354. Cerulean

Cerulean looked at his chron, and in the soft silence of mind lost in thought and not of ear, knew he had plenty of time. A cushion of time, such an interesting and ironic metaphor, he thought, as if he needed time to cushion the blow of the hours to come.

He checked his list and checked it again. There really were two lists. One of material, one not. Of the first he was sure. Of the second, less so. His father would be waiting, alone, packed and trimmed and looking as dignified as ever, his face as stoic as stone and he wondered what his father was thinking.

Ceru, as his friends called him but not his father, looked again at the time, then he looked at the table. He felt as if he were going to a double funeral. His father was leaving. He was not. Fate of either not to be known by the other. He tried to put a positive spin on the matter as he was wont to do, but this was not as it had been before when meditative prayer, scribed in letters, could deliver harm to harbor.

He took a breath as he pulled a chair from the table and sat. Upon the table, resting quietly on wood if not quietly in heart, a rather massive tone, a collection one could say, of letters. More than a thousand, although number mattered not, for any fool can shovel dirt. He thumbed through the pages as one drives through an old neighborhood. The houses are the same but the feeling is not. The missives had worked, or so he liked to believe. They were past, done, retired. Yet, they had not magically appeared on the table. The night before, they moved from chest to list to table. And then, this morning, they moved off the list but not off of table or into chest or, painfully, out of mind.

His chron beeped and he startled as if awakened from sleep. Time was flowing. He had to go. He had to choose. Pulling pen and paper from dark to light, a note was scribed and tucked and folio decided.

Father stood, as he always did, ready. Ceru opened the door of his transport, lifted by a sound he knew would, in a short time, live only in the halls of his memory, and for just a moment, allowed himself the luxury of floating. “Cerulean, my son, you make a father proud.” Von meant what he said as his arms opened as wide as his smile. “Now help an old Hynerian secure his kit. There is much to say and so very little time to say it.”



One of the Brightest Stars from James Blunt's new album All the Lost Souls.

For better audio (and video) of the song-->>One of the Brightest Stars

353. Frail It

a pail of words heavy (Pails heavy of words)
(burn) my arms in remorse (regret)
a bucket of teeming silence
mock a fire long since wet

Arms burning in regret
with words of pail full (aflame) (heavy) (with a pail aflame with words)
seek a fire long wet (voiced not before the sun set)
a bucket of teeming silence
seek a fire long wet

before the light said goodbye

heavy in teeming silence
mocking fire forever gone


"Frail it," said Von, throwing pen to floor as knock met door. "Come in. I've got frailing nothing."

"You okay Von?" asked Kyra.

"Am I okay? Am I okay? What the frail do you think?"

"I think you need my ears and I think they (my ears) need you. Cleanse the bullocks I've been hearing with the tears of your lucid regard."

And so Von begin with a story of a book, the book of letters he called it; and into the night he spun his story between the wetness of pain escaping as Kyra honored her promise.

352. And If

“Do you believe in magic?” asked John.

“Yes,” said Von, his olivary lids, looking larger than they were in the warm reflective light, as if he had large marbles for eyes, never moved past three o'clock.

John pressed. “Care to expound? We’re going to need it.”

A look came over Von’s face Rog had never seen. John, without know quite why, immediately regretted asking the question.

In a voice that seemed as deep as a castle keep, his face aglow as much of light as in light, Von spoke. “When I watched my son play ball.” His unblinking eyes measured the two as if to backhand the snoot from their intemperate faces. “That, was magic.” Von said nothing else and returned to sipping his snoot as a dragon returning to his cave, secure in protecting sacred treasure. After a short period of silence, he stood up, drank the rest of his snoot in a single swoop, slammed the snifter down on the table and, in the ringing echo of crystal on wood, his glassy eyes burning Rog and John with a look aflame in remembrance, said. “And if you frailers don’t understand the magic of this mission, may Janus have mercy on your souls.”

Von left. Five shallow breaths later John leaned over to Rog and whispered as a choirboy at mass. “Never knew he had a son.”

Raising his eyebrows, Rog added, “Neither did I.” Suddenly feeling much more sober than the moment before, he repeated, “Neither did I.”

351. in your eyes

Roar receded before chore completed. In the haze of battle done, where smiles had yet been won, eyes reflected hearts not neglected.

Trev closed his eyes and held the warm softness of Mairi tight to his trembling frame. With a whisper remarkable in unadulterated rawness he spoke. “The simplest things have become as insurmountable tasks.” His fingers dug into her flesh as if his words were inadequate.

Mairi pulled the back of his unwashed head into her bosom, her manicured and polished fingers massaging his scalp as if mining for words. A simple melody looped through her mind:

And when silence greets my last goodbye,
The words I need are in your eyes . . .

With courage of verse Mairi whispered back. “I’m here baby. I’m here.”

350. Breath of a Soul

Fragments of Taren:
an inquisition (author/date unknown)

A: What went through your mind when you stepped off the pod and into the bay of Tranquility?

T: There was no wind but I felt as if there were. There was no sun, but the heat on my face was as dry summer noon. My hearing was more acute than I can ever recall, before or since. My eyes were open, but nothing looked as I knew it. In the air, a strange scent of the cleanest ocean breeze you can imagine. I felt closer to death, absent fear, than at anytime in my life and, at the same time, felt more alive. I cannot describe the feeling.

A: Try.

T: Out of control. Electrified with an intense focus so bright, so strong, I felt as if my neurons were on fire and that at any moment my head would erupt in flames. I felt like I was floating, drifting, even as my feet felt like magnets to the metal floor. I had enough firepower behind me to destroy Tranquility several times over and yet, I felt more helpless, more alone, than I know how to describe.

A: What was the plan?

T: Mine?

A: Yes.

T: To die with dignity, without embarrassing myself or my species.

A: Interesting.

T: I knew what my people wished, why I was there. And I knew what Kyra was capable of. After our clumsy and rude attack, I had no doubt her ire would be waiting. I was the lightning rod. My crew, witnesses.

A: What happened next?

T: I walked to the center of the bay, and waited. I don’t recall how long, didn’t seem like a long time, but my mind was moving on another level and time was not as you and I know time. I heard music. Actually, I think music heard me. The oddest sensation--of hearing music so clear, so close, but knowing it came not from without, but from within. And then, on the far side, Kyra appeared. And what happened next gets a little confusing.

A: Try.

