It's easiest to appreciate simple beauty when you are surrounded by desolation.
Peace had finally settled over the dusty streets, and the small unit of American soldiers let their guns droop, looking up the hill at the kids who had cautiously come out of hiding to wander the streets once more, seeking their friends just as the soldiers reunited with their brothers in arms under a leafy tree. One adorned with freshly bloomed pink flowers.
A soldier smiled as he looked at the plants. Long gone was the time where it had been considered unmanly to like flowers. Pretty pink...
To keep her kids from starving, Mama mouse bravely went into the large house. The mouse hole they lived in was just fine, but the owner of the large house, well he was a villain in their eyes.
Mama mouse looked left and right before scurrying under the kitchen cabinet. She couldn't let anyone see her or else who would take care of her darling children? She peeked out from under the cabinet. Good, no one was coming. She cautiously walked out and looked up. There it was. Her goal. Upon the table sat a beautiful roast turkey. She was...
Six minutes...
Was that really all he had left? Three hundred sixty seconds? Well, less than that, now.
He looked into the eyes of his family, gathered around him atop the hill.
What was a man supposed to do in a situation like this? Pray? Meditate? Impart wisdom? Plan some last words? They'd have to be really special... You only got one chance at Last Words.
He thought for a moment. Two hundred seconds, now.
He nodded imperceptibly, straightened his back, and reached for a pair of scissors. With a confident, even snip, he pulled away a handful of hair...
I clung to the mast as the sea tossed them from wave crest to furrow and back again. This was not what I'd thought it would be when I volunteered to document the tallship's maiden voyage.
The curse of the weatherman'd struck at the worst of times. The forecasters had confidently predicted firm winds but that the real storm would happen far south of the ship. They'd proudly proclaimed fair weather for the day's sailing with winds at our backs and sun overhead.
I wondered what they thought, staring at their radars and maps, tallying numbers, crunching data. Did their...
How did we meet? You really want that story again honey? Okay, then.
Well, it was ten years ago, your father was a student and I was visiting an old friend of mine. We were on our way out to a club to listen to this band...
No honey, I don't remember which band, because I never got to the gig. No, I don't know if they were any good... Look, do you want me to tell you this story or not?
Right, so we were walking to the bar where the band was supposed to play and to get...
"I'm with stupid." It was the dumbest t-shirt he'd ever owned. He liked it anyway, but she gave it away. Someone at the homeless shelter would receive an "I'm with stupid" t-shirt this Wednesday at giving time. God he missed her, even though she gave away that t-shirt. He missed the way her face lit up looking at every snowflake that fell in the winter.
He missed her light brown hair sitting upon her bare shoulders in summer; the way she she would groan at him for wearing the "I'm with stupid" t-shirt. She used to dance to "Video Killed...
In 1921, he flew from the Great Rift Valley, along the trails left by the ancient Martians, to find the Temple of the Sun. It was buried, like so much else on Mars, in red sands over the course of millennia, but that meant nothing when you had a native to escort you to their ancestral home.
"So, how can we breathe here?" Pete asked the small, silver creature before him.
It sat in the biplane, strapped in, looking ridiculously small in the pilot's seat. "Air bubble," it replied, fiddling with the dials.
Pete had never flown in a biplane...
"Which way to Omaha?"
Paint flakes blew in the wind. It smelled like gas. Anna's hair was matted; she could feel it knot further. She had nothing; the pockets of her pants were empty except for lint and paint flakes. And one quarter.
The men here knew nothing except that a woman, however unattractive and hagard, was standing in front of them. Who cared where Omaha was, anyways?
"You want some money, sweetie?" One of them whistled. "Ain't no one givin' you money in Omaha."
She rolls her eyes and walks away. Dust settles in the space above her clavicle....
Day 1750: It feels eerily similar to Day 1. I wake up with the sun beating down on my face, no longer held in check by the facade I'm sleeping against. The heat is starting to sting, which I contemplate for a few moments. I'm so glad to be feeling something upon my skin which isn't gravel or my own beard, curling back up to itch me in the very same spots where I'm sore. It's as if even my own face wants nothing more than to detach and fly away.
She nearly disappeared so quickly it was like she was never there, but for scent of her perfume. I knew it was her. All those years, and she still wore sweet almond oil. She was the only woman I knew who wore it.
I followed the scent, staying well back, not wanting her to see me; not yet. Oh, she thought she was safe. She thought I'd forgotten her, or moved on. She thought that now, in this new city of millions, I would not find her.
She was wrong. I have followed her. Every step she took, I was...