240. Von's Journal #1

Kyra left in the early hours of the morning and Von was sad to see her go and he thought of Rog and the times they danced the night into the day. Reaching into his desk, he pulled out two small metallic discs, no larger than the tip of a young girl’s finger, and placed them on his head behind his ears. Ambient noise faded away as wet ink vanishes into dry papyrus.

Reaching back into his desk, he retrieved a small black folio and taking pen to paper began to write, not as most do, but in the free flow of one concerned only with letting his snoot induced mind and hand communicate without interference. With the conversation of the night still whirling in his head, words appeared as fast as he could move his tired fingers, punctuation and grammar be damned.

I’m at the age where I have memories and then all I have is memories of memories, and of course, what I muse upon most is the memories that have forever slipped away and I wonder if I am less of me for that loss.

My body moves on its own accord, within its own time. I grow old, my eyes change and here in space there is nothing I can do about it.

When you see the person, you see yourself and if you can see past yourself in that person, you see the past, you see their book and from that book you can feel their future. So few have the ability to change their book one hundreds pages into their life and so they live trapped lives, stuck in a story, in illusions neither seen nor known.

There is the flow of life and that flow is always moving. When we obstruct that flow with resistance or negativity, we create pain. The resistance of standing against the flow of reality—hurts.

Here to empty my cup, of what I know to make room for something else, something more. Here in space, on Bravo, fate itself has both emptied our cup and we, with our concerns and worries and fears have filled it up again because we fear the emptiness, we fear the unknown, we fear the silence, and in space, there is nothing but infinite silence. So we wake up each day and the silence mocks us with the very thing we fear—the emptiness, the void, the blank black slate of the unknown.

Von put his pen down and scratched his head and he thought of Rog and Yul and he thought of connections and then he said under his breath, “frail it,” and poured himself one more shot.

Categories: Story, Von, Journal

239. Connections

Von’s mood seemed to change. He picked up the crystal decanter, a beautiful antique that Kyra made a note to ask him about some day, and slowly poured two more glasses full with amber snoot. Kyra could have sworn she saw his hand shaking ever so slight.

“To answer your question, I call them connections. They define our life, give it meaning. Most of the time, we never think about the web we live in, the thousands of little touches that shape everything we do—that is, until someone or something takes them away. Then,” Von raised his glass in silent salute, “as if someone pulled back the blinders, all is clear and all is both terrifying and serene at the same time.”

Von took a sip without taking his eyes off Kyra. She didn’t move nor did she break eye contact and so he continued. “Back on Hyneria, on-world and in society, everything is connected to everything else. Get sick, you call your doctor and he or she takes care of you. Need a loan, a thousand bankers will vie for your business. Wreak your transport, one call and a tow is there, a second call and a shop repairs. Hungry? Go to a restaurant, pay by cash or credit. Want entertainment, a hundred shows await. Every one and a thousand more is a connection.”

“I can see that,” said Kyra, enthralled with the Papaesque nature of this conversation.

“It goes deeper,” continued Von. “Our systems, our language, our traditions—all of these are connections in their own right. Our nationality, our politics, count them too. And then, there is family. Parents, siblings, relatives. At work, we have colleagues, bosses and subordinates. And when we get home, our pets or even Goldie. Every one of them, again, a connection.”

Kyra took a sip and the lights seemed to dim as if on schedule. Only thing missing was the crashing of the waves and a campfire. “Please continue Von.”

“Well, there is also Hyneria itself. The pungent smell of fresh turned farmland. The salty sea breeze or even just the ground under our feet on a hike in the mountains. More connections. You see, in a way, everything we do, everywhere we go, touches someone or something that literally defines who we are.”

“Very interesting Von, but what does all this have to do with Em’s soulless comment?”

“A lot. On the surface, everything we knew about who we were, who we are, everything that defined our lives, is gone. Think about that for a second. We no longer have firm soil under our feet or fresh air to breath. Get sick, there is no doctor. Want an education, there is no university. Want to get married, neither church nor minister. Support a cause, no political party to join. Bravo breaks down, nowhere to take her. You see, our thousands upon thousands of connections, they’re gone. We still have a few, but the contrast is night and day. Here on Bravo, just the seven or eight of us, well, I suppose it’s kinda like walking to the cliff and looking over the edge and the net that was always there, is gone. I’m only surprised it has taken the better part of a year for anyone to voice this feeling, although I suspect the angst has been present for quite some time.”