T: She moved without moving. What I mean is, the next thing I knew, she was in my mind, and the two of us were walking in a field, flowing waves of green, flowers, birds and just the two of us. In the distance a lake. We walked in that direction.

A: Please continue.

T: (shakes head and looks away)

A: Please try.

T: What occurred next cannot be described in any language I know.

A: We must know what happened next. Take your time.

T: Have you ever drowned?

A: Go on.

T: What I saw, heard, felt, experienced, lived, was as death, death to all I had ever conceived. I died without dying. Do you understand?

A: Keep going.

T: I saw it all as if it were happening to someone else. The death. The birth. How do I describe that? How do I tell you what that was like? Imagine me holding your head under water until you could resist no more, till your tenseness became limp. Then imagine you are dead, but somehow conscious of being dead—dead without being dead. Then I pull your head out of the water, from death, and you are alive. A rebirth, born anew. Not the same, but yet the same. Alive. Same eyes, but they see like you’ve never seen before. Imagine what that first gasp would be like, that first breath, of your new life. Imagine a hand so glorious holding your head, having elevated you beyond the constraints of life and death, having shown you worlds no one you know has seen nor can they conceive. Imagine looking into those eyes, sapphire blue, glowing with a beauty divine. Imagine, in that moment, naked, defenseless, in the arms of another, in the arms of the eternal, where eternity is now, where here is all there is. Imagine sensations that exists not in body or mind, but in soul. You can’t, can you?

A: (smiles)

T: Frail you.

A: Take him away.

349. Memorial Mountains

Taren exhaled a thousand thoughts, each a separate path into the mountains of memory as clear as twilight, and began to write. His quarters on the pod were cramped, almost cocoon-like, and the light seemed more luteous than on the command ship, which, he couldn’t say, either aided his recollection or simply colored it in warm hues of distance seen. He preferred to write longhand, he claimed for aesthetic reasons although many suspected privacy. Digital data, no matter how encrypted, was an invitation for prying eyes. Pen on paper, on the other hand, was as secure as the fire that burned them.

“Ten minutes to dock.”

“Acknowledged,” he responded, with the enthusiasm of a ill-behaved child waiting on his father to come home, his ears as attuned to the ticking clock as the child's to the sound of tires.

His hand trembled with remembrance past. Kyra, whom he would soon see again, was a being, a force, unlike anything known, and Arc’teryxians knew more than most. He had seen her anger first hand, the blood of his friends spattered on her albugineous face like speckled eggs writ large. Why she did not kill him as she did the others he could not say. She could have. She almost did. But at the last second, for reasons still unknown, she showed him mercy. Or, so it was written. In his own heart, his life ever since, had been anything but, and he wondered if she had known that the greater torture was in survivorship than in the quiet peace of the next world.

Words didn’t flow on paper as much as pain bled from his neurons, synapses forever firing with the throb of fate’s door closing one entrance and opening another. His movements, since that day, lacked fluidity, spontaneousness, or joy as the case may have been. He was seen, justly or not, as a pariah. He had failed to break the Hynerian. He had failed to protect his men. And most distasteful of all, he had survived. No one could think of a proper punishment, until now.

“Five minutes to dock.”

“Yes, yes. I’m on my way.”

Perhaps this is it, he thought. Perhaps this is where I (he) find (found) my (his) peace, he (they) wrote. Looking at the words on paper, they looked like something someone else had written, as if he were no longer of this world and those that hated him the most found their hate had exhausted itself in wishes and now that the event had occurred, that Taren was no more, they had nothing left. And so, for their own devices, they showed him the false mercy in death that high ranking failures receive in the pulpit of state eulogies.

The doors opened with their familiar hiss, as if they couldn’t be bothered, and the ramp lowered slowly in step to the surreal sense of slow motion Taren felt, as one might have on the walk from cell to maker. Everything sounded distant. Light seems faded, muted. There was movement all around but it matters no more than the falling of leaves to the autumnal wind. Taren felt as if he were watching a movie of someone else that looked like him. He stepped from pod to deck alone. His crew remaining onboard like townspeople watching from behind curtained windows as a doomed gunfighter took to the street. He didn’t blame them. His fate was not theirs.

348. A World Beyond

Em felt what could not be heard, Kyra coming down the hall. With a tap of cane, Pinky buzzed into the corridor surprising Kyra with a metallic sense of urgency, bouncing up and down as if out of breath, a smile eliciting thought. Pointing her stubby metal articulated arm toward her master’s open door, she seemed without words as one in the presence of greatness loses the connection between thought and tongue.

Em sat still in white. Kyra approached in silence like the night. One stood. One sat. One saw. One felt.

+Bare your soul and allow the heavy cloth of poccoon guilt to fall before the play of eternal and everlasting truth and love. The divine light awaits.+

Kyra placed her hand on Em’s forehead. Warmness radiated from skin to mind to heart and spine. Eyes blind fluttered with images of a world beyond this world, of mother smiling and father proud and as a feather sways in air to ground, her head gave way to gravity, the appearance of the divine overloading her mortal constitution, as pillow soft cushioned the fall.

Kyra looked at Pinky as if to assure, before bending over and kissing the peaceful expanse of Em’s quiet forehead. In the blink and click of Pinky’s mechanical eye, Kyra vanished; and, in the air, a breath of clean fresh sea air remained.

347. Hue Majestic

Where her form fitting melanic leather began and her sable hair ended could not be ascertain in the cold periwinkle cast. Upon bended knee the halo of niveous light, a via lactea of effervescent life, touched her nigrine shoulders as sovereign to knight on carpet coquelicot and crown aeneous. Scintillating upon her sapphire eyes, as festive lights coruscating on snowy windows, a language unknown to the common mind communicated, imbued, gifted knowledge and skill. Her arms, as wings, rose with supplicating palms upward and upon those palms, twin holographic images danced and whirled, her hands glowing as natural and supernatural embraced.

346. Incoming

“We’ve got incoming!” yelled Rog, his strained voice rising in disbelief, moments before the Tranquility absorbed a rain of multihued death as beautiful as dangerous. Bones shook and ached in step with squealing bulkheads, pain matching sound. “Frail, frail, frail!!!”

“Put the shields up!

“They are! I think.”

John staggered over to the panel, looking drunk with shock as his legs quivered under a moving floor, his arms wailing as one on a tightrope about to lose balance.

“Mommy, what is happening?” cried a tearful Ariel, curling in her mothers arms tight as baby in womb, seeking the last refuge of a child scared.

