Some Say . . . Ice

   His grandmother had told him the story of Icarus, so he became a child of the night sky. He liked to lay on the grass of the yard and imagine traveling to the farthest star. Not this one, nor the next, but the one after the one after that and so on. Try as he might, however, he never got much past the next one before his eyes clouded over and his effort became lost in the cold darkness above him.

   One night, resolving to get farther, he found himself seeing beyond everything he had seen before. Although his mind was spinning crazily and his eyes were turning around in his head, he pushed on until he found himself looking back at the known universe while he sped across what learned men refer to as the "event horizon" beyond which, those same learned men say, there is nothing and no return.

   When his grandmother, still in her apron, dish towel and plate in hand, came out to call him to bed, all that remained was a frosty deposit forming an outline where he had lain. There was a drafty chill throughout the yard. "Land sakes!" she exclaimed, shivering, "What is that boy up to now?"

glwarren, 2014