Category: Just Because

Somewhat disheveled and obviously weary from a long flight, he was still a vision in his Galactic Survey uniform. He was near my age, probably twenty-six or twenty-seven standard, a bit taller than me with dark tussled hair, two-day stubble, and a small hoop earring worn. As he entered the small onboard cafeteria, he put his bottle of ale down while he stopped to light a cigarette. As he struck the match, our eyes met and he smiled. An electric shock coursed through me. And those eyes—dark, midnight blue, almost black. He walked toward me as if he intended to join me at my table, and as I caught sight of his name badge—Danot—he smiled again, nodded, and kept walking. I turned around to see if he had stopped, but only saw him leaving through the rear door.

One warm evening I decided to pay a visit to the city's old northern waterfront, a vast array of piers and overgrown parkland nearly a hundred fifty kilometers away from downtown and almost always deserted.  I had heard it was a popular meeting spot for trysts, but I hadn't gone there with that in mind.  I had been feeling very homesick and what I wanted most was to simply get away from the noise of the city, away from the crowds, away from the lights, and just stare up into a dark night sky.  Short of flying out to one of the barrier islands, the waterfront was the perfect choice, despite its other reputation.

Olyxas' brilliant double companion sun was in conjunction with the primary, two of it's three moons would not rise until after midnight, and the third—the smallest—would not be rising for an hour or more after my arrival, so the night was, indeed, very dark.  As I powered down the speeder, parked, and walked out onto one of the piers, I looked up to see the hazy band of the galaxy stretching overhead in the western half of the sky from northern to southern horizon.  And hanging in front of that glittering tapestry, forming a huge arc like a string of brilliant blue-white diamonds, six nearby supergiant stars curved eastward across the sky.  In a later life, on a different world, I would call three of them Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, but the names I used for them then eluded me.  Despite my best efforts, I was still unable to trace out any meaningful constellations upon this strange night sky, and in fact wondered exactly what constellations would've grown out of legends and mythology if an indigenous sentient race had arisen on—instead of been transplanted to—this world.

I finally gave up trying to correlate any of the stars I saw overhead with ones I knew from home.  Obviously, many of them were the same, but now in such radically different locations with equally radical brightnesses that it was futile to try locate particular stars.  And since the Olyxan system lay within the galactic plane and not far above it as my home world did, the galaxy presented itself as a narrow glittering ribbon cutting across the night sky, not as the hemisphere-filling vortex I had known before.  Still, when the pangs of homesickness struck as they did that particular night, these were minor issues and didn't prevent me from trying to spot my native suns, even if I didn't know exactly where they fell upon this canvas—or, if, in fact, they were even visible to the naked eye at all.

The tide was out, but the incoming waves still broke noisily against the pilings as I stood against the railing, looking out over the dark waves below.  My mind wandered, and memories of my desert birthplace returned: the unrelenting heat, the years passing without a single drop of rain and the twin suns burning like two brilliant yellow arc lamps in the wheat-colored sky.

I could not have chosen a more disparate environment in which to emigrate.

And we are not amused. Autumn used to be my favorite time of year until we moved to Colorado. In Arizona it marked the end of the long hot summer, punctuated by much cooler mornings and a new crispness; a new clarity to the air itself. It was like someone flipped a switch and you just knew summer was over. In San Francisco it was just as much loved, albeit for different reasons. Fall marked the end of the notoriously cold late summer fog, the beginning of Street Fair season, and usually provided  a few short—if delectable—weeks of Indian Summer. While I still enjoy the arrival of cooler—and eventually—cold temperatures here in Denver, now autumn is simply a precursor to eight long months of it-may-suddenly-drop-ten-inches of snow-at-any-time and makes my anxiety level go through the roof while anticipating trying to get around town.

As I drive around the city and see the all those golden leaves starting to appear, all I feel is a pit in my stomach and I fully understand why my mother—after divorcing my dad and returning to her ancestral homestead in Wisconsin—lasted precisely one winter there before returning to Phoenix. Unfortunately, I do not have that luxury because Ben has made it clear that while he's willing to relocate once his indentured servitude is complete in Denver, he sees no future back in Arizona whatsoever.

Ben and I are both off all next week. Arkansas, here we come!

This is my response to everything today.

There's one in every office.

I've never been so excited about the arrival of a pair of shoes as I am over these!

I won't say they're official Warehouse 13 merchandise, but I did have Vans make them to order from the color specs provided by the man himself, Eddie McClintock (woof!).

Stolen.