Chapter Three
Of all the eight year old immortals, none embraced his age more enthusiastically than Squee. He possessed an unlimited energy and a sense of sheer enjoyment to go along with it. All day long he was accustomed to flying through the trees, loudly emitting the grunts and groans and squeals that had led to his name. Able to scale a two hundred foot sequoia as fast as a raven could ascend the same distance, he had no match by branch or by air among his people. The Squee of the forest was barely glimpsed by ground-dwellers most of the time except for an occasional flash of his shoulder-length platinum blond hair or a patch of his well-bronzed skin, an elbow or a heel occasionally visible for a fraction of a second as high above he flung himself without fear or hesitance from one tree to the next in pursuit of absolutely nothing but thrills.
Now that he found himself suddenly thrust into an entirely strange new world, he was momentarily paralyzed like a puppy overwhelmed by a galaxy of unfamiliar smells. The hot shifting sand beneath his toes felt like nothing he had ever experienced, and the vast blue ocean stretching out before him was something unimaginable. Of course he'd been told stories about such things, but those were fairy tales as far as he knew, mere legends left over from the fragmentary and suspect memories of his fellow eternal inmates. In the very midst of it now he couldn't decide what to do first. Soma also seemed under the same spell while Gowdy was already kicking at the crumbly stuff and trying to figure out which direction was which. He'd covered his eyes with his hand while ascertaining the sun's present location and studying its movement.
Squee fell to his knees and began furiously digging into the sand until he'd quickly formed a deep enough pit to leap into and begin to bury his body from the sides, shouting indefinite syllables until accidentally swallowing a bit of sand. Spitting it out he began to scream, bringing Soma rushing over to the side of the hole, where she stared down at him and, shaking her head, exclaimed,
"Squee! No! You can't eat it!"
"Know it," he yelled up at her. "Colder down here," he added, digging into the damp sand at the bottom of the hole.
"It's from the ocean," Soma told him, but Squee wasn't listening. Instead he was digging deeper and deeper, and finding the sand increasingly wetter, he just kept blinking and wondering and not comprehending the mystery. He had never been the smartest kid, and all the untold years had not added an iota to his mental capacity.
"Come on," Soma gestured for him to follow her. "Let's check out the water."
"Water!" Squee cried, and he leaped out of the hole, landing on his feet at the first try out of the six foot hole.
The two children raced each other across the beach towards the ocean, where Soma went first, being faster by land, and dashed into the water. At the first touch of it Squee generated yet another of his customized and meaningless grunts, and ran back onto the dry sand.
"COLD!" he yelled after Soma, but the girl was already into the water well over her head and swimming in ever-larger circles, each time back facing the beach encouraging Squee to come back in. After a few turns she gave up and headed out to where the waves were breaking. They had often swum at the lake by Gowdy's cabin, but it was a warm water there, and calm, nearly tideless. But Soma took to the waves as if she'd been riding them her entire life. She seemed to know instinctively how to catch one and let it take her outstretched body bumping and bouncing all the way back to the beach, where she jumped up and shook herself and again invited Squee in to join her. By that time, he had already dipped his toes in a few more times, and had decided that cold was nothing but a new thing to face head on and conquer. He ran into the ocean beside her and moments later was body-surfing like a champion.
Gowdy stood on the sand and watched the pair of youngsters playing in the surf. He felt no desire tugging at him to enter the sea, and the hot sun beating down on him was already making him sweat and feel anxious. He needed water, and scanned the area around for river inlets further down the coast. There was nothing and no one in sight, no sign of human habitation anywhere. He felt the forest behind him and wanted to get as far away from it as possible, but could not make out where it ended in either direction along the waterfront. He would have to make a decision which way to go, but based on no good information. He knew by now that the ocean was to the west, that the sun would set behind it, so that north was to the right, and south to the left. He had no reason to favor either one, but eventually decided to go right. After all, it was people of the north who'd been his enemies. It was there he would seek his revenge.
Prisoners of Perfection - An Epic Fantasy by Tom Lichtenberg and Johnny Lichtenberg Page 3
