigh. The hinterland wonderment succumbed 

to boreal backcountry. Mason submitted to its cliffhanging Terran caw. While waiting for a break in the gurgling deluge, he settled under cover; he’d remembered it was rare for Golden Eagle families to break up. The parents were forever, something he never knew. Sudden parenthood as a stand-in father, forced him to question his intentions. A minuscule patch in a being’s life wavered between feeding and sleeping. It spurred Mason to access his best, disguising his impostor syndrome. 

Nature’s prime odours, sounds took centre stage ruffling him to react to the eyas’ petrified, starving state. A gritty combination at any time, especially if survival of the fittest wasn’t yet its game of choice. Focusing on his tiny charge, Mason scrambled to think where he could dig out some food. He’d packed vegan-turkey slices for lunch. It was the closest he had to carrion which the linty tot pricked at knowingly closing in on Mason’s fingered pinch.

As the dusk closed in, Mason readjusted his satisfied avian ward. Drawn to its dried-out floccose black and white colouring, its aroma provoked clashing, early years’ mementos. Submerged recollections of his blurred Mam and Lachlan. Mason rooted his reveries. A playground victim, he was lost in his body’s former, neglected self. His pocket-sized passenger cried out, triggering Mason into action. 

   “I’m now a carer. Only 24 hours ago, I was to follow Mam. I’m grateful you dropped into my life as my second chance,” equally at home as a songster swelling to Ceit’s lullaby. 

Converting his backpack to a frontal position, he pedalled through a sleepless, moonlight night softly towards the dark sky rangers’ domain. While continuing his serenade, Mason bent to the harsh road. He handled demanding puddles as deftly as swerving sparrowhawks. Side-eyed lights shone in the distance. A hunch that his winged tyke’s upheaval was at an end. Leaping from his seat like preparing an ambush, Mason hammered the heavy door, softly rocking his precious goods.

   “Help!” Peering past steamy panes. 

Decisive footsteps approached. His weary, billed package was transferred. Soft crimsons filled the room as the warmth of a headstrong fire reached their shivering silhouettes.

Just like Mason’s, could its kin be tracked down? Will rejection in the family pecking order occur despite its human adoption? Its case didn’t resemble Merrick’s 2023 birdnapping and was unknowingly destined to be at the forefront of wildlife conservation. Mason aspired to contribute in his minuscule way. Only yesterday he’d reached a fork in his erratic city lifestyle. Jointly the birdling and Mason fueled each-others’ allied, wanderlust fire. Unknowingly entitled, he inherited its august territory. 

From cradlehood, Mason took umbrage with his deprived origins. Abandoning Lachlan nor his roots weren’t part of the outsourcing equation: his rage was. Bound by a primaeval love of wilderness, it fell into his lap and he squandered it. Blasé. A certificate of devotion blended his ambitious travel permit.

Would he be forgiven in his stunted atonement, granted a second chance? Into the rustic countryside of the Great Glen, he stole away, wrapped fully in its safety blanket haven. January was deleted. As a survivor, his messy family’s tragedy had no choice against his damaged past. It unleashed a resurrected bedrock to their broken clan’s anatomy. Time to plot Lachlan’s rightful, waiting-room release, restoring his bold gaire paiste* (*child’s laugh).