“Some bad guys have made a mistake. Your father is about to explain--” a bellowing concussion silenced mother and child alike under flickering lights appearing as photon confetti in still eyes. (the camera pans above the dark two shapes, one wrapped within the other, the ship shakes in contrast to the peaceful sleep of bodies unmoving)

“Who is attacking us?” barked Von.

“Rog?” commed Yul, her voice sounding unYul like, “what’s going on?”

“Not now!”

“I’m scared.”

“Rog, the shields! Now! Now! Shiott!

Light filled the forward bridge such to render colors mute and sound ethereal. Heads throbbed and eyes burned (symphonic music plays as we see lips move without sound, of faces contorted with effort, everything in slow motion; from her quarters we see Kyra on bended knee, a halo of light around her bowed head)

Trev rushed into the hall, disheveled, of cloth and hair and directly into the unlooking arms of Mairi, the two falling in a tangle of limbs upon the forgotten cold floor. Fear squeezed out the past, suffocated it in the urgent and in what seemed odd, trembling lips sought comfort in simultaneous tenderness as arms sought release in grip tight.

Em sat in her quarters, not moving. “Ms Em,” intoned Pinky. "Ms Em? Ms Em!”

Em just sat, still, cane in her left hand, her right hand on her thigh, back straight.

“Goldie?” Pinky called again. “Goldie!?” There was no answer.

“Von, I need your help.” John’s voice sounded placid, which, in and of itself, lent an air of unreality to the cacophony of sound and light. “See that panel to your right?”

“Yes.”

John’s eyes looked heavy and words failed him.

Von turned his head.

John’s lifeless form puddled, still as night in a meteor shower.

Rog looked at Von like the second string quarterback looks at the second string tight end with eyes that say, what do we do now.

“Prepare a boarding party.” If the voice could have smiled, he would have. “And Taren?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“I want you to lead the way.”

345. Stout

“Kyra, got a minute?” asked Em, tapping the floor with her opalescent ceramic cane, a gift from Von, as if she needed an auditory hand, as if her voice was only in her head.

“Sure, come on in Em." Kyra put down her oculators and powered down the holographic report on her desk. Since Emy had lost her sight, she had taken to wearing Venusian silk robes and pulling her rosewood hair into a spiral bun. Kyra wondered if she found some measure of comfort in the simplicity of both, a retreat to the security of routine in the uncertain world of sudden darkness. Somehow it seemed inappropriate to ask. "What’s on your mind?”

“Is it true, what I hear?”

“Depends," said Kyra, marveling at her elocution of the word hear, the word rolling off Em's tongue with the smoothness of the edge of a rainbow, with the clarity of Sunday church bells on a bright and sunny day, but most of all, she enunciated the word as if for her, as a blind person, to say she heard something, somehow gave it a greater truth than when those with sight auscultated. "What have you heard?”

“That you’ve turned the ship around, back to Kulmyk?”

“Yes.”

(hesitation, as silent as shadows at noon before a simoon, endured an ogle of ticks)

“Will there be anything else?” asked Kyra.

“Why?”

“Take a seat.” Kyra sat next to Em and put her hand on her thigh. Surveying her smooth statue-like face, Kyra felt almost guilty in her voyeuristic gaze, as if staring at someone who could not stare back was morally wrong, or at the very least, uncouth. An image of Papa looking down at her flashed behind her eyes and in a voice less authoritative than she would have liked, said, “You are going to see your mother again.”

Em didn’t move; her face remained as unreadable as ancient stone. Kyra wanted a 'do-over,' to give her voice the certainty that leaders gave to men afraid, a courage, without need of liquid benefaction.

“This is good news is it not?”

“Kyra, don’t misunderstand me. I deeply appreciate what you are attempting to do.” Em silently cursed her blindness. She desperately wanted to see Kyra's face, to see her reaction. Fearful she had not communicated her sincere intent, she awkwardly repeated, "I do."

“But?”

“But I can’t let you do it. The risk is too great.”

“You're right.”

“So you will turn the ship around?”

“No.”

“But—“

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but the risk is too great not to pursue our present course.”

“My sight is not that important. And—“

“You sight is secondary in this decision.”

“But the crew—“

“Idiots, the lot of them. Lovable idiots but idiots none the less. They see with their pride, with ego, agenda, and unruly disquisition.”

(an autumn pause)

“I see.”

“No you don’t.”

“Okay, you got me there. Can I ask you a question?”

Kyra nodded before realizing Em couldn’t see her. “Yes, please.”

“Should I be upset?”

“About what?”

“Well, the crew hates my guts because they think you are risking their lives for my sight, and now you tell me my sight is secondary. I can’t quite put my finger on the feeling in my gut, but I’m feeling like I just kissed my cousin.”

Kyra laughed.

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are. The fact of the matter is this. Our mission has a higher purpose.” Kyra stopped.

“Well, would you like to share that higher purpose with me?”

“Remember when we took those little red pills?”

“Yes.”

“Remember what you did?”

“Pissed my pants?”

Kyra laughed again. “Oh, I didn’t know that. Did you?”

“Might as well.”

“Em, what you did in those last moments, I haven’t forgotten. I’m afraid the crew has. So, we are going to get your sight back and we are going to do it because it’s the right thing to do. Are your shoulders stout enough?”

Her spine tingled. “Yes my captain. My shoulders are stout.”

Kyra put her hands on Em's shoulders. "You are stronger than you think."

For the first time since she lost her sight, Em smiled.

344. A Good Woman

As unspoken as moon accords planet, Em accompanied her father’s umbra down an oak paneled hallway, the deck rolling before her mind, the bulkhead creaking under swaying thoughts, her heart beating as war drums, her defenses rising a flag not white. Movement of mind and heart, ticking against the percussion of anticipation could play those games. The captain knew. There were instruments and there was gut; one sterile, one living. Choices. Always choices, he thought as one then the other touched the familiar worn frame above the doorway of his alcove.

Her father’s study, with memorabilia scattered in every cordaged nook, a virtual history of love of sea, of relationships formed and friends buried, exhaled solemn tones of wood and brass, of midnight stories of trial and tribulation, of ghosts and heroes, of a life lived above fear, beyond regret. Without speaking, from device of hand and deliberation of eye, Em knew something was not in place; and, as if to look for the scotoma, her mind begin to spin faster and faster with each reluctant exchange of silence, of downy eyes burning with an emotion only a father could feel on bended knee before his defenseless child. His hands, those leathery warm mitts opened before the witness of a heart lost in the shoals of waters unknown, of territory uncharted. A silk breeze blew from an open paned window, brushing Em’s hair with gentle strokes across her creamy olive complexion as her eyes peeked with the shine of inevitability, blinking rapidly for focus above cheeks not long for dry.

