Glad you could join us for the next skeptical episode of Elliot’s Adventures. If you’re new here, you can catch up by returning tothe beginning, and reading really fast…
Photo credit: wildscenes.com
A subdued splash announced Pierce’s arrival.
“The Queen’s buzzy little nephew said you needed help.” A bath had washed away the sour odor of Elliot’s indiscretion, but not the disappointment of the missed mission to Bog.
“Pierce! Yes, we’ve found Vernon, but he’s wounded and sick and he can’t make it back to the Hive on his own. Would you please take him back with you?”
Glad you could join us for the next disgruntled episode of Elliot’s Adventures. If you’re new here, you can catch up by returning to the beginning, and reading really fast…
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In his dream, Elliot reclined on a bed of rose petals in a field of jasmine. He could feel Cassandra’s kisses on his lips.
He woke on the floor of the bower in Fen to find her wiping the last of his regurgitated breakfast from his mouth. The scent of jasmine drifted in and gagged him. Rolling onto his side coughing more violently than the ancient wasp, he caught a flashing glint of brown surrounded by feathers in the doorway.
Shifting impatiently from foot to foot, Pierce, the hawk who’d brought them back, preened a chunk of glistening, ocher something from his shoulder, and fixed a smoldering one-eyed stare on Elliot.
Glad you could join us for the next high-flying episode of Elliot’s Adventures. If you’re new here, you can catch up by returning tothe beginning, and reading really fast…
Photo credit: Christina Lihani
With a skyward lurch, Elliot’s breakfast threatened to return for lunch. Only the soft comfort of Cassandra pressed against his side kept him from taking his chances and diving for the safety he’d left behind when he climbed onto the hawk’s back.
“Don’t you just love flying?” she asked, her eyestalks waving gently in the slipstream.
Trying to make eye contact put his gut into a spin. He focused on the horizon, the only fixed object in the world, and confessed, “I love you more.”
“Everything is so clear up here,” she effused. “The ground just rolls away and takes every bit of trouble with it.”
He didn’t want to contradict her, but he was sure he’d brought some of the trouble with him, and it was about to erupt.
“Look at that, Elliot, my love — we’re soaring with the majestic Travelers!”
He looked. The sky and earth blurred just before they went black.
Glad you could join us for the next fiendish episode of Elliot’s Adventures. If you’re new here, you can catch up by returning tothe beginning, and reading really fast…
Photo credit: Mike Shaw
“Wait! Wait!” Elliot screamed.
The bird belonging to the beak above him jerked back in alarm. “What?! What?!”
“Please,” Elliot begged, “please let me go! Surely you can’t have rescued me from that spinning siren just to eat me? Please! I implore you, have mercy!”
Charles “Pete” Conrad (1930-1999), the astronaut who said, “If you can’t be good, be colorful.”
Early 1980
I sat between two women who had missed the same flight to San Francisco I had missed, and had also rushed to grab seats on this one.
One of them said, “Pete Conrad is on this flight. He was standing in the ticket line right in front of me, and I really wanted to talk to him, but I chickened out.”
Scanning the cabin, the other one asked, “Where?”
“Right now, he’s in that bathroom,” the first answered, pointing ahead, “but his seat is right across the aisle.”
An astronaut who had walked on the moon?! My heart thumped faster at just the thought. “Okay,” I announced, “when he comes out, we’re going to meet him.”
Moments later, he walked down the aisle. All three of us stood up, and I held out my hand. “Mr. Conrad,” I said, “It’s an honor to meet you. Could I ask you something?”
He shook my hand, and looking at me with eyes that were somehow deeper, vaster, fuller than any I’d ever seen, he said, “Sure.”
“What amazed you most about being on the moon?”
He hesitated only a second before answering.
“The colors.It wouldhave tobe allthe colors.” Pete Conrad,third man on the moon
People who knew him agree they never saw him like this; he should be smiling. (Photo credit for the sunglass reflection: Astronaut Alan Bean/NASA)
This was tough because I love musicals — America’s only contribution to theatrical genres. I could choose from hundreds, thousands of extraordinary songs. Inspirational?
