innocent stones

Another brosef.com special.... drew some clouds... and then I wrote this. It's a beginning chapter of a book that will never be written.. because that's the nature of my blog.

Charles awoke from a sleep so deep he was rather surprised upon realizing he hadn’t slept through a couple of lifetimes, but rather a mere couple of hours. Nevertheless, a stretch, that started in his toes and coursed blindly through his veins and tendons until his fingers were sure of their inability to move any further away from his warm palms, convinced him the ensuing fight between his body and these next 72 hours would be anything but matched.

He sat up, cleared his eyes of the grainy morsels that so many here desperately yearned for and looked at the fading moons with an inescapable sense of unwelcome anticipation.

“B******s” he mumbled under his breath, staggering to a three point stance before crackling upright, hands above him as if he were attempting to reach the moons themselves and drag them closer to the beach.

“Stop yelling at the moons, Chuck. They’re inanimate objects, with no feelings”

Leslie rolled onto her back, doing everything in her power it seemed, to savor the last of the darkness before lifting her eyelids to an all-too-familiar position.

“And besides” she continued, eyes still shut, almost clenched as if that would somehow better combat the ensuing rays she so desperately could do without. “It’s not their fault they happen to orbit 3 times less than an earth moon.. they’re just innocent stones”.

Charles, reluctant to admit it, knew she was right. On a planet where sleep came at a premium, he couldn’t help but gripe and moan at the onslaught of every ‘day’; and having had this argument with her ten times over, felt it was better off severed now, before any more energy was wasted on a couple of rocks that knew no better.

“I can still be angry”, Chuck said, eyes still locked on a pebble that would soon turn to nothing but a grain of sand lost in the orange sky. “Now get up, it’ll be 40 feet of water here before we know it”.

_

A65T-XB is what it had been called back home; aptly (albeit unoriginally) named being the 2^nd (B) planet (X) orbiting the 65^th star (T) in our neighboring galaxy. However those who’ve had the pleasure of frequenting this lovely establishment had a much for fitting name for it. Here, Yon as it was called (legend has it named courtesy of its first and only round of cadets some 70 years ago) is a planet home to a small group of privately funded researchers, a small group… of two.  And no matter whether it was some act of Freud or those cadets purposefully titled it to be confused with the human action which normally occurs during a lapse of boredom or sleep deprivation, Charles McAllister and Leslie Stafford were forced call it home for the next 2 years (Yon years… mind you).

_

“I’m coming, I‘m coming” Leslie grumbled. 

With no stretch and very little preparation, she jumped to her feet and clapped her hands.

“Let’s get to it”.

The research on this planet had been for one purpose and one purpose only. Clouds. Super fast clouds that seemed to attack the sky, adding quite a bit of irony to the 72 hour day seeing as how if one looked at the ground, the shadows cast by the sun would cause him to think he was living in fast-forward.  The thing is there was no wind, not a single gust.  Yet somehow they moved.  Something charged the gases.  There was energy there, a lot of it. And their planet needed it... bad.

“Looks like they’ll be green today” Leslie was looking down at the shrinking beach. 

As the sun peaked through the horizon, the clouds cast an eerie greenish glow on the sand, making it appear alive as they zipped by thousands of feet above.

“It looks like a swamp” Charles said as he lifted the sand and watched as it sifted through his knuckles.

“And you look like swamp-thing” Leslie chuckled as she packed away her tent.

Charles smiled. “Would you rather have Grandpa Smurf back?”

Leslie was packing the last of the equipment. “No.. he kinda creeped me out”

“Me too.” Charles laughed. “Now let’s go, unless you’re up for a swim.”

Author's Note

FYI: brosef.com is a doodle blog where Aidan Tonbridge draws first, then writes whatever comes to mind after seeing what he's drawn. There is no consistent format to what he posts (could be a screenplay, dialogue, a story, etc.)

I welcome all feedback. Check out brosef.com for other posts!

Reviews

[melOH!knee]

the art makes the story even better. i love how it's such a short story, but you are able to so effortlessly pack an entire novel's worth of thought into it. only a true writer can say what he means, and mean what he says in so few words.