“I think you’re right Von. Has been one helluva year with hardly time to catch our breath. Can I ask you a question?”

“Go for it.”

“It’s rather personal so if you don’t want to answer just tell me it’s none of my business.”

“Fair enough?”

“I’m thinking you didn’t just stumble upon this view one day out picking flowers?”

Von tried to smile. “Well, no, I wouldn’t quite put it that way.”

Kyra put her chin on her chest and widened her eyes. “You don’t have to continue if you don’t want. I really don’t mean to pry.”

“No, no, good for the soul to share. As you know, many years ago, I was taken prisoner and tortured at the hands of the Javalinas. Most know of the neural trace they implanted in my brain, long since removed, although that damned ghost of an itch remains, and probably will so until the day my spirit departs to places unknown. But there is another part of the story I’ve not shared.” Von’s complexion changed and his face suddenly appeared drawn and old, the creases of which looked like dry riverbeds as seen from above.

“The greatest torture is passive, not active. Once the neural trace was planted and they had what they wanted, well, I can’t speculate on motive, but the bastards put me in solitary confinement. They took away food and light and space and gave me only enough water to keep me alive and for forty days I endured what no living creature should have to endure at the hands of another. Torture comes in two forms. Brute force is perhaps the crudest and least skillful, although I must say eventually either produces results or kills the prisoner. But there is another form of torture, a form much more sinister, more imaginative, and, if pure hell is the goal, much more effective—solitude.

“You see, brute force, no matter how painful or agonizing actually gives the prisoner something useful. It gives him affirmation, it gives contact, a connection to another living entity, an entity that at least thinks enough of you to torture you, to expend their time and energy on you, and as strange as it may sound, you feel important with each blow, or punch, or slap or beating. Now don’t get me wrong, physical torture will break you and you will curse the day you were ever born, but it doesn’t take everything.

“Solitude of total deprivation, however, is something very, very different. The torture is simple. They put you in a very small box, lock you up, and leave. In effect, they remove every connection you have to virtually everything. I would ask you to stop and think about that for a second, but try as you might, the exercise would be pointless. There are some experiences that simply go pass the ability of the imagination.

“Slowly, you feel a dismantling. You see, before they put you in the hole, they tell you things, plant seeds. They tell you you will never see another living soul again, nor will you ever see light, or taste food, or read, or walk, or stand upright. They tell you they already have everything they need from you such that not even your torturers have need or desire of you anymore.

“They strip from you the most basic need of significance, the need to matter—to someone, even if that someone is just the person who beats you every day. They sever every living connection to everyone and everything and in this state one of three things happens and they happen rather quickly, although at the time it did not seem that way nor even now does it seem as short a time as I have come to learn it was.

“First, most prisoners give up and die. Second, most of those that don’t die go insane. But there are a few, not many, who manage somehow to come out the other side. I would like to tell you I did it on my own, but the credit goes to my training, the very training Zeke instilled in me. You see, in solitary confinement, you are forced to see your face before you had a face and when you see that, the stark terror cannot be put into words. That terror, however, is a mistress and she will take you one of two ways. If you try to hold on to the external connections that defined who you thought you were, she will take you under the veil of insanity. If, however, you are able to let go of those illusions, to allow the current to take you out to sea and trust that although the shore is receding that this is the only way home, then and only then will she take you to places you never imagined existed.

“My dear Kyra, I do not know how to tell you what it is like to go within, but I can tell you this, when you release yourself into the flow of the mistress and you taste your own tongue and swim in your own blood, you enter a non-conceptual world, a world without words, or sights or sounds, a world where there is nothing to be connected and at first you don’t understand, but quickly you feel, I suppose as fish do underwater, but you come to understand the reason there is nothing to be connected, nothing to be in relationship with is, well, how do I say this, hell, here it is, there is just a oneness and that oneness is full and complete. Now don’t ask me no questions because I can’t give you any answers."

