The Feather Knight

Dear Readers,

I post today as I rest upon my battle-stained blade. For I have just slain the third of five giants which assail this fair land. Two days hence either the last two shall lie dead upon this ground, or I shall. In the meantime I thought I should give you a bit of a scheduling update, and some low-quality poetry.

I intend to post a lot over the summer. The following projects have already come to mind, and I shall list them in order of impending writtenness.
~"The Prayers of Benjamin Dobbs": This is mostly written, an odd tale of what happens when Benjamin challenges God and God accepts.
~IMHO: A discussion of why we find it necessary to relativize what we say by prefacing it with qualifiers such as "I think" or "in my opinion." Why does it offend people when we neglect these phrases? Should it?
~"Timothy and the Grenobles, Part III": I may be aiming too high, but I would like to actually finish a story properly. I might just do it with this one. There's a bit and a piece of this written.
~"Benjamin Dobbs and the Case of the Flying Dutchwoman" [working title]: It's up to Mac's finest private investigators to track down the muderer of a Halcyonite. The trail will lead them down the mountain into the darkest parts of Chattanooga, and end in the middle of a deadly ring of villains.
~"Benjamin Dobbs and the Ring of Power" [working title]: The discovery of a magic ring by a member of The Family prompts a series of disturbing ethical questions (is magic on-contract?) and leads to a deadly stuggle for power at Covenant.

There may be others, but those are the ones I've got in my head at present.
Now, on to that poetry. Watch for the "behind the scenes" afterwards. Oh, and there's some violent death entailed in this tale. Take care.

The knight waited
Crest feather flapping in the breeze
Gauntlet, buckle, emblem still.
A roaming sailing light, afloat
On hilltop heather
For but a moment sailed ore his
Breastplate, laughing as it played upon
His emblem and made the feather glow.
It had not left him when he let
His lance fall
Forward to couch back beneath his breast,
Tip angled up but a little
Probing the air, thick, steady.
Metal gauntlet on wooden staff holding
Let not even the knight's heart throb it.
His helm followed the lance - tilt
A greeting between knights - the feather bobbed.
Steed, enchanted, uttered not a sound,
Till with a jab of silver heels
The armored beast burst up, forward, down,
And down the hill they sped.
Another sailing light between the clouds
Marked the meeting of the two men
At the lowest point, beneath two hills,
Each descending to condescend to send
The other to his end.
Two steel heads alight with noonday fire all their own,
Bowed to each other as they passed, then
Leapt up, long wood necks straining
Each to cross armored finish-line first.
Each horse-head rippling, damp, bespangled
Lit in the light and strained forward again.
Into the light came two crests,
One feather, shadows falling
From the helms of obscured bright
Eyes - lies of lives that did not know
Their worth, their dearth to soon
Upon them.
One lance upon its mark
Could not cross it,
Clattered, shattered on the shoulder plate,
Concussion thrilling, excitement failing
As the truth of death came close,
Scored the knight as the lance had scored his coat.
His own shaft through tattered
Garment ran and ran and caught
The feathered knight through breastplaste,
Heart, and lung.
And the young man was flung down,
Lance - like tree rising from his breast.
His beast stumbled and ran on;
His breath pitched headlong
One great gasp!
Amazed, perhaps, or agonized;
Yet could it be satisfied? Done its
Work of keeping life,
Done its work of endless strife:
Ever going, ever returning.
Now it fled, blue skies yearning,
Following up the hill the vessel
Of light.
The knight rested
Crest feather flapping in the breeze.

I wrote this a few weeks back, about an hour before taking a Calculus exam, in the middle of studying. I rather suprised myself that I had that much creativity in the middle of studying, but not that I had so little meter or rhyme. I'm not really a fan of free-form poetry myself; I prefer to think of this as a choppy story. Until next time.

