And where will I find this,
perfect and wondrous?
…I slip into rain,
slip into rain.”
–Karen Peris, “Green Bus”

    The first time she was only a toddler, barely even walking at all. Her mother had set her down at the foot of the porch stairs as she rushed across the lawn to take down dry laundry from the line, as an early summer thunderstorm began to spatter fat drops. As the first few struck her, Jillian used the bottom step to lever herself up on pudgy legs. Borne on a gust, a sudden spray of rain swept the yard, just as she took an unaided step toward her mother.
    And there she was, on an infinite white beach. She remembered this moment all her life, as with other early memories, like a fragment of a dream. Nothing moved on the beach but the steadily falling rain, obscuring the distance in every direction: the gentle surf, the wavering line of damp pale sand, the curious trees inland with delicate stems and jagged fronds.
    It was unspeakably beautiful, flawless, in the way only a dream can be. The sort of dream that has imprinted as an indelible image, when it isn’t really even the image that matters, but the emotion that inexplicably blossoms up from nowhere knowable, unfiltered by actual experience, a feeling which can never be shaken off.
    Then she heard her mother’s voice calling and turned back, stumbling against the porch and falling backwards into the grass on her small rear, and began crying. Whether the tears were prompted by the unexpected bump or the sudden loss of heaven, would have been impossible to say. They were not distinguishable to her.
    ( Read more... )

 
         The fluffy black cat sat in the clearing at the top of the hill, and looked up at the stars. The night sky was clear, and brilliant. The cat himself was invisible in the dark grass, except for a glimmer of light reflecting from his eyes.
          His people had stopped calling by now, and tapping dishes, and whatever else they could think of to entice him back. He’d watched them for a time, safely hidden in the bushes, as they searched and called. But he’d already had dinner; what he hadn’t ever had was a chance to spend a night outside. He’d resisted the pull of his stomach and turned away, crossing the road and going up the hill into the woods.
          One of the stars was getting larger. He watched it intently, wondering if it would turn out to be a bug. He quite liked bugs.
( Read more... )

We were having tea when something I mistook for a grayish-green pit bull blundered into the kitchen. Then I nearly overturned the cream in my double-take.

"Goodness, Gwennie, when on earth did you get a pet with two heads?"

She chuckled and broke off a bit of her pecan scone, holding it permissively below the level of her rocker's seat. The heads extended suddenly, and now I could see the necks were long, like a turtle's when stretching fully out of its shell.

"It's a baby hydra, dear," my aunt explained.

Both heads sensed the proffered treat, and it trundled over like a small bear. But one head was quicker, obliging Gwen to to break off a second bit of scone for the other. She stroked it as both heads explored the floor for crumbs.

"It often seems a little confused," she admitted, "but it's actually still relatively focused, and the training's been going just fine. It's important to do a good job of that early, you know, before it grows more heads -- you can see a third budding already, between the first two. Just there... see?"

Once there was a man who became a thief, whose crimes grew so great that he was forced to flee for his life.  His greed had mastered him, and one night without meaning to (but not meaning not to) he caused a death.  Once found out, he was a marked man, wanted dead just as good as alive.

And so the thief fled from his city.  They hunted him for a time, so he traveled across the fields, and into the hills, and finally into the wild, where he knew they would no longer bother to search for him.  Living there was difficult, but he was able to find enough food to stay alive.

Then came the rains, and without shelter the thief was cold and miserable.  He sat shivering beneath dripping trees, and knew he must find a better place or he would die.  He forced himself to go higher into the hills, toward the mountains, struggling in the pouring rain through thick woods and up rocks.  And near evening, he found a cave large enough to shelter in, and he went in and collapsed, falling asleep at once.

The thief awoke in the night to the sensation that he was no longer alone in the cave.  Something large had come in, breathing, dripping.  It gave off a wet musky animal smell, and it was very warm.  He lay the rest of the night awake, too terrified to move.

At dawn, he saw that beside him in the cave was a tiger.  Now he knew what he feared, but he was no less afraid.  When the tiger woke, it looked at him with yellow, opaque eyes, and said, "You came into my cave.  Why should I not eat you?"

The thief had no answer.  He only trembled.  But the tiger did not eat him; it watched him for a time, then watched the rain falling outside, then slept again.  The thief's fear never waned, but eventually exhaustion overcame him and he slept too. 

The next morning man and tiger woke, and again the tiger watched him, asking, "You are in my cave, so why shouldn't I eat you?"  Again the thief had no answer but quaked in fear, but again the tiger did not eat him.  Both sat in the cave together while it rained, and slept at night.  And so it went again for another day, and another night.

On this fourth night the rains stopped, and at dawn the man saw that he could leave.  But first he bowed to the tiger and asked, "Why, while I sheltered in your cave, did you not eat me?" 

The tiger studied him, and then said, "It is a mystery."

He waited, but it said nothing else.  And so he turned and left, a man marked for life by something he could not explain.