By: Paul H. (nessus19) - , + 43 more
Date Submitted: 3/8/2007
Last Updated: 3/8/2007
Genre: Literature & Fiction » Short Stories & Anthologies
Words: 156
Rating:

One night, a thousand years ago – measured in that temporal reckoning fathers and sons have – we held hands and walked across an October field brittle with frost and corn sheaves.
“There,” I said, pointing with my uncaptured hand to smoldering mote in the night sky. “That’s Mars…perhaps you’ll go there some day.”
“Will you come with me?” A random comment, mostly, caught up as he was with playfully batting down skeletal stalks. A young David among a host of desiccated Philistines.
“No.”
A stutter step.
“No?”
“No. I’ll stay here so you have someone to miss.”
“I will! And I’ll come back, too.”
“Good…you can tell me what the corn is like there, and the night sky, and holidays.
“Daddy, there’s no corn or holidays on Mars!”
“Oh…do you suppose that means you have to stay here?
“I’d still like to go...”
“Good…I think it’s terribly important to have someone to miss, don’t you?”
No answer. The routing of the Philistines had resumed in earnest.

The Eclectic Pen - NanoFiction #7

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