R.S.V.P.
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Slimeworld & Galaxy Magazine -- All rights reserved -- |
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Chapter LVI
by General (Uncle Claude) Xxaxx
& General (E.J. Gold) Nunan PFC 1st Class Ret.
The vision was perfect, the contact clear, that much Woo could remember. But what of the actual events? Did Stan Lee manage to manipulate the Cititzins, eggheads and goobers into the cooperation needed to reverse the slowing down process that spelled the doom of all life on earth?
“My life may just be pages in the book of creation. I may be only a character without substance. But gosh, darn, doo-doo, titty-titty damn, damn, I would like to know how the heck that little adventure of saving the world came out. That’s not too much to ask is it?”
Something was obscuring the view. Something was insisting itself into Woo’s attention.
With dawning recognition of her old mentor, Woo blurts out, “That is not a something, that is Drak.”
“Drak, what is going on? I can’t recall a thing about what happened. Is the entire human race candidate for flapjack look-alike contestants? Did the butler do it? Did we save the planet?”
To Woo’s dismay, Drak ignored her as one ignores a three piece suit when addressing the wearer. Speaking through and past Woo, using tones of great respect Drak says, “It is time to blow out the candles.”
In spite of feeling like a fifth wheel in the conversation between Drak and herself, Woo persisted in asking even though she knew that any answer given would not be for her, and probably not be understandable, in any case. One last expression of Woo-ness before she became the long silence, “Who is blowing out what candles?”
In a surge of compassion for his lifelong distant friend, Ja Mere, placed a comforting tendril of nonphenomenal morphology about the immaterial shoulder of the dissolving Woo. “Man values silk and tolerates the silkworm. But the sun looks to the butterfly-moth as a tool in the light. The silk is valued for its strength and utility. The practical headed merchant couldn’t even begin to understand the needs of light to be fractioned and splayed across the rainbow heavens. Woo, you have been a strong and worthy vessel, but it is time. You must give up your position in the center of the universe and allow that which you carry to take a place in the central sun. The cocoon is abandoned when it is the butterfly’s time.”
A fierce pang of shame brought tears to Woo’s eyes. How could I have been so foolish to think that I mattered — all of my competence and all of my accomplishments are nothing.” Even saying it, Woo still felt dread and hesitation to admit the nonexistent role that she played — perhaps, if she doesn’t say it, it won’t be true. In the final analysis, even with almost nothing left to lose, it is almost more than she can bare to yield it up. Even though her life has been nothing, Woo was afraid to give it up, “stuck between heaven and hell and neither option looking all that good.”
Drak turned to Little Roy, “Do you have anything to say to help your friend?”
Not responding directly to the ancient dragon, Little Roy turned to Woo and asks, “Where does a candle flame go when you blow it out?”
Like the passing of a flame from the emptiness into the void, something melted deep within Woo — free and light. Woo may have previously felt herself to be old; that which sprang forth now was ancient before dragons were born — and they have existed since before the beginning of time. “It’s time to sing the Happy Birthday song, Little Roy.”
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R.S.V.P.
|
Slimeworld & Galaxy Magazine -- All rights reserved -- |
|