The Boy and the Volcano

There was a boy looking up at a cone shaped mountain. It was an old volcano and I don't know if he knew what that was or what it meant. The room was dark as he looked out through the high up dirty window, looking dark more so because of the bright sunny day outside. He wanted to climb up to see what was on top. But, he was supposed to stay in his room. All that was inside was his toy soldiers. He'd long grown tired of them because in the real world they could only portend death and destruction, ruined and bloodied lives for ever shattered and never to be put back the same again. He missed his mother, but he didn't know why. All he knew is that he was empty inside. The men had come and taken her away screaming and kicking. He couldn't understand why she was so frantic. He was numb at the time and didn't understand what was happening, that more than anything she could not stand the pain inside her caused by the prospect of being separated and unable to protect him. Still, that volcano loomed outside. It hadn't erupted in decades, maybe even centuries; no one could remember anymore. No one even ever imagined that it would ever erupt. It's stoic appearance never changing; it would not be right for it to erupt. But, erupt it did. With such a vengeance just like the vengeance of war. It was indignant at being forgotten, at never being feared again. It wanted, no deserved, to have the respect of the town people. It had looked over them for centuries, never allowing any bad fate to become of them. Yet, they had no thanks, no appreciation for its stewardship. The boy never saw it coming just like he never saw the men coming to take his mother away. It was all a dream from which he would never awake. It was as if he was never born. Except his mother, still alive in a far away land would never know the emptiness inside her could never be made whole again because her baby could never come home to her. She never lost hope until that fateful night when she screamed "Bloody Murder!" at the top of her lungs and her heart burst from the agonizing pain of her separation from her only son, her only child begotten by a man she had despised all her life. She was so tormented by the deep love she had for her son in conflict knowing he was the prodigy of everything she saw as evil in her universe. She so longed for escape and it had not come through all the years until the pain was so intense it ripped her heart to shreds. She left in such an agonized and unbearable fit that any memory of her would evoke such pain as to bring deep, deep melancholy. So, this is the story of the boy looking up at the volcano. If there is a moral here, I don't know what it is. If there is any insight or enlightenment to be had, it can only come from your heart for the heart which wrote this story may have insight and enlightenment for its bearer, but only your heart contains what is meant for you.