The captain, heavy of lid, planted his competent hands on the edge of his desk and leaned over. His lips opened as if to speak but instead crackled words destined to haunt the halls of a child’s memory like a eulogy, “Emy, your mother is a good woman.”

Em looked from cheek to cheek as if seeing words in creases, sonnets in furrows and love in the wrinkles of a Hynerian who suddenly looked older than he was. “Father, you’ve always been straight with me. What’s wrong?”

“I’ve never been one for fancy words.” He hesitated as if lost for the very locution practiced the evening long.

Em released her troubled shoulders into a shrug when she realized the sonic boom was not forthcoming and immediately regretted the solicited ineptitude that overcame her father’s countenance like a grotesque mask. His steady hand began to shake and his eyes looked dim, faraway, his mind spinning for light in the dark, for answers within a book not written. With an act of mercy, she took his trembling hands and with lips slow and tender kissed away the salty anguish on his glistening cheek. “Tell me father. Tell me what you called me here tonight to say. I am stronger than you think.”

The captain pulled his walty head back as if a stranger had just spoken. He surveyed his Em, a young female Hynerian full of promise, and in one of those moments that changes everything while changing nothing, she appeared not as child but as Hynerian. “Your mother,” he began in effort of force, of spine stiff, of commander straining under the weight of advancing unrequited hordes, “is dying.”

Em knew what was coming. And, and still, she felt slapped by an invisible hand from behind her father, one laughing and grinning in the pain of mere mortals, a hand with a knife to her father’s neck. From sting to anger to resolution to compassion occurred in the space of a breath. “You know what we must do?”

“Tell me. What must we do?”

“We must fight. We must fight this thing with everything we’ve got.”

“Emy—“

“I want to know every detail.”

“Emy my dear—“

“I want to know now, right this instant. We must devise a plan. That’s what you always said father, that we need a plan, that we must win the fight in our minds before we take the fight to our enemies.”

The captain squeezed tears down his cheeks with a smile he could not repress. She was wrong and she was right. His wife, her mother, was dying and nothing known on land or sky was going to change that. But that wasn’t really the point.

“We start with flowers.”

“Flowers?”

“Flowers brighten everything. We need flowers in every room, a signal, our standard. Mother will know. She will see and when she can no longer see she will smell the aroma of our untiring efforts. We will bathe her senses in our love and our strength will become her strength, our hope her hope, our conviction, the road to recovery. We will carry her father. We will lift her upon our stout shoulders as victors and she will know, know a love unlike any other.”

He ran his fingers under her bangs as if to see the face that was speaking such words. “My dear child, you are the fruit of your mother’s womb.”

“Oh, I’m just getting started. Now, tell me everything you know.”

Reading and Commentary: A Good Woman

343. The Captain

The captain's angular face, a rugged, solid, worn, chiseled, and handsome block of granite, looked as if he had been born facing into the wind. Worn buttery smooth by employ like an old trusted saddle and tanned golden brown by sea and sun, the captain didn't look, he glowed, as if behind his soft glaucous eyes hung the inviting light of a porch lamp. Falling around his weathered visage, as oak leaves in autumn twilight, titian locks belied his age. From the crevasse of his furrowed brow, a nose, neither large nor small, rose as a majestic alp on his gorgeous stone façade, with a sign below, written in white chalk, advertising fresh snizzle on a cold day.

When the captain smiled the room seemed, rather the world felt, a safer place, a place children know before adults burden them otherwise. His ivory teeth were straight and, upon retraction of his erythraean lips, appeared to spill forth hope and belief, catching light and gleam of female imagination. He was tall without looking tall, lean as a work horse, a build and bearing that spoke of dignity and quiet command. His hands were like mitts, soft when needed and hard as nails on task. One did not shake the captain's hand as much as slip into a calorific pocket of gentle welcome as inviting as the aroma from the kitchen of a small town chef. His ears were large with lobes like nickles, and according to Em, reminded her of elephants. So as horse to jockey, she recalled, on the open deck and fresh sea air, father carried daughter, legs secured under loving paternal stirrups. With deep laughter echoing a young girl's giggles, he would gallop to and fro as her hands directed his every move with tender but firm rein of his soft, and she smiled, large lobes.

The captain was a Hynerian of considered patience with a mind that saw horizons before horizons could be seen. He had married young, married dreams pregnant with expectations of a life marked in smiles full and bellies bare, of unshod feet with wiggly toes, of pastures verdant and trees generous of fruit and leaf. They had tried; Janus knows they tried, to raise seed in barren soil. Miscarriage followed miscarriage, disappointment stacked like so many uneaten pancakes upon the cold numb plate of fate blind to orison. The table of their dreams filled not with giggling youth and bright eyes but of empty chairs and taunting silence. In his mind they might well have been tombstones silently, coldly, mocking the hubris of bride and groom. And then came Emy; a gift born of relentless determination, of desire unquenched by the frigid waters of failure. A good child, as she would be known.

And now, some twenty years hence, father and daughter stood hand in hand as the last of the evening's guests bid farewell, drunk with food partook and aching of smiles shared. The captain had put his best foot forward remaining strong and certain, as often he had done on the sea before the wrath of nature come. Em started to turn for bed when he called her name.

"Emy? Join me in the study."

342. Penumbral Randomness

Rog looked at Von, “You’re going to need a load of tumbrels for that story."

Trev’s glabrous face belied concern.

Em, if she could see, would have smiled her earthly smile at the persistent umbral presence of Ariel.

Em's skin, a rare olivaster palette, looked deeper and richer in the dawn light. She missed the apple-hued verdure of home where simian critters small and agile hunted for nuts in the maculae light; and bumblebees hovered in the polite tones of after dinner reserve among the lace work of foliage, tonguing languidly from the penumbra of dark green ancients gently singing in the warm breeze.

With fingers soft, Em pensively rubbed her coppery butter lips with fingers educated in the arts of nautical knots. Stars winking in solemn nods, paid quiet respect upon eyes open but not seeing. Her roan mane, weaved as rope with tiny earnest hands, flirted on the nape of shoulders anxious.

From somewhere to her right, the nervous clatter of crystal bespoke of toasts raised and spirits imbibed in the glint of evening light bowing adieu before the warm flickering advance of surrendered wax and wick.

