Canto Fifty-Three – The Morrells’ Assigned Sleeping Nest
Alden was bone weary as he and Gracie finally found the nest that Sizzahl had assigned to the two of them. It was a weird little alcove made of artificial stone, with what appeared at first glance to be a huge pile of sticks and leaves in the middle of the central depression of the floor. The bedding materials were also artificial, however, made from some sort of foamy material and quite comfortable to recline on.
“Oh, Gracie,” said Alden, “I am so relieved to be able to wear clothes again. I really couldn’t stand being naked around the children all the time.”
“I actually liked being naked, Alden. It made me feel nice and so very free.”
“It’s like being totally vulnerable, like someone or something could take a bite out of you at any moment.”
Gracie looked suddenly concerned. “Do you think our poor Brekka is safe with that awful man-eating plant thing?”
“Yes, I do. It actually seems to take care of her. I worry more about Sizzahl being safe with this uncle of hers. Makkhain doesn’t seem very trustworthy to me.”
“You are such an old poop sometimes.” Gracie looked a little put out. “He’s her uncle. He’s family. Surely we can trust Sizzahl in his care.”
“But what about the rest of us? Are we safe from Makkhain? To him, we are the invading aliens. And it’s no secret that the Galtorrian lizard-people will gladly eat human and Telleron flesh.”
“Well… yeah. I don’t completely trust him either. His weird, snaky eyes are creepy. He’s not quite as human-like as dear little Sizzahl.”
“Gracie, I kinda like Sizzahl too, but you have to remember that she has no regrets about using us for her own purposes. As soon as she learned we were Earth humans, she wanted to use us for her little Galtorrian/Human crock-pot experiment. She’s cooking up ten children already, made from our… I mean, my DNA.”
“But when you stop and think about it, Alden, those ten little test-tube babies are your sons and daughters… your actual flesh and blood. Doesn’t it excite you, at least a little bit, that you are finally going to be someone’s Daddy?”
The thought actually hadn’t hit Alden quite as hard as it did at that moment. He almost swooned as he lay down on the soft nest-bedding. “They are half mine and half Sizzahl’s,” He said. “And they are going to be born from glass jars!”
“Cloning vats for warm-blooded children,” said Gracie. “And since they are your children, doesn’t that make them mine too?”
Alden knew that back on Earth, not being able to have children had practically killed Gracie. It was the reason she had been so anxious to adopt Davalon when they found him on that country highway, alone and left behind by his space ship and his people.
“Gracie, how do we do this? We are living on an alien world now, possibly permanently. We are two grown-up people from Earth trapped in the bodies of children. You can never grow up. And if I grow up without you, I… Well, I simply can’t do that. So how do we raise ten children all the same age? And not just any children, half-lizard children!”
“They’re your children, Alden. And I will love them as my own until the day I die.”
“The day you die may never come. And I may have to keep making myself younger every year by Telleron technology to stay even with you. I may be alive forever too.”
Gracie smiled as she crawled on top of Alden in the middle of the Galtorrian nest. “Love me tonight. You haven’t loved me since we became like this.”
“Gracie, you have the body of a little girl.”
“But I am an adult, no matter how young my flesh is. And I love you. We have a family now. Don’t you feel young and alive again too? Like I do? Love me.”
There was no arguing with Gracie. How could he do anything but love her?
*****
ege. It struck me that it was hauntingly beautiful… but maybe I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.
Catch a Falling Star 
Dawn in Iowa, Sunset in Texas
The recent Iowa trip has been more or less a metaphor for my life as a whole. I don’t mean to be funny but… wait just a minute! Yes I do. This is corn-shucking humor blog, after all! But the metaphor is still there. I was born in Iowa.
Dawn broke over the farm yesterday where Uncle Harry used to live with his wife, Aunt Jean, and their three kids, Karen, Bob, and Tom. Bob was in my class at school. We got into a fight once over who should be Robin Hood when we were playing with all the cousins in the old brooder house on Grandpa Aldrich’s farm, the farm where mom and dad now live. It was a fight that got so intense that we were throwing broke flower-pot shards at each other in anger. Bob’s hand got cut so badly that he had to go to Belmond and get stitches. Dang, was I in trouble after that. Bob’s version, the shard I threw hit him right in the hand, directly between his thumb and pointer finger and cut him. My version, he cut himself as he threw a pot shard at me, and it cut him leaving his hand. Everyone believed Bob, of course. I’m the nutty kid that always told the stories that gave the girls nightmares. And those stories were never true… mostly. So they couldn’t believe my version.
Mom and my sister Nancy designed and executed the painted barn quilt on the work shed that used to be the chicken house.
Bucolic farm scene to represent my Iowegian past.
But life, like days and car trips, moves on. We had to pack up the little Ford Escort that brought me home and take off once more for Texas. I was a little bit worried about the dog. She didn’t poop as much in Iowa as she normally does in Texas. Well, we figured that out on the way back. She pooped a lot of funny colors at every rest-stop dog park on the way back to Texas because of all the people food she had eaten. She got fed better in Iowa apparently. And it was stuff like stolen Doritos and other stuff that is so not-good-for-her.
But going back to Texas with two kids and a dog is a lot like me after college, moving to Texas via Trailways bus in order to become a teacher. I got a job in Cotulla, Texas, the place where LBJ taught way back when he was a young Texan and still working at being good at telling the REALLY BIG LIES. I think I mentioned this before, but all the kids in the painting above were real kids I taught in my first year teaching (except for the kid sleeping.,, nobody did anything but hop around and yell at me my first year as a teacher… including the principal). Oh, and the window is imaginary. I taught for three years in a windowless concrete box with only buzzing fluorescent lights to keep the monsters from killing and eating me… or each other. Within a decade of that first class, two of the boys had been to prison, three were already dead, and one became a star lineman for the Texas A&M football team.
And over time I got closer and closer to my goal. My skills became bigger and better as a teacher. I grew in wisdom and power. Honestly, the grass in the picture was closer to the camera than I was, so I am looming in the sky above the photographer, not tiny and smaller than the grass. So maybe I better claim the picture was taken by fairies. Yeah, that’s it. Down there in the grass. Iowegian fairies got a hold of my camera and took the picture. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. (See. I never really learned to get away with the REALLY BIG LIES. A teacher, as a storyteller, has to also be a truth-teller.)
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