Kyra sat stunned and even if she did have a question she wasn’t at all sure her tongue was willing to move.

“Getting back to your original query on soullessness and my answer about connections I hope you see there are three basic positions. First is where we live without the awareness of the conceptual web of relationships that some call society or civilization, although I feel both definitions miss the mark. This is where most live their lives, unaware, unthinking, caught in a fantasy world that literally exists only in their own heads, and, I suppose, what is most sad, is most of those never even realize their whole life is nothing but a dream. Second is where Em is at the moment, although I would hazard a guess she is only vaguely aware that all is not as it is or should be. Em is in that space between unawareness and awareness and I can tell you, that is a most uncomfortable place to be, very close to being lost, of feeling dispossessed. It is, however, the first step to the third stage or position, the position of oneness in which the illusion of separation disappears.”

Kyra sat for a long time and so did Von and neither said anything. Then slowly a smile emerged from Kyra’s face and she stood up, emptied her glass and slammed it down on the table. “Von, you are one righteous dude. Now do right by this Hynerian and pour us both another.”

And so he did, and the two drank into the night such as Kyra had never partaken before. She missed her Papa, but Von was doing a damn fine imitation and that was just alright with her.

Categories: Story, Kyra, Von

238. Feeling Lost

“Hey Von, got a minute?” asked Kyra, poking her head into his open quarters.

Von looked over his silver reading glasses like a professor taking the measure of his response to a student’s silly question. “Would be my pleasure. Come on in.” (responding in his sonorous baritone)

Kyra entered on tiptoes, quiet as a patron arriving late for the opera, and Von returned to polishing his twin las pistol with strokes sharp and practiced. Moving cloth whip tight, his detail complete with the focus of a soldier consumed in contemplation of imminent battle. Kyra watched, absorbed in the mediation of his routine, of hand on metal, of mind in flow. Von’s breathing flowed with the steady ease of a light rain as his hands moved faster and faster, cloth transparent with blur as the mirror-like finish of his las seemed as polished as possible. Yet, still he polished and she understood the exercise was not for the polishing of metal as much as the polishing of mind.

Without taking her eyes off his aged hands Kyra gingerly broke the spell. “I just had an interesting conversation with Em.” Von continued to work, not looking up. “She never ceases to surprise me.” Von smiled. Kyra pulled her cheeks up as if to reveal words hidden. “She agrees with the others.” Kyra paused again. Von held his las up to the light aligning his sight with the shinning shaft of retribution as he liked to call his instrument of righteous reprieve. “She feels we are chasing ghosts, our own, that we are unnecessarily placing ourselves in harm’s way, or as she so poetically stated, sailing into the darkness of our own souls.”

Von looked up, thumb under chin and index finger tapping his dry pursed lips as if lost in thought before uttering, “Hmmm.” Then he returned to work.

“If this is not a good time I can come back later,” said Kyra, somewhat annoyed that Von seemed to be preoccupied.

“Now is as good a time as any. If you have a question Kyra, ask, and with what little wisdom remains in my itchy skull, I shall endeavor to answer.”

“Fair enough. Em also mentioned a feeling of soullessness and sterility, here in space. I have to admit Von, I feel it too, which only heightens my concern with regard to this mission. What was once clear is now cloudy. On the one hand I feel drawn to the signal and on the other, well, I can’t get the echo out of my head, an emptiness I suppose, that somehow there are more important things. My Janus Von, do you realize I chose this mission over Yul? Do you realize she may not be alive when we return? When Em threw out that soullessness bit, and I know she didn’t mean it the way I’m taking it, well, I just wonder if I haven’t lost my way, that I haven’t misplaced my priorities.” Kyra paused and looked down at the ground.

“Please continue,” said Von.

“Have I become a cold-hearted selfish bitch?” Before Von could answer she added, “Yul could be dying right now, right now Von, and all I gave her were words. I said all the right things. But, well, you know. There are words and there are actions and right now I’m feeling like a huge hypocrite. The mighty Kyra, always talking about love, about relationship. Do you understand what I am asking?”

“Well—“

“Because I don’t.”

“We may need some snoot for this one,” suggested Von.