Breakfast and Everything Block: An Adventure of Benjamin Dobbs

Writer's block. No, everything block. It was something like drowning in opaque water. Not that Benjamin had ever tried that before, but still, he thought it was a good analogy.
It had all started with...
That was about how it went, over and over again.
Calestranov stood from the table with a start...
"Blue wing, break and engage!"...
It was a bright, blue-streaked sky that greeted the three as they emerged. On Polaris 2 it was morning. The beauty of the place was only matched by the cold. Even within their suits they would have frozen in a matter of seconds. Only the addition of heating...
He sighed. There was definitely not going to be any productive writing this evening.
Swords flashed for but a moment in the sunset; Cashalin was not one to toy with an enemy...
Well, at least not much writing that connected with anything else.
He had tried homework earlier. Physics had gotten him through Wednesday. Or, physics and all the things he got distracted by while he tried to finish his lab writeups. Now he was at a standstill on them. Linear Algebra had looked like way too much brainwork. He had talked to an answering machine. His parents were in Texas on vacation. There was very little left to do but try to write, and he had wanted to be able to for so long.
An update? No, he was not in the mood. It would be dry and boring, and some of the stories he could not bear to see written like that. They had been so funny at the time.
Like breakfast last Thursday. Everyone at the table had been tired. That was not at all unusual. The conversation had not been too memorable (at least he didn't remember a word of it). The table broke up around 7:55, and everyone headed for their classes. Benjamin accompanied Efad towards Sanderson, wondering at what point he should leave her to head back to his room. He was skipping class that day, but had gotten up to study, and Sanderson was on the way back to his room. He had a well formulated five-second-or-less explanation for bolting from the Sanderson doors (as if anyone needed one...) which he hoped would suffice to communicate a reason for his absence. Most of the time he wouldn't have doubted his ability to get his point across, but somehow pre-seven breakfasts with sleepy people led to a lot of dull stares and "Hmmm?"s
But he was the confused one when Efad said something and peeled off to the right, back towards Founders, just fifteen feet short of Sanderson. Benjamin, pre-occupied saying something about...something, and dodging the dripping water from the corner of a roof, spun about, brow creased.
"What are you doing!?" he asked.
"Going back to sleep," replied his walking companion.
He paused for a moment, and dredged up what she had said as she turned away. Something along the lines of "I don't have class."
Oh.
"Well, I'm skipping!" he announced, and they parted ways.
Yes, thought Benjamin, tapping a pencil on the desk, that had been hilarious -- each of them walking to Sanderson to keep the other company.
Gregory turned to me, blade in his hand, gasping for breath.
"We'll need a safe place to hide, and quickly. But first we'll need supplies and our weapons. Back to their camp, swift and silent, for the other soldiers will abandon it to find out the cause of that racket," he jerked his head towards where we could hear our pursuers shouting and crying out as they rushed through the sewers.
He couldn't wait until he had enough imaginative energy, and time, to finish that one. It was one of his favorites.
He began to wonder why he never finished any of his stories. And no, he scolded, killing all the characters does not count as finishing. Perhaps it was because he had never seen a whole story before. After all, he lived in the big, grand, story arc that God was bringing about, and it had not yet reached its happy everafter. He hadn't lived to see anyone both born and die, not anyone close to him, at least. And he himself was quite young. Anyway, he would not get to be better writer by dying...well, not a better righter here on this Earth. Perhaps God would be pleased to have him write on the New Earth. That would be...oh, wow...indescribable. But he probably had a lot longer to live, and he had better figure out how to end stories. After all, people might judge a book by its cover when they first see it, but when they actually read it, the last page would do a lot to determine whether they like it or not. He didn't like books that got worse near the end, or just jerked from one point or setting or group of characters or goal or quest...to another.
The determinist smiled quietly.
"You do not understand," he whispered, "but that is not a problem..."
"Because you do?" cried Calente.
"No. I do not understand what is, either. But I can tell you exactly what what did, does, and will do. And, my dear boy, you are part of what."
A sly, mocking grin split Asren's face, "Did you predict this?" she asked, straightening up from where she had been slumped against the wall. Her hand flicked from her pouch, and a clear glass marble flew across the room, its clean blue light out of place amid the dark, brown and black dirt of the hold and the travelers' clothes. A rumble sounded through the room as the head of the determinist's staff blazed with ethereal fire. The marble turned into a spherical pool of ripples, emanating outwards, until with a great sigh that echoed through the walls and corridors of the transport, and made Calente think of sweet sleep after a day of frustration, the ripples froze and the sphere dropped to the floor, shattering with a soft tinkle into thousands of shards, each so light that they bounced nearly to the ceiling, and got into the folds of everyone's clothes.
"Yes," replied the Determinist, still smiling, "I expected you would use a weaker marble, but there was a fifteen percent chance it would be that one."
Yes, Benjamin couldn't stand books that changed their points or goals midway. That was why he didn't like having writer's block. If he didn't even like his own writing, when he knew without thinking exactly what everything and everyone looked and sounded like, why should anyone else like it?
Perhaps he ought to make another go at homework...
