by J. Naomi Ay
“What will you do with this trash?” I asked as I watched him. “What good is this refuse you find on the streets?”
He smiled at me, and though his hair was dirty and his clothes were those of the old fathers, there was something in his eyes that told me he was smart as my Fruph had been. He led me to his machine, the kind that had disks, the kind from the old books that my Fruph and I had read. Inside this machine were many more bags of this same plastic trash he had gathered from the streets.
“You are cleaning the land? I asked, and he nodded.
“It is good for our Andorus for our streets to be clean.”
He bid me come with him and so I sat in his machine and together we travelled on the streets of the city to a small building on the shore by the lake. Inside this building were yet more of these bags and a different machine that made all sorts of noise. Many other men and some women too were there, each bringing more bags. They fed these to machine and it did swallow them up, and my friend now showed how he destroyed this refuse for good.
“It is wonderful,” I cried. “You have rid us of the trash.”
“There is more,” he said and taking my hand, he showed me how the great machine emitted a liquid. It was golden, this liquid, and smelled a bit foul.
“What use is this? Can it be swallowed or fed to the crops?”
“No,” my friend said and extracted some liquid, filling a bottle and closing it tight. He took the golden liquid back outside to the machine with the disks. “It feeds this machine.” Then he poured it inside through a hole on the back. “It makes the car run.” He turned on the motor, and it purred and hummed and so I climbed in and together we drove through the night. We drove through the city and into the valleys, across the great rivers and out onto the plains. In the morning, we stopped, and he showed to me great mountains of trash as far as my eye could see.
“If I had some money, I would build a great building. I would put my machine inside and all of this trash.” He waved his hands at the mountain. “It would turn into liquid and power the cars so the people may ride to where ever they desire to go.”
“Why would they come here?” I asked for there was nothing there but the great trash mountains.
“Come,” my new friend bid me and again I climbed into this car and together we drove from one day to the next. We arrived on the shore of a great blue ocean where the ground was green, and the trees grew tall. There were only a few houses, and never any mud and the water was clear when you held it in your hand.
“If our people had cars and oil to run them, they might drive across the land and come here, too. There is much to eat here and much more that can be grown.”
“And your machine will make this happen?”
My new friend shrugged. “Perhaps. But I have no money to make this machine so we shall never know.”
“I have money,” I said in a whisper, trusting my new friend although I knew him not well.
“I will not take your money,” he replied. “If I build these machines they shall be yours and the business that comes shall be yours.”
I nodded my agreement. I would have a business that would make machines and perhaps someday it would be large like SdK.
We drove back across the continent to our home city and over the course of the years, we built this business. Never were we at a loss for the wrappers as the trash was everywhere and the trash-mountains grew like crops from the ground. The golden liquid fed the cars and the people who used them took them across the continent and built cities near the ocean. Larger cars and trains came like the machines in the books that long ago I had read to the Little Prince. As in the stories, they brought the crops back to the cities and the forests in between provided wood for new buildings. The wood became furniture so no longer the fathers sat upon boulders but instead upon chairs like civilized men.
My friend and I, after so many years, decided to become mates but only of each other. My Bleph and I built a house next to the ocean on the far shore that looked out at the sea. Often I sat in my bedroom there and gazed through the window and thought of my Katie.
She was once blessed with a house at a sea and a mate who loved her and an infant in her belly. Now she had nothing, and I had it instead. The scar on my chest ached with the memories and my heart beat with caution. I knew I could lose all that I had in a moment, just as she.
I put my arms around my babe to protect him from the curses. I sang to him joyously in thanks for blessings, and I taught him to realize that blessings and curses often come in disguise.
The story continues with
The Days of the Golden Moons
Find it on Amazon.com at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BXLYUS
