h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

She was my cousin.

We called her Kweekwee because she could fly like a swallow from the sandstone precipices to the spuce trees below fluttering down through the branches and emerging unhurt at the roots except for a few cuts and bruises.

She would usually take off her clothes before flying so she didn't tear them. Then looking up to me grinning and laughing triumphantly she'd demand that I throw those clothes down to her, and often I would mischievously refuse.

So then she'd run up the trail that followed the sandstone shelf of the cliff until she reached a seep where the water mixed with the red dust. She would paint her body with stripes of red mud, beautiful markings. Then she'd stamp her feet in the dry dust and rub two pine cones together in time with her heartbeat. In this fashion she mocked my treachery and lulled me into an oblivion which was abruptly interrupted when she suddenly appeared behind me clacking two rocks together near my ear.

She was truly magical and beautiful and I loved her as no other before or since, not like a cousin but a sister or even closer.

Frequently she would say we cling to the rock with our fingernails because it sustains us between our flights. And then she would laugh and giggle and smile exuberantly.

And when she flew off to Mexico she returned wounded and disheartened but the rock healed her. Then she flew off to Las Vegas and lived a glamorous life among the rich and powerful and the wannabees. Men celebrated her and gave her presents and audiences acclaimed her, but even so she wouldn't give up the rock.

So when she finally returned to it, wounded and disheartened once again, once again it healed her. And again she flew from it into a life of writing and other creative endeavors. I so wanted to be like her too.

When she finally returned last summer she was wounded again, this time mortally and she knew it. So last fall she made a final flight from the rock to the spruce trees below such as she hadn't flown in years. And when she fluttered down through the branches I had a forboding that she wouldn't emerge unhurt this time. And it seemed that forboding was realized when she didn't respond to my calls.

When I finally reached her after climbing down from the precipice, I found her lying with her face to the sky, bright eyes reflecting the green-blue branches, blood streaming from her ear and a wide, triumphant grin draped in spit and I knew she had landed on the rock that can't be seen but around which the entire world revolves.

As I wept quietly feeling the warmth gradually drain from her body, I thought how often I'd wanted to be her, beautiful, brave, glamorous, clever, full love and life. But it didn't happen.

I'm just Analiese, a teller of children's stories to grownups. But I know about the rock and I'll cling to it too between my flights.

That's all.

Thank you for telling the story Analiese.

Sometimes Coyote's jokes aren't that funny.

Still, the kweekwee must strive to fill her place in the world now that she cannot show it the way.

I weep.

Barton