“I’ve been telling myself I had no choice. As soon as I heard that tape, I told John the same thing. I had to go. Papa always told me not to make decisions in the firestorm of emotion. I did. And then, well, is it just stubborn pride that is blinding me, keeping me from seeing the bigger picture, from recognizing what it seems the rest of the crew already knows? I mean, when I asked Em why she was here, you know what she told me?” Kyra’s eyes began to water.

“What did she say?”

“She told me she was here for me, for love, but for me, even though she thought, like the others, I was wrong, she came because of relationship, her relationship with me, because she felt, she knew I was wrong and that I was going to need someone as soon as I discovered that fact. Can you believe that? You know, she tried to tell me she was here because of the wanderlust in her blood, but I know better. She is here, with me, because I’ve lost my way. Now you tell me, who should be leading this crew?”

“Can I say something?”

“I’m sorry Von. I feel like I’m answering my own questions and the truth is coming down on me like a house of cards. What did you want to say?”

“I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”

“How so?”

“I’ve heard the tape. And although it would be nice to be by Yul’s side, she is in the best hands available. We have a mission--a Hynerian vessel has sent a distress call.”

“They’re lost Von. You heard what John said. The signal is old and Trev did not dispute that point.”

“Let me ask you a question. Could John be wrong or that he let his desire for you to return with him cloud his judgment? Is it possible, their technology has simply got it wrong? And for Trev, the boy hardly knows how to shave much less interpret distress transmissions.”

“What are you saying Von?”

“Life is frailing gray. There is no right or wrong, no fault or blame in this situation. We must act on the best available information. I will say this. If you had stayed with Yul, had not followed up on this distress call, I can say without any doubt, the ghosts of which Em speaks would have haunted you till the day you die. We have a window to act, and we are acting as any Hynerian would. Simply put yourself in the shoes of that crew. Would you want a potential rescue party to assume you were lost? Or would you want them to make every possible effort, regardless of the odds, regardless of what some alien technology told them about your condition? And Kyra, if we find survivors,” Von smiled, “do you understand where I’m going with this?”

Kyra wiped her eyes. “I do Von. Thank you. I think I’ll have that snoot now.”

“Why not,” smiled Von.” He poured two glasses and handed one to Kyra. “Now as for the soullessness of space, I feel it too, but it has nothing to do with space.”

“Really,” said Kyra, taking a sip of the amber liqueur. “Pray tell then.”

“Connections, my dear. That feeling has everything to do with connections.”

Categories: Story, Kyra, Von

237. Like a Calf

“Rog, put me down right now,” demanded Yul, her tiny fists protesting without merit upon his back, her waist wrapped over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

“Oh, I’m going to put you down alright. Don’t you worry your pretty little head over that one.”

“Rog, don’t you dare. Rog? Rog! What the frack do you think you’re doing?

Rog swung Yul off his shoulders and onto his knees. “Only what I should have done a long time ago.” His left hand grabbed the back of her hair as his right hand came down hard on the rounded cheeks of her upturned arse. Yul yelped, somewhat shocked he actually spanked her. “That was for tonight.” A second “pop” echoed in the air. “And that one is for tomorrow since I know you are bound to do something to piss me off.”

Raising his hand a third time, he snapped his fingers and music (Sweet Child O’ Mine—or the Rog equivalent) begin to play with a beat that set his legs in motion. Bobbin his head he smacked her firm bottom a third time with just a little something extra.

“You bastard,” yelled Yul. A few smacks was one thing and perhaps she deserved them but he was enjoying himself just a little too much now. Taking a deep breath, she chomped down on his calf and he let out a yelp of his own, relaxing his grip just enough for Yul to break free.

Their apartment was small with few places to run. Her breathing rapid with sweat streaking down her face, she backed into a corner. Rog closed in, equally as out of breath and wet with effort. Yul bent her knees like a cat preparing to pounce. “You think you're Hynerian enough to take me Mr. Sneak up from behind baggy pants?”

Rog tried to keep a straight face but the out of the blue baggy pants comment was too much. “Hynerian enough? Hynerian enough,” he responded nodding his head with a grin like one in control. “You’re bout to find out Ms I’m the emotional center of the universe.”

