Morning Assembly #fridayflash 480 words

He'd never any toys when he was a child. Well, when he was younger than he is now. Left to peck with his fingers in the dust alongside the chickens. He didn't even know he was draughting imaginary maps and coastlines that now he was surveying for real.

There was no instruction guide for this kit. No box with a picture on it for comparison. It was however made in China, more coastlines away from his home than he could ever limn.

The flat curved box with the grooves was easy. He knew where that went, but it was ever the last piece of the jigsaw. The other chunky part, the wooden one which vaguely echoed the shape of a hobbyhorse, not that he had ever seen one of course, well that too was relatively straightforward. Though it was the one that posed him the greatest trial, forever slapping his shoulder with tremendous vigour. More so even than his father, or the man presiding over him here.

No, what caught him were all the fiddly bits. The bits that actually looked like fun. First there was the spring and a metal gulley you could make it slide across. Push the spring back with your fingers, then release it and watch the spring dart across its cradling runway and fly out like an arrow. Then there was the bolt. You could wedge it into the ground and then roll or throw miracle fruit towards it and see which gets the closest. Of course he would never be allowed to stick the bolt in the ground and get it covered in smut. Then he would most likely feel someone's hobbyhorse smashed over his head by the man in charge.

The thin tube, my how fine a blowpipe might that make, for going hunting bush monkey or birds. A silent and deadly weapon, like the old ways. Though he knew if he brought this tube to his mouth, it would taste of oil and make him retch. But he knew metal toys needed oil to keep all their parts working. And finally, the strange little drum. That seemed to do nothing at all. Yet if he held it to his ear and shut his eyes tight enough to block out the world, if he then shook it he could just hear the sea moving about inside it. Like listening through a conch shell, but so far more distant. All the way from China perhaps. Did China have a sea of its own? The man had told them that the drum contained a gas, not water. But to him it sounded only like the waves. Alas there was never sufficient hush around in the camp for him truly to be able to hear it quite enough and prove the man wrong.

"Okay boys. Thirty seconds only to assemble this AK47. Or I shoot you".