He had been doing well that semester. Day-long study periods, even over, no, especially over Easter break, had helped him stay on top of all the projects and tests. Perhaps the breakdown had started with the random poetry about the knight that he wrote during the last hour's cramming for a Calculus exam. He'd have to type that up later, but right now, he didn't have room in his notebook. He'd even gotten some fun work the weekend before -- clearing trails behind the visitor's center. Somehow, demolishing a forest to make it look nicer made him feel all warm and fuzzy. Maybe it was that he got to cut down trees with saw tooth knives. Now that he thought about it, he was almost sure that was why. Then he had gotten to sit in the lobby, eating icecream and pretending to work for Covenant's radio station, and listen to the Bakertree festival performers. After that had been a somewhat disgruntling walk through pouring rain back to Mac, but that had been all right as well. Still, it wasn't home. And later that afternoon he had had to plow through Linear Algebra homework.
And Tuesday hadn't been so bad. His mother had called at breakfast, to ask what he was wearing. That got the table laughing of course, until he explained that she wanted to know so his family could tell who he was when he walked past the webcam on the way to class (then they laughed harder). Dear Old Chap was there; he and Benjamin had kept each other company through deep conversations about the responsibility of the church to the community, the new 18 waffle record at the Anderson's Sunday night waffles get-together, and how they were going to build their space station, all over the weekend. Now, they formulated a most-excellent plan to surprise Benjamin's family. Arriving beneath the webcam, Dear Old Chap placed himself beneath Benjamin and lifted him to his shoulders. Everyone was most pleased, torque puns were made, pictures taken, and along with Benjamin were lifted several moods. The funny thing was his family couldn't figure out who he was anyway. When he informed them why his position should have made him obvious, they simply replied, "oh, you must have been the really tall one!" In their defense, the morning sun was lighting the background, and obscuring the shadowy foreground. They could not be blamed, and fun was had by all, at least until they had to go to class.
Now the semester was almost over. He was sure he would have plenty to do that summer, but it wouldn't be as busy as school. There would be variety to his work, as well, and time at home with his family and his dear friends. Good sleep, time to write! Benjamin sighed wistfully.
"Jonathan? Are you all right?" Martus leaned forward, wishing for the thousandth time that he didn't have the flat black of the suit's mask between him and everyone he cared about. It made it hard to sneeze, too.
Jonathan did not move. Instead, he stared harder and harder off over the plain. They were only a few feet from the edge of the cliff, the mesa spread out before them, clusters of trees and animals, insects buzzing, some happy and some eerie calls echoing up from the jungle. There were a few lights from nearby ranch houses, and the stars above were thick and bright. Martus shivered a little, not used to the drastic change in temperature. His suit-skin shivered with him. Jonathan was not shivering. His pulse was steady, his internal temperature still fearfully low, his core glowing slightly through Martus' infrared eyes.
Martus glanced back over his shoulder towards the city. She loomed up, Angelus Brasília indeed, lighting the darkness like a pillar of fire, ships slipping up and down through her roof like sparks dancing in a chimney.
"They'll be closing the doors soon, and then we'll have to get through the little airlocks. It will be crowded."
He counted to twenty, stamping his feet a little, sensing the grass remotely, and enjoying the feeling even as his patience waned. Poor Jonathan.
"Jonathan, can we go back?"
"Forgive me," replied the other.
Five minutes later Martus was sitting, cross-legged on the same plot of ground he had been standing on before. Jonathan still had not moved. His apology had apparently not indicated repentance from his goal. What was he doing, trying to melt into the landscape? It was his old home, so Martus decide to forgive his obstinance. He accessed his internal computer and sent more heat through to his hands and feet. He almost wanted to activate his suit completely, to feel the warmth of it wash over him. But then he would fall asleep and nothing short of a nuke could move him -- literally! He laughed at himself.
Then he noticed that Jonathan's vitals were changing. His heart rate began to fluctuate, but increased over time, and his temperature changed. Mark tried to recall his emotion diagrams, but found he only remembered fear and resolution -- they were the only two he needed to be able to see in combat. Davel wasn't there, so he couldn't use his memory download -- cheater that he was, it came in handy sometimes.
Then Jonathan moved for the first time. His back stiffened, and then jerked, again and again. Martus leapt to his feet, endless briefings about watching out for attacks and seizures storming their way into his head.
"Jonathan, what is it?"
His friend did not respond. Instead he sobbed harder, and Martus, embarrassed, took his hands off of his friend's armored shoulders and stepped back.
As he waited for Jonathan to stop crying, he truly sympathized with him for the first time. He had speculated before, with Davel and M'haile, how terrible it must be to be lost for so many years, but never before had he been able to put himself in Jonathan's own armor prison, and consider, no, feel, for just a moment the loneliness, emptiness, and strangeness that must come with three decades of absolutely nothing but oneself.
Benjamin smiled. That had made him a little happier.
He would get back to work now, and perhaps tomorrow he wouldn't be so distracted, and he could work hard, plowing through the oh-so-healthy but oh-so-dreary plate of vegetables before him so that the beans, meat, and desert of a weekend would taste all the sweeter.
And wasn't it that way with life? Wouldn't years of struggle, writer's block, and whatever else God was pleased to give him make the eternal main dish of heaven, the Bread of Life, his dear and awesome God, all the more sweet?