Breathing slow and deep the treasure of flower and foliage, the baritone of father clothed her bosom in the tones of home and hearth.

Lacing her fingers behind to match the lacing of fern before, Em blinked away the dreams of a little girl as whispers of plans and devices were traded on the waves of amber intoxication.

Her mother, a woman of measured wisdom and forgiving eyes, rested her warm hands on Em's shoulders. Her touch was light, and Em would say, inviting without intruding, as the scent of grain baked and pies prepared warmed heart and stomach alike.

Words were whispered and smiles exchanged as father looked with beam of eye upon mother and daughter. Breathing in the darkness as limpid night poured into forest deep, the air cool and crisp and fresh as pie made from love of heart as much as labor of hand, Em placed her hand on top of her mother's.

Endearing words of love and beauty flowed from mother to daughter as experienced fingers massaged young shoulders as if to marinate language within skin, to imbue soul with touch. Em felt the warmness of hand radiate from warmness of heart, her mothers lips speaking with the pure sweetness of spring roses; a truth without question, as eternal as the seasons.

Before the tender touch of unshod lips, a kiss of mother and daughter, the hearth crackled with aged wood, exhaling warmth with dancing flames of carmine and rust, casting shadows blue before the pale glow of rising moons.

Weaving her arms inside her daughter's, Em's mother pulled her tight, her eyes surveying the bounty of her bosom grown proud. Softness of chest cleaved with firmness of promise as the cloth of humble hands found comfort in the nip of night.

Among lights warm and soft, between sounds jovial and loud, the eyes of mother and daughter sparkled as if dusted with starlight in their own private lacuna. Reaching behind her daughter's head, mother held her child's head with fingers evenly spaced. Gently she massaged intent, her purpose beyond time, a moment to capture in eye and mind as clearly as a photograph of light and love, a private memento framed in the reveille of public discourse.

The captain, as Em's father was called by his friends, stood with glass uplifted, with eye raised to the sihouette of maternal love evinced in the hug of one poured into the vessel of the other such that where one began and the other ended mattered not for the two were as one.

"Em?" asked the little umbra known as Ariel. "What are you thinking?"

Without turning from the window of light she could not see, Em said, "Of what a lucky little girl you are to have such a wonderful mother and father. Do they tuck you in at night and read you stories?"

Ariel laughed. "Of course they do silly. Every night."

"Good," said Em. "Good."

341. Ripe

Her tits hung ripe like melons on the pregnant dew laden vine.

Rog's roughhewn digits pressed into her warm swollen flesh, the temporal imprints of his desires roue.

She sighed.

He sighed.

"I thought you locked the door?"
"Nope, thought you did."
"Frail."
"Lock the door first."

Yul pressed her soft chest into the whin of Rog's broad sweep,
his arms pulling her mams of female production flat as if caught in the vice of his wicked intent.

Yul closed her eyes
and tilted her head back and to the right,
Starlight catching the silver highlights in her hair
and the long simmering drool at the corner of her lips.
His hands plied the small of her back as baker's hands to warm dough
And as if he kneaded supplication, Yul's lips parted in release of harbored stress
Her tongue on lip firm as shoulders narrow fell slack under the spell of seduction rendered
In the breeze of thoughts moving as the winds of autumn.
Slowly, as inevitable as dawn to noon, he kissed her inviting skin
and upon his tongue imbued the scent of submission.
Yul opened her eyes into the bright darkness of his smoldering masculine reflection
and smiled with vision of warm waves to come
Washing the pain and stain from heart and soul, of mind and body.
Her nipples ached from chest to crotch
as if one were but an extension of other
as her knees resisted the call of gravity.
Taking her willing hands
Rog slipped the ceramic leather cuffs over her wrists
and as surely as moon winks at tide
Yul gave forth resistance futile
a device of feminine cunning
in the art of warm breath exchanged.
Rog pulled the cord tight and high
Secured as slave to master, as calf to hired help.
Her long arms reached to bed and post as supplicant to lord
and upon the alter of bedding impetuous
and sheets white
Lay skin moving of nature, not volition.
Eyes opened in the wetness of lustful tears
and as the stars blinked in silent witness to wonder of loin
where curve held curve
as surely as trembling hands in winter sun.

A Reading: Ripe

340. Kiss the Sun

“Papa, what are you doing?” asked Kyra as she watched her grandfather embrace the sun with his tanned face.

“I am dropping everything that keeps me from the flow of the eternal.” He said it is such a way as to leave questions moot, a tone so commanding, so authoritative, so sure, one just stood in the midst of mind spinning.

So Kyra, with tiny white dress stood on the southern deck and, like Papa, held her face to the sun and her hands outstretched. Papa noticed and said, “What are you doing little one?”

“I am embracing life and the sun is embracing me back. We are naked, our souls as one.” And as the last word rolled off her lips, she kissed the air.

Papa laughed and as hard as Kyra tried to maintain her composure, she started laughing too. Before long, they heard the familiar voice of Grand. “Okay you two, time for breakfast.”

339. I Carry Them Home

Kyra stood at the helm. Lights flickered around her, before her, as memories, slightly faded, just out of reach, each with a piece of her, speaking their peace.

I stand before nine souls
Each a piece of me
A piece of the whole
The fabric of our name

Colors speak of pain
Sound of doubt
And from the clear mind
I ask for compassion

Questions haunt me
With pike and dagger
They poke and pry
The tender shield of my nous

Words not spoken
Looks heavy with intent
I see them from
The edge of my cravenness

Time blends with space
Hearts beat with anger
I hold the reins
And my hands burn

My spine is locked
Breathing becomes difficult
The crew on my back
I carry them home

338. Wrong Question

“Von,” asked John, “what the hellocks is she thinking?”

“Well,” said Von, scratching the few hairs on his aged chin, “I would say she is following a voice only she can hear.”

“Bullshiott. What she is doing is putting this entire crew at risk for a fracking pipe dream. Ten lives in the balance for the non-existent chance that one of those ten might see again.”

Von smiled.

John was beside himself. “Is that all you got? A smile? You’re senile old man.”

“You may be right. I may be senile. But let me ask you this. Have you asked her why she has made the choice to return to Kulmyk?”

“She told us. She thinks this infidel can do the impossible, assuming about fifty billion things, not the least of which is whether he is still alive.”

“Have you considered that you are asking the wrong question?”

