plagued or whatever

----

The first time Neil made something out of clay he was on the run with his mother somewhere in the mountainous backwoods of North Georgia.

The dinky little motel they'd been staying in, while his mom recovered from a near miss seven states away, backed up to a creek caked in mud. Or at least he thought it was mud.

He spent the first day, while his mom slept off a concussion, making sculptures and cups and creatures out of pasty mud that was cool when he slathered it on his sunburnt shoulders.

He had to abandon his carefully crafted tiny army of mud creations when his mother called him back for the night, expecting them to be gone when he was able to sneak away again the following day.

Although some had washed away, the cups he'd made were exactly where he'd left them, hard and holding having been left to bake in the southern heat.

It fascinated him, he tried to make other shapes to see if they would do the same but before he could experiment further it was time for them to move on.

Everytime they stopped somehwere and he could convince his mom to let him perform elements of childhood, play in a creek or at the edge of a pond or even have his feet brushed by the rising tides of the ocean, he tried to find the material that had created those little cups.

He was rarely successful, having to move on too fast for him to even have the time to try.

In the few sparse moments they stayed somehwere long enough for him to be enrolled in a school or spend time in a public library, he searched for information

He learned about pottery, about different types of clay, saw pictures of famous peices, the difference between what he'd been doing and wheel throwing.

It was simultaneoulsy consuming and out of reach, just one expereince in a slew of others he knew he'd never have the chance to try.

When his mother died he floundered, struggling to adapt to life on the run by himself.

Although he had picked up as many survival skills from his mother as he could, and despite his best attempts at life on the run, he was not as adept at evasion and didn't have the same connections or resources.

It wasn't long before his father's people found him.

After hours of torture, an unexpected rescue, and what he hoped would be his last near death expereince, his uncle asked him what he wanted to do with this new found freedom.