From: Michela Ecks Subject: "Mother Tell Me a Story" (story) by Michela Ecks Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 09:40:03 -0700 (PDT) "Mother, tell me of the old age." The child murmured sleepily to his mother. His mother sighed. She has been so young when the plague had come and ravaged all the land and taken her parents and nearly the rest of the area from her happy home. She did not relish the memories of the time of her youth. They had been hard trying times and had ultimately led to the meeting of her husband. "Son, I am tired. Beg your poor mother some time to rest because I must work soon. The cows need milking before the sun sets tonight." The boy child pouted in the way that tears a mother's heart in two. No father to teach him the way of life in this new unfettered, uncharted life so she had to teach him. "In the years before I was, I was born the sky was teaming with Metal Life. The old woman down the way can testify to this fact. One day, a great ball, burning bright, erupted from behind the shadowed moon. A plague came down to the country land and stole man, woman and child away in the night with a sickness that robbed the soul." "Momma, will I get sick like those people?" "No, my son. You will not get sick and die like those who died from the black night." Deep inside, the young mother prayed she could keep the promise to her young son. She grasped her hand to his. "Before the sickness came, the area was great. The old woman tells me there were things that came out of the sky and took men with them and returned them." "Momma, how come the old woman knows this story and know one else does?" "She is old son. She is one of the few that lived. She raised me and your father and many others around here. She kept us safe from the sickness. She does not know how she did this, she just did." Her son nodded. "We are alone, my precious son. There are so few of us uprights left. There is not much left at all. There are hulks of ships that sailed the sky. That is where we live now, now that your father has died and gone away. When you grow into manhood my son, I fear you will not even have these hulks for houses and you will be forced to live in holes in the ground." "Momma, why did this happen?" Her son asked as a tear streamed down his young cheek. "Why do live like this, when you tell me stories of a greater age? Why can't we live like that?" His mother sighed, not happy to have to tell the truth to her son, to make him see the futileness of their situation. "We have no choice my son. The men from the skies, who flew ships in out air, have abandoned us. They will not return here. A time, even before the old woman was born, was when we were prosperous. We lived in huge houses, with magical things that you couldn't dream of. There was no use for fire. They had items called heaters, stoves, central air, climate control and space heaters. Then came a war. It was fought by men from here and men unlike those you have ever known. They fought side by side to save the whole of the land. They had names like John, Marcus, Delenn, Ivanova, Franklin, and Lennier. They had ships called Babylon 5, Icarus, Agamemnon, and Asimov. They won the war against the evil shadows of the night. They had the aide of the gods, but in the end the gods deserted them. The shadows of the night reclaimed the land while the warriors were at rest. The demolished everything here, and then they sent the plague. The warriors not killed, left. They fled and vowed to come back when they could." "Momma, who said they would come back?" "The Rangers, my son." "Momma, do you think they will come back?" "I have no idea, Joshua. No idea. I pray everyday that the Rangers will come back and save us from this fate that befell us." == http://homepage.usr.com/m/michelaecks/ Feedback to MichelaEcks@yahoo.com