The dawn suggested clear promises of easy warmth. Clear, blue skies, crisp- breathless. Purple tinges fade out of the night into the light.
The adolescent stood by a young gum tree. Feet bare, blue with cold. Plaid pyjama pants, and a shivering frame unnoticed under a stretched cotton t-shirt. In his right hand, drooping unaware, a length of thick rope.
The note rang out in the bird's choir. Thus began the day's din, the boy listening, looking abject to it all. Nearby, a brick and timber pergola flanked a busy road with a curve. In an hours time, the current empty street would be lined with SUV's full with uniformed children, sulking and sullen, headed to the nearby local school.
The boy's movement broke the placidity. He limped gently in response to the frosted ground. The bird's call faded out in response to the limping movement. No wind offered resistance to the tense stillness.
The rope sailed over the rafter of the pergola, directly in the centre. The boy struggled with a knot, in obvious novelty of the pattern. Despite, after bated movements, he succeeded in producing a strong noose.
Tying the ropes end to the bottom a brick column, the noose hung over the rafter. Carefully assessing each component, with calm notions the boy climbed carefully up one of the columns, and teetered across the rafter to it's centre where the noose waited. He sat carefully, and reached the noose around his neck.
A moments hesitation resulted from the sudden cry of a black cockatoo in the gum. The boy paused to watch as the bird sailed out from the tree's canopy towards the sun, yellow tail sparking across the clear blue.
The rope snapped taught as the boy fell forward, feet extended curling toward the ground, dirt along their base, blue with cold. The rafter creaked under the bodies strains, till the only sound remained the cockatoos distant call.