A Night in the Computer Lab: An Adventure of Benjamin Dobbs

Dear Reader,
It has come to my attention that interesting things happen to me. These events are so interesting, in fact, that, with only a small amount of exaggeration and re-arrangement, they can be turned into stories, better yet, adventures. Within them you find me...but not playing myself, no, that is left to Benjamin Dobbs. You will find me as the author.
And now that I have finished it I must warn you it is long and bland.

The day had gone by quickly, thank goodness. It hadn't been a bad day at all. In fact, if it had not gone by so quickly Benjamin should not, probably would not have minded. But there were several reasons that he had been peaceless for a good portion of the day. Waking up at seven in the morning after going to bed past twelve-thirty had not helped. He did not blame himself too much for his lack of sleep, though. He had stayed up to catch up on history reading so he could do well on the quiz this morning. He had just finished the three chapters -- some seventy or so pages of text -- but had not yet taken the online quizzes which most of the in-class quiz material was drawn from. So he bumbled about, not even awake enough to fall into things, and climbed back into bed, setting his watch for seven-thirty "just in case" he fell asleep while praying. There had not been a morning that week that he had not, except for the previous Sunday, when he had not taken a time to pray in the morning at all. He would stay alert anywhere from five to thirty seconds, and then he would be resting a still head on his hands, eyes closed. Another five to thirty seconds, and he would sit back up again, forcing his eyes back open, and try to remember what he had been praying about.

But this morning Benjamin did not have this problem for very long. He fell fast asleep again, waking up one minute till his alarm was due to sound.

