The Boot Runs Ahead

I left Part One for the last time this week. There will not be another dwelling like such.  

Yet, I found that when I came to its final chapters, I did not want to go just yet. I saw around me a thousand fears and short comings that bid me to stay. 

 

I felt stuck, ironically, very much like a boot in the mud. 

It was then, as if by some chance, that I came across the mark in a chapter very near the end, where, at the beginning, a boot had been carelessly left behind; only there was no boot now, just a footprint deep in the dirt.

The lost boot, it seemed, had gone ahead into pages unread and unedited. Evidently, the thing was up to some mischief, or otherwise late for some plot point I had till now neglected.   

 

 

I couldn't help myself after that, for it seemed the boot was more eager than I, and immediately a million places where the boot could be came to mind. Whether it had been filched or kindled to life, I could only imagine. I know only that it excited me to think of the pranks a single boot might contrive if it were revived and roused to action; or, if it were not such a frisky boot as that, whose mismatched foot I might find it on later.  

And so, I ran off in search of this lost shoe, forgetting altogether to glance back at where I had so long lingered. Like Alice to Wonderland, I jumped down the hole, following the boot out of the familiar pages and into Part Two by the shadow of its laces.

 

As I heard its stomps and romps running ahead of me, I laughed: Now, now the fun begins, I said to myself; all because of some well-placed-disappeared boot; vivified by witchery or a well-timed tidbit left by a thief; just enough to pull the writer through. 

For when boots vanish and run into Part Two without you, anything could come of it. 

 

(Note: Special thanks to Marc who always makes lots of jokes while holding a camera.)