“Oh you bastard, you know that is a cheap . . . .” Yul stopped mid-sentence and her eyes got big as Rog, with his signature grin, pulled a coil of rope from behind his back. “Don’t you even think it,” Yul responded, lowering her voice and enunciating each word slowly and distinctly in part to indicate her seriousness and in part to buy a little time.

“Oh, ain’t no thinking bout it. I’m gonna rope you like a dirty cowhand ropes a calf at the end of a long day.” Rog twirled the rope in his leathery right hand, a display to indicate this wouldn’t be his first time. “Now baby, you can resist all you want or accept what you got coming. Makes no difference to me, but if I might make a suggestion, I think you might enjoy this just a tad bit more if you just go along.”

Yul relaxed her shoulders like one resigned to their fate. “Suppose you got me there.” And then Rog made the mistake she was looking for—he relaxed in accord. Later he would say he never saw the roundhouse kick to his temple that knocked him out cold but Yul knew otherwise. He saw it. He just couldn’t do anything to stop it, but that would be their little secret. A Hynerian’s ego needed massaging after all.

Twenty minutes later:

Rog was buck-naked and spread eagle on the bed, his wrists and ankles securely tied to the four corners of the bed. Blinking his eyes as if to gain focus he sheepishly managed to say, “Baby, you know I didn’t mean it,” as he tried to deliver his best boyish grin, which was about the only defense he had at his disposal.

Yul, wearing only her devilishly wicked smile, crawled on top of Rog, tucking her knees firmly on either side of his broad chest. Slowly bending over from the waist, she let her nipples graze his chest, glowing hard and blue with the evidence of her intent. “Just relax and enjoy it baby,” purred Yul as she licked his left lobe, delighting in throwing his own words back at him. “That is the advice you had for me, isn’t darlin’?”

Before Rog could respond, she slid her lips from his ear to his mouth without losing contact, making sure he felt the deliberateness of her warm breath on his cheek. As her lips found his, Rog closed his eyes and relaxed. Gently, Yul suckled his lower lip between hers, letting her tongue dance back and forth from side to side before sucking his pink flesh between hers, pulling him inside her warmness, past the gates of mastication (ed note: I’ve just been dying to get that word into the story somehow :-D).

Rog’s whole body sank into the bed as if dead weight, such the power Yul could exert with the skill of a kiss. Then she bit down, hard, drawing blood while simultaneously grabbing his male Hynerian-ness with the warm agent of manipulation, otherwise known as her right hand. To have Rog tied down was one thing. To have him roped like the calf he thought her to be, literally tied down with teeth to lip and hand to vulnerable-ness, well, that was just too delicious a proposition for Yul to pass up. Her boy was going to find out what it was like to be taken, with or without his consent, but to be taken without recourse, to be taken in every way, however she wanted, at the pace that communicated complete and utter control.

Without releasing her right hand grip from behind, Yul sat upright on his chest. She playfully licked her blue spear-like tongue over the wet redness of Rog’s essence, an essence she wanted it to be clear, she had taken, not that he had given. Watching his eyes, Yul moved her left hand to her left erect nipple, and with index finger and thumb, begin to pinch and twist and pull as if to say, the pleasure tonight my sweet, is going to be all mine and you are going to witness every single slow purposeful delight.

With a dreamy lost in pleasure smile, Yul rolled her tongue over her red wet lips again. “My, oh, my, my sweet baby. You taste so warm tonight.”

Rog tried to pull free, but the ropes only cut deeper into his flesh and he wondered where she had learned to rope like this. Seeing his effort, and for good measure, Yul allowed her agent of manipulation to slide down his hardening instrument to the twin provocateurs of potential future Roggies. “Relax baby. I promise this is not going to hurt, unless,” and she tightened her grip, “that’s the way you want it?”

“Well,” choked Rog, still smarting from his bleeding lip, “I suppose discretion is the better part of valor.”

“Oh shut the frail up,” shot back Yul as she pulled out a shinny chrome knife, hesitating just an instant before cutting the ropes with a lust in her eye Rog hadn’t seen in sometime. “And frail me into next week. Give me that future you think we have.”

As Rog rubbed his wrist, Yul pulled back and popped his tight and taut arse with a crack like lightning. “Now!”