He had been fairly alert taking the online quizzes, and in history he got an eighty. It was better than he had been doing, but he wished he had known the meager bit more needed to get him a hundred and actually help his eighty-three. After history he went straight to Mills, the science building, and entered the computer lab. Here he checked his email, Facebook, and blogs, for the second time that day. The first had been in the few moments the computer took to warm up before he took the quizzes. There was nothing important new, so he turned his attention to his assassin. His previous pursuer, an upperclassman femme-fatale, had been killed by watergun the day before. He had been happy about not having to play mouse to her cat any more -- she had at least four confirmed kills, and two sisters to help her track down targets. Her replacement was a freshman who Benjamin thought he vaguely recognized from her Great Scots photo. After working on his Physics lab writeup, due that day, he checked his three computerized social networks and headed upstairs to physics. He entered at one end of the building, having climbed the two floors on the outside stairwell from the computer labs on the bottom floor. Just before the hall reached the center of the building and turned stood two students. One was in his Physics class, and belonged there at nine-fifty-five, because she was in front of the lab that served as classroom, and class started at ten. The other did not belong there, because she was talking to the other girl as if they were friends, was not in Physics, and looked suspiciously like his new assassin. Not yet realizing the moment of the occasion, Benjamin decided to play it cool, and leaned against the wall, not approaching. The suspected killer, short and blonde with glasses that had not been present in the Great Scots photo, hugged the other and moved his way. Playing it cool dictated he walk nonchalantly back outside and leg it down the stairs and back to the computer lab to safety.

But Benjamin was a man of habit, and so he did not consider leaving his heavy bookbag, jacket, and certainly not the zip-open murse containing his sidearm behind him to give him more speed. Nor did he rush past Dr. Petcher on the stairs without calling hello. At this point, the adrenaline had kicked in, and Benjamin, instead of heading down another flight, the quickest way to the lab, decided he needed to use up as much time as possible -- if he could get into the classroom after ten-o-clock, he was safe. No assassinations could occur in class after the official starting time. So, with one glance over his shoulder to satisfy himself that his pursuer was only halfway down the stairs, he jogged along the front of the building towards the main entrance in the center. Two rather large obstacles blocked his path. Both were students, and it took an "excuse me" and a bit of suggestive shoving to get them out of the way. The moments lost without thought to his pursuer were his worst and final mistake. He heard hard footsteps behind him, began to accelerate on past the main entrance towards Carter, still carrying his heavy load, and was shot down in a hail of di-hydrogen monoxide before he hit his full speed. As he came to a halt he calmly considered and rejected the possibility that the shots had hit his bookbag and not his body -- it took a direct hit for a kill. But he had felt water on his neck and shoulders, so he turned (dropping his bags now that it was no use) and, jovially extending his hand, introduced himself to his assassin, calling her by name.

They began to pull out their contracts. Killing people was so complicated. "We need a pen," noted Benjamin. "Here," he jogged over to his abandoned pack. "I have only pencils. Will they do?"
"Oh, sure. How did you know I had you?" she asked as they both pulled out their contracts.
"Oh," said Benjamin, and paused, partly to catch his breath, partly to try to think of something effective to say, "we have our ways," he finished, and signed in a surprisingly shaky hand, glad she was saying something to a passing friend rather than watching.

Then it was back to Physics to confess to his friend, hallmate, and the un-proclaimed heart of the Sutherland Alliance, that he had failed, died, endangered the next man in the chain, and was generally reprobate and a sad sight to see. Benjamin's friend was merciful, so Benjamin turned to the friend of his assassin and frowned. After a few poor attempts at teasing her for helping what turned out to be her teammate in soccer with a kill, he turned to the front and class began. He could hardly pay attention, and realized the experience of being assassinated, while it had felt unimportant at the time, had filled him with nervous energy. He thought of at least four ways he could have dramatically escaped, disarmed, and/or killed his pursuer.

After that he skipped chapel to study a little and go to lunch early. He had skipped two chapel's already that week. Normally there were only three in all, but this week there had been extra, because the college was having a conference on marriage and sex. Benjamin felt that today's, a Q and A separated along gender lines, would probably be the least beneficial and most likely to get a bit seedy. So, he checked his email, Facebook, and blogs on his roommate's computer, paced the room, reloaded his backpack with new books, and headed to the Mills computer lab again, where he worked on his physics writeup for about ten minutes before going to lunch. There he read some physics and watched previewers on tour as he waited for the Great Hall to open.

Driven to prayer by happening upon two people in conflict, he began his rather large meal. Within a few minutes the Great Hall was filled with girls. Apparently their chapel had let out earlier than the boy's. Benjamin joked with the girls who sat at his table that the previewers must be amazed that there really were a lot more girls than guys at Covenant. Eventually the boys did arrive, the wise directed the conversation away from the discussion in chapel, and Benjamin returned to his room to study.

After traveling through a misty period of room and hall events, including escorting a hallmate to class with drawn sidearm, he returned to the Mills computer lab to work on his Physics writeup. A friend from Physics was there. "You aren't in a good mood," he commented after Benjamin picked up a calculator when it slipped from its pertch on his desk. Benjamin helped him a little, worked on his own writeup a lot, and then left to go find something else to do. Another friend, an education major and frequenter of 508 greeted him in the hallway. "Are you having a bad day?" he asked. Benjamin supposed he might be.

Thankfully, he was back in the lab within a minute, driven by guilt, to look up the ESVbible-online and read a few chapters. He was quite distraught about his spiritual state, lacking fervor, and prayed fervently but not very long about it. Then he went next door to the computer science commons, across from his Calculus classroom, and fell asleep. He slept for about fifteen minutes, and then went into Calculus. The Flying Dutchman, as they called the good Doctor of Mathematics, was retiring at the end of the semester, and Benjamin, for one, liked him. He was quite a comedian when he wished to be. During class he made one bald comment, one joke about his old age, and told several stories about the Dutch, one of which involved singing an old Dutch song. The teaching portion of the class was not nearly so entertaining, but Benjamin paid moderately good attention, took lots of notes as usual, and then headed upstairs for science seminar in the physics commons. He got a coke from the fridge, a little bag of chewy fruit snacks with 100% daily value of vitamin C, smiled at all the upperclassmen and few freshmen in the room, and took his place on the floor with his back leaning against a table just as the week's speaker, one of the two Physics professors, prepared to begin.