337. I Will See My Mother Again

Em sat straight as a pupil on the front row before her favorite teacher, her perfectly brushed rosewood hair adorned with a slight sheen in the dim light, which gave her mane a deepness, a richness, the kind of illusion that begged the hand to reach and teased the eye to look twice. Kyra marveled at the hue which, depending on how Em held her head, changed from shades of red to gradations of dark brown. Holding her head steady and dignified, as if to compensate for her blindness, Em looked regal, stately, and with glass of eye, as dignified as a princess bearing the fate of suitors unworthy.

Kyra looked twice, folder in hand. Em was a tomboy, a father’s daughter. She was attractive, but not pretty. When one saw Em, one saw the sea and the wind, the sweat of honest labor and the common sense of those who sailed at the mercy of nature. Em may, at times, have appeared naïve, but never weak; she may have carried herself, at times, with clumsiness of presence, but always limpid in eye and thought. Yet tonight, Kyra thought, she looked almost delicate in her black and white kimono tied to the left side with hands small. Irony aside, she looked better than she had ever looked before.

“Thanks for having me Em,” said Kyra as she pulled up a chair across from Em.

“If you’ve come to offer me sympathy, save it for someone who cares. I will regain my sight. You know why?”

Kyra didn’t know what to say and before she could respond Em stood up and pulled a chain from her neck. “You see this?”

Kyra looked upon the pulsating brooch. “Yes.”

“And so will I. I will see my mother again.” Silence. Tears flowed from Em’s eyes. “Do you hear me Kyra? I will see what you see. I will see my mother again.”

336. Red and Blue

Yul stepped outside her quarters. Rog was coming down the hall with purpose, his jaw set, the muscles of his neck bulging like a bull in the ring, a bull bleeding red, seeing red and determined to horn something.

“Rog, got a minute?” she asked with sheepish eyes, wearing the earrings he had given her.

“Not now,” he shot back, brushing her aside with the outside of his hand, his eyes as elsewhere as his mind.

“Rog? Rog?” she called into the narrowing perspective of a figure growing smaller. He did not answer. He did not turn. And, as quickly as he had appeared to the right, he had disappeared to the left.

Yul stood in the silence of humming lights, her face as white as the new moon. Suddenly she felt silly, ashamed for having the thought, of making the approach and of wearing his earrings.

335. Shine On

In the hour prior . . .

Kyra was seldom nonplused, but Mairi's story, her claims, begged belief to stand on the edge of sanity and leap into the fantastical. She had searched Mairi's countenance, her tone, for a scintilla of cozen. She found none, which placed at her feet both relief of soul and distress of dilemma. She made Mairi no promise other than to sincerely consider her plangent plea, to review the reports and weigh all options against risk and reward.

So, she sat with leaden mind and aching neck and flipped the pages of the report quickly, back and forth with her white agile tense fingers as if the manner of turning would uncover a hidden meaning, a different conclusion, like the gentle warm waves of the beach shifting sand to reveal the treasures of the sea. She needed something to take to the rest of the crew. If the report held "that something" she was not seeing it. The doctors' conclusion was unequivocal. Emy would never, could never, see again.

"Ms Kyra," asked Goldie, sensing distress in her beloved, "can I get you anything?"

The sudden sound of Goldie's voice snapped Kyra's head back causing her coal black shoulder length hair to rise as velvet curtains on either side of her porcelain white face. Kyra closed the report, the sound echoing like a gavel in an empty courtroom, jury hung. "Come here Goldie. Let me ask you a question."

Goldie hummed to the edge of the metal desk, the handiwork of Papa floating efficiently just inches above the ground and blinked her mechanical eyes. Kyra could have sworn she tilted her head as if ready for serious contemplation.

"Remember when you and Pinkie offered to give the last of your resources so that Von, Em and myself might have just a little more time?"

"Yes Ms Kyra."

"Tell me why? Why were you willing to sacrifice yourself, not that we would live, but that we might have a few more minutes longer?"

Without hesitating Goldie replied. "Nothing is greater than to give all you have for another. I saw it as an opportunity to fulfill the promise."

"The promise?"

"Papa put his love into every nut and bolt and circuit of my being. The promise, as Papa put it, was, that in a moment of need, he would be able, through me, to reach past time and distance and life itself, and convey his love from me to you."

Within Kyra's sapphire eyes, sparkles of metallic gold coruscated. "May I ask you another question?"

Goldie tilted her head the other way and nodded.

"Which is greater. Life or Love?"

Goldie began to whirl and lights Kyra had never seen blinked and flashed. She uttered one non-mechanical word. "Love."

Kyra sat and Goldie hummed. The two looking at each other as if something sacred had been said, had been shared, and neither one wanted to break the spell.

"Comm Em. Tell her I'm on my way."

"Yes Ms Kyra."

"And Goldie?"

"Yes?"

"Shine on."

334. Midnight in Winter

Silence stood as midnight in winter. Distant light reflected the infinite cold of space, a fungible of hue for mood, as the vase of Yul echoed with the emptiness of a breaking heart.

Seated before her mirror, her eyes soft with unshed tears, her fingers trembling with unsaid fear, she gingerly affixed the earrings. They looked out of place, which was not far from where she felt from herself. Rog had given her many gifts but none had meant as much to her as the gorgeous implements of a heart deep with sincere tenderness. And what had she done? Took that heart and crushed it under the heel of angry pride, a pride that succored nothing, warmed nothing, and contributed nothing but loneliness and frigid bitterness.

Sparkle of ear matched sparkle of eye. He was just a comm away. Mind moved. Arm didn’t. And from beauty before mirror, her heart poured forth from chest to cheek.

The Score (I Really Want You)

333. Turn It Around

“Look at this Rog,” said John as he manipulated the iridescent screen before their reflective eyes. With a slight movement of eye the cartograph zoomed to points of interest with grids to the outside and boletus looking orbs of green and blue speckled thought out.

“Nice John, but do we really have time for pretty pictures?”

John started to answer before he caught Rog’s grin out of the corner of his eye. “Well, maybe you’re right. We don’t need a port of refuge.” The screen started to flicker.

“Wait, I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t say what?” asked Kyra. She seemed to appear from nowhere, something Rog had gotten used to but John still found unsettling.

“Looks like our boy has a plan?” beamed Rog as if he and John were now best friends.

“Plans are good. What did you have in mind John?” Kyra spoke as one who had all the time in the world. John noticed.

“There is a place,” he began, “where, assuming we can get there, we can, with our small size, get lost, so to speak.”