Categories: Story, Rog, Yul

236. Future Credits

Rog and Yul walked from store to store, hand in hand. The City of Hope had almost anything one could want. John had given them a credit slate with more value than they could spend in a year, and, John had laughed, spend that and I'll give you two more; and so they walked and they looked and Yul’s excitement grew dimmer by the hour.

“We can buy anything we want. What do you think?” asked Rog, trying to lift her mood with his own. Yul was unusually quiet. She looked lost. “What’s wrong baby? What did I say?”

“You know what shopping is?” asked Yul, tears filling her big eyes.

Rog pulled her in tight. “I don’t know baby, tell me.”

“It’s a future.”

Rog pulled her tighter, not sure what to say to that.

“Look around. See all these people? Look at their faces, their eyes. They have a future. I saw it in my grandmother.”

“What did you see baby?”

“When she was near the end, she lost all desire to go shopping. My mother couldn’t pull her out of the house or interest her in anything. She just didn’t care anymore. Material things mattered not the least to her and you know what? She was never that way.”

“Baby, don’t talk that way. You have a future. We have a future.”

Yul shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

“Then tell me. Help me understand. Make me understand.”

“I don’t feel it. Or perhaps I do. I do feel the emptiness. I feel it like an endless gray day. Nothing but gray, everywhere I look. There's just nothing there.”

“Baby, I’ve told you, we are going to beat this thing.”

“It’s not just that," said Yul, her voice trailing away as her eyes looked down and to the right. Her shoulders drooping with the lifelessness of a puppet put away.

Rog was starting to get exasperated. “Then what is it?” A tone rising in his voice he quickly regretted.

Yul either didn't hear or didn't care. “Don’t you feel it? Our life. What is it Rog? Is this home? Are we going to stay here? And if not here, where? Bravo? Is that our home? Look at all this stuff. Do you really want any of it?” queried Yul, her eyes boring a hole right through Rog.

“Well, . . .”

Yul stomped off. “Call me when you get it.”

Rog stood as a boulder in a sea of people as Yul disappeared in the crowd. “Damn, what the hell was that?”

Categories: Story, Rog, Yul

235. Outtake #1: Sailing to the Sun

One week later.

Bravo slipped through the silent blackness of space as if pulled by the invisible hands of fate or, as Kyra solemnly mused, like Papa’s river carrying them forth; to the next bend or the fall was not theirs to know. Only Emy had joined Kyra and Von. One week removed from departure, one week to contact, the ship had never felt so quiet or so spacious.

“How are we doing Em?” asked Kyra, watching with pride as Em stood watch over the control panel, her sea legs planted firmly in command. Kyra only imagined this was how her father must have stood.

“All systems green. Not a problem in sight,” sighed Em as if disappointed. “I suppose now we just sit and wait. You know, there is something sterile about space travel, something lacking,” Em searched for the right word . . . .

“Something soulless?” offered Kyra.

“Yes, soulless. Do you feel it too?”

“More so since we departed. No offense, but Bravo just doesn’t seem the same without Rog and Yul and Trev and Mairi. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure Kyra. Anything. And by the way, no offense taken. I feel it too.”

“Do you agree with the others?”

“In what way?”

“Do you think this mission is imprudent? Foolhardy? Misguided?”

“Yes, I do.”

Somewhat surprised Kyra sat up. “Really?”

“In a way, yes.”

Kyra searched Em’s face. She was not joking. “Care to explain?”

“I’ve already told you why I’m here.”

“No, not that. I meant why you agree.”

“Oh, well, my father always said we sail to the sun, not from it, which I suppose was his way of saying we move forward, not back. I do understand the desire and need to pursue this signal, but I believe all we will find is answers for our ghosts, not for us, and I think the bigger question is, why are they still haunting us? Or to phrase it another way, why do we still allow them to haunt us?”

“But you don’t agree?”

“Agree or not agree is not how I would frame the question. I think the question is more, as you might say, one of love.” Em smiled.

“Love?” Kyra smiled back, the kind of smile that said you have my attention now.

