Canto Sixty-Seven – The Arboretum Again (We Can’t Seem to Get Out of There)
When Farbick and Starbright finally got to the Arboretum where everyone else had gathered, they got in on the very end of Alden Morrell’s third re-telling of the final battle and deaths of Tedhkruhz and Makkhain. Alden had gotten rather good rather quickly at telling the tale, complete with the sound effects at the climax of Lester smacking his huge petal-lips as he/she/it devoured both combatants.
Starbright then went to Science Officer Shalar to see if she could help with the medical care for the little wounded lizard girl.
“Was she badly wounded?” Starbright asked. Farbick continued to hold her hand even as she asked it.
“Yes,” answered Shalar, “It seems she would’ve died if not for the application of this alien device to her throat as she was dying.”
The weak and pale little lizard girl smiled up at them. “It’s a tissue-knitter given to our people by the Zeta Reticulans as a gift when they left our planet for good. Makkhain wasn’t supposed to have it, but he stole it from the evil Senator’s treasure room to save me if he was forced to try and kill me.”
“You were lucky that Makkhain was still himself even though he was a clone,” said Gracie Morrell.
“That was Senator Tedhkruhz thinking he could completely control the clone with his hypno-programming. Makkhain was still free to do whatever the Senator had forgotten to tell him not to do.” Sizzahl smiled at Gracie. “I think you know something about the value of love when it comes to clones,” she said to Gracie.
“Yes, if a simuloid Telleron clone had not sacrificed himself out of love for humanity, I would not even be here,” Gracie said.
“And you wouldn’t be a child again either,” added Alden, somewhat ironically.
“But, Alden, don’t you love being young and fresh and full of energy again?” Gracie asked him.
“Yeah, I suppose I do. We are going to need it raising those clone children.”
“What’s this about children?” Starbright asked.
“Sizzahl used some of Alden’s DNA to create five little boys and five little girls that are half human from Earth and half lizard people from Galtorr Prime.” Gracie was beaming like an expectant mother, even though she looked like a little girl herself.
“I was expecting the fusion children to be the new people of this planet. I really didn’t think any Galtorrians would survive,” Sizzahl said. She was still weak and looked ill, but as she rested in Shalar’s protective embrace, she was obviously recovering.
“So, let me understand this,” Starbright said. “The Morrells are finally going to have children of their own, and all of the survivors are going to restore and repopulate this planet?”
“That’s about how I see it,” said Shalar, the Science Officer, giving the idea the rubber stamp of scientific approval.
“Well,” said Starbright, “It’s about time we got in on this whole love and marriage thing too, Farbick and I.”
“The two of you are going to get married?” asked Alden, looking shocked in the fakest possible manner.
“Well,” said Farbick, “She hasn’t officially asked me yet.”
“Farbick, will you marry me?” Starbright asked, smiling brightly, like a star.
“Of course I will, my love.”
“Gee, that’s just like in some old movie,” said Alden.
“I don’t remember the name of it,” said Farbick, “but it was an old black and white movie I got it from.”
Farbick laughed as Starbright slugged him on the shoulder.
stuff, and doing some of it naked.
But that, of course, is not how it works in real life… even without the nuclear physics which was an exaggeration for humorous effect.
Mickey at Sixty
It is true that I am now only a month away from being 61. But this reflection is based on what happened to me while undergoing the year past. My fictional character, Valerie Clarke, took the selfie above of the two of us. She doesn’t have her own smartphone, after all, she’s a fictional character, so she used mine. It shows in the picture what she looked like at eleven and what I looked like at sixty years and eleven months, in other words, this morning.
So, what exactly does the picture reveal about us?
Well, for her, it is fairly obvious that she’s only an imaginary person. She was eleven in 1984, the year of the fictional snowstorm in Snow Babies. She’s a bright and vibrant young girl with hopes and dreams ahead of her. She’s also known tragedy, especially after her father’s suicide. But the fact that she’s fictional and based on more than one real person from my past does a lot to explain why this reflection is not about her.
For me, however, you get a look at a grumpy old man with a straw farmer’s hat, an author’s beard, and silvery Gandalf hair. More of my drawings are glimpsable on the wall behind me. I look like the kind of seedy old curmudgeon who yells at neighbor kids who walk on his lawn.
But I’m really not what I look like.
I am a writer. So I am full of experiences, ideas, and feelings. And I am also full of people. Valerie is only one of those. I create fictional people from the people I knew or knew about in my little Iowa town, Rowan, where I grew up. Kids that went to school with me. Their parents. Shopkeepers and business people and creepy old people that I sometimes encountered. Hot tempered people. Wise people. And stupid people who were often laughed at for good reason.
I can also draw on (and draw pictures of) all the people I knew as an educator. More than two thousand kids who passed through my classes in four different schools, some of whom I knew as well as I knew my own children, were available to pull details from to mix and match and make fictional characters from. Fellow teachers, some gifted with a natural way with students, some hopelessly lost in the wrong profession with the wrong sort of personality were also available to make characters from. Fools and idealists. Bullies and shrinking violets. Heroes that possible readers could look up to and love.
I am the kaleidoscope, the thing that you can look through to see the world and have it refracted and patterned to make it beautiful, even in its ugliness.
But all of this reflection is only that, the view in the mirror, the outward look of the man who is me. Mickey at sixty is many things, not all of them pretty, not all of them wise. But some of them are. And some even better than I think they are.
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