Tarpeian Rock Intro

Hello everyone! I'm posting the first few paragraphs from a new story. I would like to hear from you how well it sets the scene. If all goes well, I intend to post more fragments.
Again, this is just a section

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The morning following his graduation, Timothy Larrick sat upon the roof of his home, the emerging sun like a blossoming golden bud. Its light turned the sky the color of iron; a perceivable edge, sharp and distinct, emerged behind the clouds, and then there would be the pale blue, the sea imbued with salt.

Sitting high above the street, he gazed through the faint convergence of oak trees at the lake. Still attached to sleep, his eyes wore heavily the pain of many dreamless hours, and so the wind-struck waters had lost their crest; it was as if blue waxen paper was being illuminated from beneath by a dim candle. The moist soil lining its edges was black as ash.

The expanse was seeded with houses. Each sat at a minor length from the other, with his being the only solitary one; it gazed across the road at the orderly procession. Its place amongst the others was a rather fitting analogy when brought up against his nature: defiant in silence, like an indignant eye resting above a plaintive mouth, never to cherish a star-bathed sky.
The early sunlight bathed the grass plots to the left and right of his house, causing the blades to lightly shimmer.

In austerity, such as what he saw, there was comfort. Any act of rebellion within nature, whether it is a fierce storm or tall grass pestering a dirt road, is unsettling, as it displays the very thin surface between structure and disarray reality treads, nauseatingly thin. The roofs he saw, the one atop which he sat, were thankless; snow and rain, heat and chill, had crashed and flowed along their coarse surfaces, and so it would be until they fell to earth and decayed to join the soil; they were common and provided structure, thus they soothed the weary hearts of the calm and pensive.

Timothy sniffed at the air. Its pleasant scent mingled with the stagnant air of yesterday’s ceremony that remained in his nostrils. The tedium, the reek of hundreds of youths closely confined, the drone of a valedictory speech…all sights and sounds had formed into a single desultory odor. But there came along another scent. He breathed in once more, in order to assure himself nothing was amiss. His heavy eyes widened: smoke.

Timothy’s mind arrived at the conclusion that there must be a fire. He searched the scenery for the guilty flame, but could find none. After a brief moment, he discovered its source. From one home across the way there extended forth a chimney, laid from greyed brick. Smoke wafted out in a column. It would remain as one and then curl into many, each seeking a breeze along which to scatter.

Nothing wrong with it as such. My first impression is that you might be trying too hard, as it's very wordy, with lots more adjectives and metaphors than actual content. However, that may be a matter of personal taste, and you did say specifically that you were setting a scene. The above does paint a vivid picture. It did jar me a bit when you compared the sky to the salty sea, as the sea is the color of the sky, not vice-versa, and the salt has nothing to do with anything. That may be an example of what I mean by trying too hard.

My second impression is that you know spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Big plus. Also, unless you typed a perfect first draft, you most likely bothered to proof this before posting. Big thank you.

One thing, though: You said that these are the first few paragraphs of the story. Opening a story with (at least) six paragraphs of pastoral description and no actual story in sight will kill most of your potential readership dead on the spot. You need to 1) remove any of the above that's not actually vital to the story or setting and 2) break the rest into bite-size pieces and feed it to the reader within the story itself, as you might mix small bits of broccoli with something more palatable when giving it to a child. In other words, show the parts of the setting that matter when they matter, and leave out altogether the parts that never matter.