“I love you Kyra and so I am here—for you. The mission, I believe is sailing into the void, it doesn’t move us forward. But I’m not here for the mission, for missions will come and go, as will this one. I’m here because, as my father also used to like to say—often, the relationship trumps the circumstance. This mission is important to you and so it is important to me. I’m here to honor you, to serve you. The mission matters little.”

Em paused and Kyra allowed the silence. Em began again. “Now, having said that, I do believe as long as we are haunted, as long as we live in that darkness, then I believe we must seek the light and so I like to see this mission as a ghost busting exercise. What we find on that vessel will matter little in comparison to what we find in the dark reaches of our soul, that place that compels us forward.”

Kyra just sat, her jaw slightly open and her eyes a little wider than normal. “Em, I don’t know what to say.”

“No need to say anything. The look in your eyes right now has given me more than a library of words. On the open water, miles from nowhere, my father would hug me tight; tell me he loved me as he whispered, as fathers do, that without each other we had nothing. As I said a week ago, I am thankful you welcomed me on this mission, welcomed me to travel with you and Von. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure Em.”

Em’s eyes widened and a sparkle seemed to appear. “Did you see that performance Trev gave?”

Kyra busted out, tears of laughter blurred the corners of her sight. Wiping her eyes and catching her breath she said, “Yes, Em. Yes I did.”

“And?”

“And what?” teased Krya.

“Whhhaaaat did you think?”

“I think we saw a side of Trev none of us had ever seen before.”

Em’s eyes drifted away. “I’m sailing to the sun Kyra.”

[ed note: this chapter is the first of what I am calling an "outtake," which is to say, I'm not really sure I like what is said and how it is said enough that it makes the official story, but it has enough redeeming value to be included. So, with that said, enjoy.]

Categories: Story, Kyra, Emy, Outtake

234. Love Is

The night rolled on with each member of the crew taking their turn. Trev, perhaps most of all, shocked everyone with his performance. His golden honeyed voice reached angelic proportions and some wondered why he ever considered medicine. Em seemed lost in her own world as Trev performed, with eyes only for dreams and possibilities.

Last to perform was Kyra. Taking the mike and standing center stage words flowed, or so it seemed, not from the lips but from the pounding in her chest and she looked over the crew toward Von working the bar, yet, as Von would later say, her eyes did not meet his. There are words and music and song but what Kyra performed eclipsed them all. Her eyes shone and her skin appeared to glow and with each movement of arm, with each step of foot, one felt the love and heat of a long simmering volcano erupting in sheer power and beauty that words alone failed to justify. So without further ado, I present to you, Kyra.

you look at me
and I go with you
and it's eternal, this moment
the sun is shining
life is laughing
my heart opens up
I want to give it to you
I want to carry you
I want to love you
for love has remained
didn't ask
is simply there
there's no running away
that's obvious to me

you and I that's quite surely
like a wonderful deep rapture
of the very special kind
and we have a right to
keep meeting again and again
to keep looking at each other
when the big wide world calls
I'll surely go with you

love doesn't want
love doesn't fight
love doesn't become
love is
love doesn't seek
love doesn't ask
love is like you are

good night my marvelous one
and I'd still like to express my gratitude
what you did
what you said
it certainly wasn't easy for you
you think of me in complete love
and what you see only moves forward
you're courageous
you're smart
and I'll always be there for you
that I know for sure

you and I we're like children
who love each other the way they are
who don't lie and don't ask
when there's nothing to ask
we are two and we are one
and we see things clearly
and when one of us must go
we are still always there

we are there, we are there, we are there
we are there, we are there, we are there

love doesn't want
love doesn't fight
love doesn't become
love is
love doesn't seek
love doesn't ask
love feels like you are

love should not
love doesn't fight
love doesn't become
love is
love doesn't seek
love doesn't ask
love is like you are

like you are
like you are
love is like you are
love like you are
love is like you are
love is like you are
love like you are
love is like you are
like you are
like you are

Above Von’s head glowed a bright red orb, pulsing with energy. No one saw it, save Kyra and many, many years later, when the subject of that night surfaced in an interview, a smile and a glow appeared on misty eyes that I swore looked pass me if not over me. I put down my pen and I smiled back, and for just an instant felt I knew what was witnessed by the crew so many years ago. Liebe ist.



Categories: Story, Kyra, Karaoke