Freedom’s Touch
Ryan The lake engulfed the landscape, glinting and gleaming with the colors of its surroundings. It met the sky’s gaze with a fever of its own, deepening in color the farther out it reached. The evergreen forest that surrounded the body of water left, in their shadow, a deep green mark upon the water – as if to remind you just how far from the world you really were. Waves, churned up by the mountain wind, lapped up against the shore. The steady thrumming of the water was broken only by the echoes of playing children and the shouts of excited lake goers, who like him, had made their way out here into the wilderness for the summer. Ryan was not the wisest of men, nor was he the best featured, his beer gut had …