“Sounds like an excellent plan,” responded Kyra.

“Yes it does,” said John, however, I sense a ---“

“A ‘what’ John?”

“A but.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Rog could stand it no longer. “What the frail are you guys talkin’ bout? This is a plan. Do you know—“

“Shut up Rog,” said Kyra without taking her eyes off of John. “Turn the ship around.”

“Around?” asked John as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear.

“Yes, around, as in back to Kulmyk.”

332. Believe Me

“Mairi, grab a seat,” said Kyra.

“Want to tell me what gives you the right to violate my quarters?” asked Mairi, her face flush with the surprise, her mind racing through her options, of what they knew and what they didn’t know, of how she should play the deal.

John wasted no time in responding, much to Kyra’s chagrin. This was her ship and Mairi was her crew and she was conducting the questioning, not him. “John,” snapped Kyra, “back off.”

Rog smiled. For once it was not him overstepping his authority.

“Look Mairi, I don’t have time to dance around this issue. Kulmyk hounds are tracking us, which means two things. One, they’ve picked up our signal; and two, a Kulmyk command ship cannot be far behind. I need to know, right now, who you have been communicating with and why.”

“You want the truth?”

“No,” jumped in Rog, unable to contain himself, “we want you to lie like the—“

“Rog, that’s enough,” said Kyra, cutting him off before he did more harm than good. “Mairi, we are in danger. Not in an hour, or a day, but right now. We can’t afford to question and interrogate. I need to know what you know and, quite frankly, I need to know it right now and I need to know everything.”

Mairi locked eyes with Kyra as if John and Rog were not in the room. “I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

Rog sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Frail you farm boy.”

“Rog,” snapped Kyra, “that’s enough.”

“Are—“

“I said enough! One more word, one more look and you’re out of here. Now Mairi, please continue.”

John smiled at Rog and winked. Rog mouthed a few words his mother would not have approved of.

“Mairi, excuse me for a minute,” said Kyra, clearly irritated. “John, Rog, over here. “What the frail do the two of you think you’re doing?”

“The little whore is gonna lie her arse off,” said Rog.

“You don’t know that.”

“She’s a whore.”

“Rog,” said Kyra, her voice rising. “For the record, she’s a Chatelaine.”

“Chatelaine my arse, she’s a whore. Ask Trev, he’ll tell you.”

“So Trev’s been talking to you. We’ll discuss that later. Right now I want the two of you back on the bridge. Neither of you are doing me any good here.”

“What did I do?” asked John.

“Now. Go.” They hesitated. “Both of you.” She pointed toward the door.

“She’s gonna lie,” quipped Rog.

“Good, great,” responded Kyra shaking her head. “You’ve got the last word. Now get the frail out of here.”

“Sorry about that Mairi. Now tell me what is going on?”

“Promise me you will believe everything I tell you?”

Kyra searched her face for disingenuousness and finding none said, “Okay Mairi.”

“John,” asked Rog as they entered the bridge, “what is that?”

“What is what?”

“Behind that last red star. See it?”

John froze.

“What? What is it?” queried Rog.

“A Kulmyk Command Carrier,” said John without looking at Rog, exhaling worry as much as words.

“Is that bad?”

John smiled. “Yeah, I would say that is bad.”

331. Unleash the Hounds

“Trev, I know you’re in there. Open up,” demanded Mairi, her patience with his aloofness exhausted. To date he had offered no apology, pretending to be the victim, which in her eyes, was getting old, frailing old. She balled her fist and raised her arm for another assault of tender flesh on cold metal, then thought the better and returned to her quarters.

“John,” asked Rog, pointing to the obvious red stars floating on the bridge, “what the frail are those things?”

“Tracking hounds,” responded John, not taking his eyes off the hologram. “They respond to a signal like hunting dogs to scent.”

“Okay,” said Rog, drawing out the word.

“They’re tracking us,” shot back John, slightly irritated.

“I thought you said.”

“I did.”

“So?”

“So, we’ve been compromised.”

“Impossible.”

John took a breath and mentally reminded himself that this was not his ship and he was not in command. “Perhaps.”

Mairi retired to her study and retrieved the orange slate. Working the code from memory she turned one dial, than another and another. The slate glowed and although she knew it wasn’t true, seemed to feel warmer in her manicured hands. The light reflected off her cheeks, which turned upward with the sound of his melodious voice. “Evening my dear. Have you spoken to Kyra?”

As quickly as her smile rose, it fell into a frown. “No. Haven’t had the chance.”

“We don’t have much time. The device was not meant to trans-signal great distances and I fear soon we will be out of communication.”

John’s eyes widened. “You see that?” he asked Kyra, ignoring Rog.

“They’re getting brighter. I sense that is not good.”

“No, I mean yes. What I mean is, they are picking up our signal again.” John quickly tapped several keys on the control panel. A screen of multi-hued light arose and with the flick of his eyes, page after page of luminescent data flipped before his darting eyes. Rog blinked at the blur of, what appeared to him, nonsensical chicken scratch. “There. There it is.”

“What?” asked Kyra.

“Our leak. It is coming from the the fourth quad, section two. Who’s quarters is that?”

Mairi sighed. “I don’t know how I can convince her?”

“Use the girl,” the voice replied.

“She will think it's a trap, or that I’ve lost my mind.”

“I’m sensing something is wrong.”

“No, no. I’ll do it. Just give me a little more time.”

The slate suddenly hummed down and the glow receded. Mairi worked the dials again. Nothing. “Damn it,” she cursed.

“Damn what?” asked Kyra. “Care to tell me what you’re doing?”

330. Swirling

“Roger, son, what are you doing?” Their hopper bounced like balls in a lottery bowl. Wind gusts, nature’s invisible tentacles, slapped and licked the tiny two-hynerian craft. Rivets screamed. Bolts tightened in growling anguish to the left and loosened in groaning lust to the right. Dials pinwheeled a blur of trouble. “Son?”

“I’ve got it dad,” Rog yelled, his forehead dripping sweat on a cold day, his bloodless knuckles working stick into the storm. Just ten minutes earlier the sky was clear and the air calm. Rog had volunteered to pilot the hopper so dad could survey the ranch. Fences were never finished, his dad liked to say and Rog had the calluses on his hands as evidence to the truth of that statement. This morning was just suppose to be a routine fly-over and Rog took every opportunity he could get to fly. Perhaps one day, he dreamed, he would be flying something more than just a hopper over the lonely plains on the southern reaches.

