Chapter 18
The Thirst for Knowledge
His desire to prove himself has transformed. It's no longer about the villagers, but about understanding himself and the mysteries surrounding him. The tree is his classroom, the object his final exam.
The sun, a molten disc bleeding through the emerald canopy, was no longer a mere marker of time, but a teacher. Each dawn, a fresh page turned in the silent, verdant academy of the towering tree. The villagers’ voices, those sharp, dismissive pebbles that had once lodged themselves beneath my skin, had long since been ground to dust by the relentless wind. Their judgment, a phantom limb I’d desperately tried to reanimate, had withered and fallen away like dead leaves. My climb had been a desperate, foolish lunge for their approval, a frantic attempt to silence the chorus of ‘sukkeltje’ that echoed in every corner of my small