A Point To Lost Things

WHERE IS HE! shouts Terence.

Don't shout at Saint Malo! says Baldy.

Where is he? says Terence to Saint Malo.

Saint Malo can't speak, so he mimes the answer, by jumping.

He jumps, but drops back and collapses.

Oh look, says Belle. That proves something. Saint Roley didn't get out by himself!

(Which is false reasoning).

Maclou may know something, says Gaius.

He won't, says François-René.

I'll find out, says Arthur, grabbing Gaius's bike.

Take it, says Gaius. But bring it back when you have an answer. We'll stay here and search the surroundings.

Spread out everyone, says Belle.

I'm not going anywhere, says Baldy. Someone might steal Saint Malo.

No one would want HIM, says Terence.

Little Saint Malo has been thinking and thinking.

He knows what happened to Saint Roley.

......

Saint Roley had jumped out of the box easily.

He had wanted to look at the ants.

Here he is.

He knows they are all over the shoe that he has been sick in. Terence said so. Why would ants do that?

He tiptoes to the grass verge and looks down the slope at the rocks and the wild crashing ocean.

There is the shoe.

He skitters down the loose gravel scree on his feathery bottom.

He stops at the shoe.

Silent ants run all over it.

Large blue-green blowflies dive into it.

But as to the reason....

It occurs to him that he has made a mistake coming down here.

He could die here and no one would know.

Some of the flies are spitting on the dried vomit.

Then yuck! laying eggs in the wet bits.

Ants are dragging pieces of sicked-up eel back to their tunnels.

Getting on with it.

Perhaps it's a lesson.

But Saint Roley doesn't learn it.

Luckily for him, in the intervening moments, Saint Malo has been teaching himself how to point.