Filtering Through!

The child, bored at the prospect of being bored for the next hour, sits at his study. He doesn't want to read. Afraid that his parents might punish him as they have threatened a few minutes ago, he picks up a book and opens it to a particular page. On it there's a drawing of a man carrying unbearable load and walking impossibly on. He doesn't know the context. He doesn't know who that man is or why he has to carry such a weight. He just stares at it and waits for the clock to suddenly show an hour has passed. He thinks the man must be poor; or probably it's some some sort of punishment he's having to go through. For a second, knowing it's a bad thought, he imagines his dad carrying that weight; and in spite of himself finds a vague consolation in the thought.

He though knows his dad could easily carry that weight. The old man in the picture is weak very unlike his dad. He then, again despite himself, imagines his dad with double the weight. Would he find it tormenting to carry all that weight just like the old man, his dad? He thinks he would. He thinks he would come to his dad's rescue and help him carry the weight. His dad would smile, grateful at the help, and proud at his son's strength. It's a deeply satisfying thought. It feels to him like his moment of glory. He re-imagines it. Now he inserts his mom's presence as an audience in the scene. She watches them as he helps his dad and smiles at
him. He keeps repeating the scene, drawing an unimaginably huge satisfaction at every repetition. And at each repetition he adds a new character. At one point the scene transforms into his act being performed in front of his whole school, ending in everyone clapping for him. There's no thirst in him for it to really happen. In fact if it were for real he's not sure if he wouldn't go hide himself somewhere. He's content to keep it within his head, and it's where he retrieves a huge satisfaction from.

And sudden;y he abandons the whole thing. It's as if the chapter or the picture has done it's purpose. He starts reading aloud from a chapter so they could hear him. He observes them and calculatedly pitches his voice.

What's that thought, is it's life lived in him? Or would it come back some time later in some other variation to rescue him again?