It was agreed that the Physics department had been quite in touch to discuss dating the same week as the marriage seminar, and an hour of half-lifes, neutron bombardment, and six-day vs. six- "day " creation debate later, Benjamin went to finish his lab writeup. Unfortunately, there were still some problems with the graphs, so he emailed his partner and good friend, and went to work out before dinner. After a good shower, two email checks and a phone call to try to contact his partner, he went and ate, mostly just listening to the interesting discussion of Agatha Christy novels, which he enjoyed profusely. By the end of the meal, however, he had turned the conversation to Alfred Hitchcock, a subject he was more familiar with. It was chilly outside, so he soon returned to the room. There he checked his email, and, having no word, went upstairs to visit his lab partner. After some conversation, looking at pictures, and listening to music, they discussed the problem with the graphs, and Benjamin went back to finish his writeup. He copied some music from his roommate's computer to his thumb drive, put his headphones in their case, packed the books his would need for a night of studying, and headed out, taking the back way behind Founders, and ascending the steep hill to Mills. He used the auxiliary computer lab, beside the first, this time, because it was completely empty, and began to set up his things.

It soon became apparent that he had not brought his headphones, and it was a shame to have an evening of studying without headphones, so he ran hard back to Mac, got them off the dresser where he had left them, and ran back again, completely out of breath by the time he was done.

He emailed one of his dinner-fellows pictures of what she had done to the gun Benjamin's roommate had shot her with (she had crushed it with one hand, quite to pieces) and more pictures recounting how Benjamin's other roommate had glued it back together, black paint, white Sutherland S and all. It even fired, though it leaked like crazy.

Once he prepared the music -- a combination of Enya, the Village soundtrack, and music from the old computer game Crusader -- he set to work on the lab. The problem, as usual, was disorganized recording of data on his part. It took about two hours to figure it out and fix it. For breaks, he looked up cool pictures of spaceships, checked his email a dozen times, and completed his weekly PE writeup:

I was under minor stress this week. Dearth of sleep was the main one...
...My sleep schedule was difficult to maintain this week...

The best part was putting mild humor and inside jokes into the text.

Nutrition was probably my best area this week. I ate less food in the Great Hall than usual, as I was avoiding it because of assassins. I ate multiple meals, most of them lunches, in my room, and Friday night I ate Chinese off the mountain.

His other roommate's mother had been in town and they had invited him to dinner with them. He still had a good meal's worth leftover in the hall refridgerator -- or at least it had better still be there.

...I only ran for ten minutes Friday, outdoors across campus, including heavy inclines and stairs. (There wasn't any reason to let that sprint go to waste, and, counting running up the hill from the gym, back down it to return the pink towel he had accidentally walked out with, and back up the hill again the Mac, he had run ten minutes).

Finally, at about eleven, Benjamin finished the writeup, none the worse for wear, and commanded it to print. There was a dearth of printing, so he went to the printer and eyed it imperiously. It was complaining about an unexpected paper size, so he hit the large green button titled "go" and waited. After thinking for a while, it decided to go into a rest cycle, so he hit "go" again, and it went.

First it printed out an essay on physical education. Then it printed out a psychology outline. It continued with the entire schedule of Fall 2007 classes offered at Covenant. A paper on Bartok was next, followed by the definitions of words like Borazine and Thiacyanines. Finally, the crisp graphics of a Physics department lab writeup emerged facedown. But alas, it was a friend's. The next was Benjamin's however, and he snatched it up eagerly.

CENTRIPETAL FORCE

read the title.

Dr. Petcher
Box 625

That was going to be a problem. Benjamin was no Dr. Petcher (though his mailbox number was 625). It seemed he had forgotten to replace his Physics professor's humorous placeholder with his own name. It took only a moment to correct the error, but a check of the pages of the new printoff showed that, despite working all afternoon to fix it, he had still left two glaring errors on his graph. Congratulating himself on acquiring so much scratch paper, he printed off a third version, and took it upstairs to the Physics commons where it was to be turned in. The commons was locked for the weekend, of course, but that was all right because the date printed automatically on the paper -- he could prove he had completed it on time.

Returning to the lab, Benjamin crossed the third floor bridge, which looked down on the stairs and the first floor, and out of great panes of glass through the front and back of the building, off both sides of the mountain. To the front the blunt, broad, brick face of the chapel, shot through the center with a streak of stained glass, blocked most of the view of Chattanooga. To the back trees gave way to trees, to the quiet valley and lights, range upon range of mountains, and the dimming horizon where the sun had just gone down. Quite pleased with himself, Benjamin returned to the lab, deciding he ought to write about his exploits.

And so he did.

Timothy and the Grenobles, Part II

Dear Readers,

It is continued, but not yet finished. I do not apologize for putting it down, for tonight has become tomorrow, and I must sleep.

