Reunion

It's like yesterday, now. She's smaller than I remember.

...

She's exploring her new environment, gradually. Rubbing herself against me. Settling in the windowsill. Everything I worked for, everything I sacrificed for - no thanks to *them*. No thanks to *California*.

The last chain binding me is severed.

I see the distaste for animals so many here have. Being turned away by apartment after apartment. This is the cost of your *diversity*. If there is a God, she no doubt frowns at my words.

But does that make them any less true?

I feel a calm I have not felt in a long time. But I feel also the knowledge, at the edges of my mind, of who has done this to me.

I'm leaving California. I'm heading back to the ancestral stomping grounds of Maine, in fact.

That is not to say this place has been without merits. Environmental justice. The acceptance of the LGBT. Oh, this place has its strengths.

But it's a festering, sunbaked sore. The heat is wretched and ungodly. The teeming urban masses are a blasphemy to my small town sensibilities. I had to call the sheriff's office a week or two ago because a couple of young hooligans were being threatening downtown. I don't even know who the sheriff back in Adams County is - but I do know the chief of police, on account of him being my 4th grade teacher's husband.

That's the small town life. I wasn't suited to this place, then or now.

But she's here now, and the semester is drawing to a close. I've done what I came here to do.

Look at her wondering eyes, as she looks out at the world beyond the window. Has she seen a place like this before?

And oddly, I see myself reflected in those eyes.

Serpentine

Undulating coils

Rough and dry, but never slimy.

She slides slowly, naturally, like a part of the forest itself.

What is it like to be a snake?

Villified. Feared. Hunter, yet hunted. Maybe there's more of us in the snake, and more of the snake in us, than we know.

Patterns.

The ouroboros will show the way.

Dialogues

"Sorry?" I blinked.

"Jesus, ma'am. Do you know him?" the young man's honest face looked down into mine. "It's all right if you're not interested," he added quickly.

He was fidgeting a bit with the stack of pamphlets in his hand. Probably hadn't been doing this long.

Right. I wasn't wearing my clerical collar. With my shopping bags and (decently stylish, though my wife disagreed) sunglasses, I looked like anyone else enjoying her day off. I opened my mouth to tell him I did know Jesus - pretty well, actually - but...

I looked up and down the street. People absorbed in their little routines, their destinations - just like I had been a minute ago. Most wouldn't even give him that much. Maybe it was wrong not to be up front about what I did for a living, but... I had some time. Why not humor him? If nothing else, we could have an interesting chat about religion. Probably.

"I think so," I nodded, smiling up at the evangelical. "But why don't you tell me about him?"

He looked relieved to have found a willing listener. "Well. You probably already know the basics, but... Tell me, do you think you're going to Heaven?"

Oh, I saw what he was doing. The whole salvation by works thing. He was expecting me to make some comment about morals, then he'd tell me how Jesus' sacrifice made sure we didn't have to worry about that.

"Isn't everyone?" I asked innocently.

"Sorry?" he said, frowning slightly, as if he thought he'd misheard.

"Isn't everyone going to Heaven," I said. "I mean, surely a loving God wouldn't consign their children to eternal torment."

"Well, he doesn't *want* us to," he replied. "That's why he gave himself, to save us."

He didn't miss a beat. I was sure my universalist theology would have had more of an effect - but then, this was California. He'd probably heard his fair share of progressive religious ideas before.

I probably shouldn't have continued pressing things. Collar or no, being a priest was a full time vocation. But it felt strangely liberating, being able to turn his conservative idea of "Christianity" on its head without announcing myself.

"What about the LGBT?" I queried.

Worlds

Hello.

  I don't know if anyone's out there. But maybe it doesn't really matter.

We're on a little island, a blue and green marble, like a speck of dust in infinity.

  The cosmos are so vast and ancient and beautiful. And we're just one of so many manifestations of that beauty.

But in the end, we're transient. Travelers, getting to enjoy this universe for a little while. But it's all been here long before us, and it'll be here long after.

Just specks of dust.

Fae

The guard continued his patrol in the deepening twilight gloom. He'd walked the same path, felt the same stones crunching under his boots, for years now. But it was a living, he sighed.

He yelped suddenly as a sleek figure ran through the shadows near one of the houses, instinctively reaching for his mace - then relaxing somewhat. "Damn knife ears," he muttered. Just another elf. They rarely caused trouble, but the last thing he needed at the end of a long shift was a heart attack - or worse, scrambling the brains of some idiot that thought the city was a forest.

There was another, crossing the path now, some 20 yards away. "Hey," the guard raised a hand. The elf paused and turned to look at him. "Try to act a little more normal, would you? At least after dark. For my sake."

The elf just stood there, like a deer caught in the light of a torch, before smiling enigmatically and running off.

The guard shook his head grumbling. Elves. Damn elves. Why did they have to be so difficult? When he'd started this job, when it was just him and Chloe, before the kids were born - he only had to deal with humans. Plain old, predictable humans. You knew where you stood with them.

He felt a snap beneath his boot. Frowning, he bent to take a look. Just a branch - but he could've sworn that wasn't there when he walked this way just a few minutes ago. He straightened up, dusting off his hands on his trousers.

And found himself staring into the face of one of the elves, eerily pale in the growing starlight. "Move along," he growled, gesturing threateningly at the handle of his mace. "Unless you've got business-"

Another elf stepped from the shadows, then another. "Wha-" the guard said, stumbling back as he drew his weapon - only to bump into a fourth.

Comprehension dawned. "Gabriel!" he shouted for his fellow guard. "I need backup, this is-"

His words were cut short almost as soon as he saw the flash of crystal. "Chloe..." he murmured as he lay in the pool of his own blood.



The elves stood in a circle around the dead man. "The first blood is spilt. The lesser creatures will pay dearly for not knowing their place..."

Prayer for the 7th Generation Hence

I dream of a time, soon
 When women and men alike may be free
Free to be who they are, free of oppressions and double standards and divisions
All based on the lie of their gender.
We are nearly there now.

And I dream of a day when Fido and Rover and Fluffy,
 to whom our hearts are already open
May open our hearts to their kin, snouted and hooved
That all animals may escape cruelty and torture and death
All for the slightest scrap of steak.
We are slightly there now.

And I ask for a time when
knowledge is acknowledged, and rationality is truth
When learning reaches even the meanest corners
 and enlightens society.
We are barely there now.

All this I ask, and I pray, and I hope, and I dream
 But words and inaction are one thing. I will play my part.
Will you?

The Cat

"What is it?" I ask.
The serene ball of fluff stirs.
"A cat," she replies.

Why did I ask that?
I know well what a cat is.
But I didn't expect one.

Sleepy purring beast.
Four paws and a long tail.
I would have preferred a dog.

It's late Sunday night and I find myself awake, again, against my better judgment. The rain patters rhythmically outside my window - the perfect thing to fall asleep to, if I could afford that luxury. Yet for the umpteenth time, I find myself having procrastinated to the very last moment before starting on my homework. Such is life.