“Into the storm son,” his dad barked back, trying hard not to alarm his son while still trying to be heard over the shearing wind that threatened to tear their fragile vessel apart.

“Got it.” Then the heavens opened and like a curtain descending on act one, visibility dropped to mere feet as both Hynerians instinctively reached for the wipers. Rog looked at his instruments. None were functioning, as dials whirled like children on the playground, free from their burden of hire and readings spun like slot machines in a dream. The rain didn’t fall as much as shot like bullets from above or so it sounded as beads of water peppered the thin glass bubble. “Oh shiott!” yelled Rog, as rain turned to hail. Hail, they both knew, was bad news, very bad news.

“Take her down Roger!”

“I’m trying but the--”

Lightning flashed bright as a portrait camera and for a second the tiny ship appeared frozen as a snapshot on a turbulent swirling sea of grey and black. The report cracked close, too close. Lights failed. Power to the rudder failed. Shoulder straps cut into the pair as the craft fell through the darkness in equal measure of guts rising into throats. As Rog would say later over golden snoot, it was a moment when you thought, just for a second, that this was it.

There was a second flash, not of cool bluish light but of warm oranges and reds, of violence unexpected and in the blink of an eye, the hopper exploded.

“What have you got Rog?” asked Kyra.

“What?”

“You called me here, what have you got that is so important I needed to see it now?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Take a look at this.”

Kyra looked at the monitor. “Full screen.” Rog complied. The bridge of the Tranquility, compared to Bravo, was magnificent. Before their eyes, as if in a theatre, the small image appeared on the forward bridge, floating before their eyes in 3-D. Kyra walked around, behind and through the hologram as it continued to morph and change with each data burst. The image was, as they called it, live.

“What the heck are those swirling red stars?”

“Don’t know, but I’m willing to guess they aren’t exactly good news.”

“Get John up here.”

“Won’t answer his comm.”

“Damn it Rog.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll get him.”

Kyra stood in the middle of the holographic image. The red stars continued to move. Reaching her hand out, she touched the larger one. It was the last thing she remembered before looking up and seeing John’s concerned blurry face.

329. Reconciled

John poured golden amsec, Cait watched.

“Say when.”

“When.”

The golden liqueur matched Cait’s primrose hair as the sparkle of crystal mimiced the catch-light in her demurring eyes. Ariel was playing with Em or Em with Ariel for the evening. Seems Ariel took a liking to Em, almost as if Em offered her the opportunity to play the grown-up, helping Em function without sight. Either way, the relationship afforded John and Cait time alone.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Always. What’s on your mind?”

“How do you do it?” asked John.

“Do what hon?”

“Remain so calm, so steady, so steadfast.”

Cait put down her fork and her eyes came alive with the intensity of ten suns. “I allow myself no other option. I look forward, not back. I let go of what cannot be changed.” Cait lifted her glass and John poured before the witness of two candles flickering light into shadows thus rendering edges hard, soft, of dimness cold, warm.

“My actions--” Cait put her finger to her lips as her other hand reached across the table to rest on his.

“What is done is done,” she said. “I know what I know. I am reconciled. I am at peace. I am here, John, not because of what you have done or not done, I am here because I love you and I love Ariel and I love us, together. Do you understand?”

“I just want you to know, if you had decided to stay, I would have understood.”

“And I just want you to know that staying, without you, knowing I would probably never see you again, knowing that you had been wrongly accused by someone with a vendetta, someone very powerful who invoked an ancient law, someone that was out to destroy you--and our family--at all cost,” Cait shook her head, “you see, without you, there is no family, there is no us. Staying, quite frankly, never entered my mind.”

“And Kyra. I know you heard the rumors. I know what my actions must have implied, the hurt you must have endured while I was gone.”

“John, we don’t live in a vacuum. None of us. She is a gorgeous, well, how else to say this but, alien. I understand the attraction. Really, I do. You know, you aren’t the only man I’ve ever looked at more than once. And believe me, with all the missions you undertook, there were plenty of lonely nights where a thought or two crossed my mind.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. You wouldn’t believe the temptation. When you were gone for extended periods of time and those young staff officers would drop by to check in on me and give me updates, you know the ones, just want a cup of coffee, whatever it takes to stay a little longer than necessary, looking so clean cut, so young and fit, so deliciously," Cait paused with a smile, "military.”

John sat up in his chair.

“John, I’m not a angel. Come on. I don’t want this to sound the wrong way, but I’m not an unattractive woman. I have needs, desires, wants. And while you were gone there were others very interested in filling those needs and desires.”

“Cait, dear, you want to tell me what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying John what is done is done. Nobody is perfect. Not you. Not I.”

“So you--”

“No. Never. But I thought it. Maybe even had a dream or two. Look. I understand the attraction toward Kyra. For about two weeks, I resented the hell out of the mission you undertook. A few hours with The Commander, however, gave me a chance to see things in a different light. You have no idea how much that man has done for us.”

“What exactly did The Old Man tell you?”

“In a nutshell?”

“Yeah.”

“He told me you love me more than I would probably ever know. And, he told me that Kyra was the equivalent of the Holy Grail, and that by any means necessary she had to be kept out of Arc’teryxian hands, assuming she couldn’t be rescued. He told me the mission you embarked upon was ultra secret and that you did not steal the ship in question but rather that was your cover. And he told me you had been given orders to kill her if it came down to us having her or the Arc’teryxians.”

A tear rolled down John’s leathery cheek and the glistening of his eyes matched Cait’s. Taking her hand he stood up, lifted her into his arms and carried her past the arch of eternal bliss.

A few doors down. “Em, can I read you a bedtime story?” asked Ariel.

“Absolutely. What did you have in mind?”

“Once upon a time there was a little girl with rocket shoes. Have you ever heard that one?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

Ariel smiled. “It is my favorite story.” Before Em could respond, Ariel commanded center stage, her eyes wide, her hands waving, weaving the tale her father had told many times. Em began to cry.

“What’s wrong. You don’t like my story?” frowned Ariel.

“No, no, no sweetie. I love your story. I love it so much,” Em lied, “these are happy tears. Please continue."

“Can I crawl in bed with you?” asked Ariel.

“Sure.”

“I’m kinda tired. Is it okay if I finish the story tomorrow night?”

“I won’t take no for an answer,” responded Em thinking the little girl with her arms around her neck was wiser than a little girl that age should be. The two drifted off to sleep, one dreaming of motherhood, the other of friendship.