"Well, which way is it?" asked Lisa, for she was an educated young lady, and knew well-enough that the first part of getting somewhere is going in the right direction.
"Which ever way you go, so long as, at the end of it, you are home," they replied.
Lisa raised her eyebrows, the same way she always wanted to when she had to pretend there were numbers that were less than none.
"If I go that way, I will go home," she said, pointing over her shoulder into the woods, "but it will not be your home."
"How can it be yours and not ours?" they asked.
"Take off!" commanded Timothy, pointing at the boot of the Grenoble that stood beside him.
"We cannot," they replied. "We cannot take off our boots until we are home, and," they said, their voices dropping to the taut gust of a winter's wind through the trees, "we cannot go home until you do."
"Let's go home, Timothy," said Lisa, sadly, for she felt very sorry for the Grenobles, though she could not understand why they should have such difficulty.
"Take off!" He shouted, and, standing, he whacked at the boot. The Grenoble watched him silently.
"They say they can when we get home. It's almost dinnertime anyway. Let's go home."
"Take off at home?"
"Yes!"
"Come home!" he called to the Grenobles, and, as if he were sailing into a gale, he plunged into the woods.
A burst of wind followed him, as Lisa clambered up the bank. As she too plunged through the woods the wind twisted and rippled her dress, and she loved the cool breeze in the warm, damp air. Timothy stopped to watch a line of ants climb a highway set deep in a crack in the bark of a venerable pine and looked back to make sure his companions were following. Lisa checked as well, and saw, to her surprise, that the Grenobles were skipping, sprinting, twirling through the woods. One moment, they were walking soberly straight ahead. A burst of wind caught them; and with their arms held arched behind them like those of a ballerina, they too burst forward. The wind changed direction, dipping to the left, and the Grenobles swayed and dipped as well. The wind swirled, spinning Lisa's hair around her forehead, and the Grenobles twirled with it, limbs acting out the parts of eddies and currents. Timothy let out a cry of joy for he knew not what.
For when he looked at the Grenobles, he saw the wind.
Both Grenobles stopped, and Timothy began again his homeward romp. So still they stood, their limbs rustling for a moment longer than they moved, and so still was the wind, that Lisa turned to look over her shoulder at them.
"Have you remembered the way home?"
"We have found him," they replied in whispers. Then, all at once, they leapt forward, flying through the air, and, though she could barely see for the torrent of wind that stung her eyes, hurled leaves every direction at once, and threw her into a run towards home, she thought that their legs still stretched below them all the way to the ground, and they were running, but perhaps it was only the forest floor caught up in the wake of the wind beneath them.
She knew then that they were not mimicking the wind with their dance. The woods all about were still, until they moved. There was no rush in the distance. The wind mimicked them, or perhaps, stranger still, Lisa thought they could be making it themselves.
On she ran, and the sober thoughts in her mind and on her face melted when she heard Timothy squealing with delight as the wind caught him. She laughed as well, and her laugh was small and weak compared to the laughter of the Grenobles, for it was all the roar of the great gusts, the rustle of a thousand leaves, the singing of many great chords, none of which could be completely separated from another, and so could not so much be said to blend into as to be the same song.
So the Grenobles sang and so they danced their way through the woods.
Until, not nearly long enough and some time later, the two children ran laughing and breathless into a small glade, the last few bursts of a wind-storm sighing about them. They did not remember such a place -- where the trees grew thicker around, but thinner in number, and the new grass saluted the sky despite the leaves that laughed and lounged about their upright blades, and where the wind dipped down to mingle and chatter with a brook. The Grenobles arrived not long after the wind, and skipped their hands across its surface like stones before plunging their faces into it. They followed the brook, socializing with the water, until a drop in its path sent them somersaulting head over heels down into a pool. They fell with grace and beauty, spinning and twisting like a wind that has lost whatever course it was following, until they fell, limp-limbed, their bark streaked with rivulets of water, and were still at last.
Timothy had laughed a great deal more than Lisa when the Grenobles fell over the brook, for she was concerned they would be bruised by the fall, while Timothy had no doubt that anything so funny and exciting could hurt anyone.
"I've never been here before," said Lisa, concern shading her eyes. She cast her gaze back and forth, with each little gasp of air, and her lip quivered, for she did not like being lost at all.
Timothy stuck a finger in the water cautiously, roared at the cold, and ran up to a big, mossy old tree and caught it in an embrace, his arms not circling round a tenth of it.
"Aaaah!" he shouted, pushing with his feet, and Lisa, bound to pout if she was to be lost, scolded rather than laughed.
"You can't move that!" she said. For it looked very much as if Timothy were trying to pick the great tree up by the roots.
"Mmmmm!" He bit it fiercely.
There was a great splashing sound, and a burst of wind flew by. The Grenobles had leapt from their rest with a great flourish, and stood, now perfectly dry, before them, as a mist of water that they had flung off fell on Lisa and Timothy. Timothy turned at the sound and the gentlest of drumming on his back by the water, and leaned his face on the side of the tree to stare at them, whishing air in and out of his reddened cheeks, his eyes soft and tired.
"We are here," said one Grenoble.
Will you be home?" asked the other.
All was still.
"Home! Take off!" shouted Timothy, his eyes coming awake again, and Lisa jumped, startled. She did not know how, but she knew that whatever was happening was very important the Grenobles, more important than what had happened before.
"Is this your home?" she asked, looking around.
"We are here." They both said.
"Where is here?"
"Will you be home?"
"I most certainly would if you hadn't made us lost!" she cried.
"Then be home...look," and they walked, stiff and straight, no more than a rustle accompanying them, to the edge of the brook. There, was a pool. Though the water on either side leapt and danced, the center was still. Even more curious, Lisa saw, was that the water ran both ways away, and neither into the pool, as if it were the source of the whole rushing brook. Yet it lay as still as if it were ice, and through it the children could see, as if through clean yet gently swaying glass, a great well. It was the open trunk of a great tree, which reached almost to the surface, so that any ripple would expose the uppermost fingers of wood to the air. But nothing disturbed the water, and the well might as well have been a picture, but for the spring in its bottom. Playing with the water, rolling the current, rippling the inner walls of the trunk spun out a jet of water, Yet, as you, dear reader, I hope understand by now, the surface of the water was not disturbed. This truth struck the children just as often and odd as it has struck you.
"Staiws!" Timothy saw them, curving down around the inside of the trunk, carved wooden stairs, half-logs, so that only their tops were flat. Down and down they went until the blue of the water became too deep to distinguish the brown of the wood.
"What's down there?" cried Timothy, looking up perplexedly at the Grenobles.
"The spring."
"No, but, beneath it?" asked Lisa, looking up at them just as Timothy looked back down, sober-faced, to examine this "spring".
"We cannot go there, so it is no use saying," they replied.
Lisa stood up straight, crossed her arms, and pouted. "What is the matter?" she asked in her most fearsome voice -- a quiet, piercing one that began every word too quiet to hear and thrilled through it so that it resounded with crushing urgency at the end. Timothy almost fell into the pool at the sound of it, for it bode badly for him when she was angry. He took a few steps away, casting about for a hiding place, or hiding person. (A hiding person is just as good, if not better, than a hiding place, for, even if you are found with them, big sisters cannot take you away from a hiding person, so you can forget your big sister and play with their buttons while they hold you).
"Nothing," said the Grenobles.
"But there is something the matter! It is past our dinner! We need to go home. Come on, Timothy!"
Timothy wailed and ran behind his great tree.
"We need to go home," said the Grenobles.
"Then go! You're wind...like wind...go!"
"We need to go down the water," said one.
"We need you to stop the spring," said the other.
Once more Lisa knew they were in deadly earnest.
"Stop it?" Lisa pitied them. She could not leave them. Besides, Timothy, she could tell, did not want to be caught and brought home; he would be very difficult. So, "How?" she asked.
"Put finger in it!" laughed Timothy, and he bolted for the water. There was little he enjoyed so much as sticking his finger into the water-spout, feeling the water run faster to escape it, and chasing it about with his hand, trying to catch it and stop it. He never could, and that is not such a bad thing, for a game that is bliss to play should never be won, or it becomes tiresome.
"Timothy!"
Timothy shied away and sat down on the bank, a frown on his face. He did not like big sisters.
Lisa raised her eyebrows, trying to look important, and, walking a few feet downstream (she could not have walked any other way!) she took up a large, round-edged stone. Huffing with the weight, she brought it back and stood on the edge of the pool with it. She looked at the Grenobles on either side of her, and then at Timothy, sitting a little ways off. They all stared back at her, and, rather embarrassed, and glad there were no adults around to think she was silly, she mphed the stone into the water. It sank through the top of the pool, sending but a single ripple out to the edges, and fell ever so slowly, until, but a moment after it disappeared into the spring, the water stopped playing beneath the pool, and the pool, with a ripple like a spider's-web caught in the wind, sank and darted out through cracks in the trunk walls, different currents bumping into each other, like a school of fish, embarrassed to be intruding. The brook did not stop, however, but began around the top edges of the trunk, water pouring from the side of each splinter of wood outward, but not inward. Soon the well was empty, and Lisa could see that it went very far down indeed. Timothy stepped to the edge of the pool, and then onto the first step inside the trunk. He looked back at Lisa, half giggled, half gasped (for she frowned at him), and charged down the steps, moving more back and forth than he did forward and down.

Timothy and the Grenobles, Part I

Preface: (Aren't literary words fun?). Here is a story. It is a bedtime story. I made it up lying on the carpet, my hands beneath my head, staring at the ceiling. I told it to a little boy, and it put him fast to sleep. I am writing it now because I am too sleepy to do any schoolwork, and want to go to bed soon. I will not finish it tonight, but some other night I hope to. I wish everyone a good night.

It was a misty day in late April. The sun had winged its way to the heights, pierced the clouds for a few moments during naptime, and was now falling, out of sight, towards its rest behind the Johnson's garage. For Timothy, three years old, had divined its hiding place, and secretly planned to seek it out some night and wrestle it across the Johnson's driveway out into the street, where it would light the yard so that he would be able to play forever and not go to bed when he was supposed to.
But the sun was not his object this particular day. No, he was enjoying his after-naptime romp through the back woods, his sister Lisa trying her best to keep up with him, but failing, of course. For young boys, Timothy knew, were much more clever and agile than grown-up girls like Lisa. Why, she was all of nine years old already! He felt sorry for her, for soon she would not be able to show her age on her fingers, and what is the fun in being older if you cannot show it to people?
The sun was to the left, its warmth cutting through the mist in rays of water droplets, water-stained, moss-covered bark, and reflecting pools in leaves. The leaves squished and squelched beneath his feet and he squirmed his toes and nose and paused to examine his footing in the deep muck. Satisfied, he turned about, his wide body giving him ample balance, and saw Lisa moving with behemoth strides through the forest behind him. He giggled uproariously and dashed away into the woods, a broad smile on his mouth, leaning his weight forward like a ship's sail caught in the wind, and his grinning face was his own figurehead, his arms the rigging.
But ships do not have feet, and oceans rarely have roots, so the ship that was Timothy was, as a matter of course, surprised to tumble down into the leaves. Undaunted, he put himself back on his feet, examining himself soberly. He was somewhat dirtier than before. A leaf was stuck to the base of his hand by a clump of mud. A black-stained pine twig clung by a drop of dirt to his chin, and his shirt had several new stripes on it.
"Timothy! You'll get all dirty!" cried Lisa, her tone important and full of peril, for she thought to be dirty one of the worst things that anyone could be.
He laughed harder and ran on into the woods. There was nothing in these woods for quite a while -- he had heard his father say once that there was nothing until the next neighborhood, and Timothy expected that was quite a long way.
Now, running in the woods while someone is following you is a tricky game. Run too fast, and you might loose your sister, and never find her again, and that would be a shame. Run too slowly, and she may well catch you, scold you, clean you up, tickle you, or something of that nature. Of course, at some point you must let yourself be caught...but not until you're quite done with your romp. So Timothy had to check over his shoulder often to make sure Lisa was neither lost nor about to swoop him up with her great big strong arms. After going some ways on, he saw that she was falling behind. He turned around, flinging the leaf from his hand by his motion, and laughed loudly so that she would catch up. He saw her moving slowly from tree to tree, but she was going more in a circle than coming towards him, so he shouted "Wis-AAA!" and began bounding back towards her, slightly annoyed that she would abandon the game.
Lisa, meanwhile, tired of pretending to chase her baby brother, slowed to a walk and wistfully glanced at the treetops above her, humming tunes that only she could discern, and glancing into the distance occasionally to make sure she could still see Timothy. Soon he was almost out of sight, and she was day-dreaming about whatever it is big sisters daydream about (many of you, dear readers, may be big sisters yourselves, and I am sure you choose choice daydreams, but I cannot tell what they might be, as I can only speak for big and little brothers, and not for sisters at all). His call made her jump and forget her dream, and, feeling a little guilty for letting him get so far ahead as she now saw he was, she began to run towards him.
As Timothy came near to Lisa, she ducked behind a tree, and, amused to find that she had known better after all, and invented a new game where he chased her, crept up to it giggling, careful to step quietly so she would not hear his approach.
As Lisa caught up with Timothy, he hopped down out of sight into a creek-bed, and, stirred to greater haste at the thought of what he would look like if given a chance to enjoy himself in the muddy stream, Lisa hopped down to the bank. "Timothy!" she cried scoldingly as she spotted him, and then she stopped very abruptly and took several steps back, so that she bumped into the bank and sat down on it, dirtying her dress. "Oh!" She said sadly, examining it, and then turned back to the little creature that she had thought before to be Timothy. "Now, see what you have made me done?" she scolded.
Timothy let out a squeal, halfway between delighted and terrified, for he had grabbed not Lisa, but a branch, and the branch had gently drawn itself back from his chubby hands. The brother and sister saw each other -- the real each other, finally -- from where they stood, not more than a few moments' Timothy-run apart.
Lisa pursed her lips, folded her eyebrows, placed her hands behind her back (over the mud on her dress), and examined the creature that she had mistaken for Timothy. Timothy, meanwhile, sat down and stared at the one that he had mistaken for Lisa.
The two creatures were very similar, yet, especially in their faces, the brother and sister could tell them apart easily, though they would not be able to say why, similar to how two puppies may look just alike to a visitor, but are easy for their master to name. They were brownish-green creatures, and their skin looked like bark, but they did not crackle or crumble as they moved. The bark, indeed, seemed able to bend easily as far as it needed to. Leaves and moss clung to them, and they wore boots lined with thick wet dirt with an upper of leaves and a lower of their own bare feet. They were each about as tall as Lisa, each had two arms and two legs like Timothy, and they had faces. Their faces were strange, and made Timothy look very serious. They had no noses to speak of, and if they had mouths, Lisa could not see them. Timothy looked at the eyes of the one nearest him, and yawned. Its eyes, Lisa mused, were like acorns. Not green acorns, or dirty acorns, or scratched acorns, but the acorns that have fallen unbruised, and been washed clean in a pool of rainwater till they shine a perfect rich reddish burgundy that makes you think of smelling good living wood and knocking on knotholes in trees, and root-beer flavored candy. The eyes did not look deep, but they seemed to shine the color of wet, clean wood deep in the forest where the light cannot come and yet you feel perfectly cozy and at home, until, of course, some naughty leaf drips a drop of water down the back of your neck and makes you gasp. The creatures looked at them with their eyes, eyes that reminded Timothy of the blind dog that lived next door, and also of the eyes of his teddy bear.
"What are you?" asked Lisa politely.
"We are the Grenobles," they answered, and as they spoke Lisa saw their mouths, but once they were silent she could not find them again.
"Ha!" said Timothy. He was amused that little treeish people talked. He was of the age where he had not yet firmly decided anything about the world, and so did not know that he should be very startled to find such creatures.
Lisa, on the other hand, knew quite well that there should be no such thing, but was old enough to know that it is silly to deny what you see with your own two eyes. So, she smiled and said, "We're Hunters," for that was their father's and mother's name. "We live through the woods that way. Where do you live?"
"Will you help us find it?" they asked.
"Do you not know where your own home is?" she asked in pity and astonishment, thinking that they were lost.
"We would know better if you showed it to us," they replied.
"Ha!" said Timothy again.