Albatross: Gioja Crater

The lunar terrain was desolate. Their liberated Chimera craft was approaching the planned descent corridor  with Riley  at the helm. Automation made his role in the landing one of pure formality, and only marginally redundant. Two million moving parts working cooperatively without fail was no longer an Everest achievement of engineering. Between lines of code and satellite systems, ground-based cell-phones performed at higher standard on a daily basis failing only under the stress of posterior pressures.

            No matter the years of experience, the nearly perfect eyesight, and near-instinctive reactions, there was no human alive that could pilot this landing through to the surface as safely as the Chimera every time. Wielding rockets engineered to gimble at thousandths of a second was perverse, considering all Riley’s years of experiences in fighter jets had only honed his muscle memory to approach the theoretical human response limit; one twentieth of second for the eye to acknowledge information and the brain to reply. One twentieth of a second versus the digital one thousandth of a second. Humans were slow, too slow.  The sluggish and fickle human pilot in a sleek streamlined machine of precion was aptly a Chimera of creation.

 Riley sat in the pilot’s couch, hand perched near the joystick , mostly for the human element. Insurance in assurance, security theatre. While August knew the engineering, he did not trust it, and while he did not know Riley,  he trusted him.  August could not decide whether or not to call this brave or stupid, instead settling painfully on calling it human.

The row of couches slung behind Riley were filled by August, Osric, and Jules. Osric and Jules had the intense look of children looking through an airplane window for the first time. ‘New York looks so small. Are the ants, cars? It’s so vast.’ Now in reverse August could read the expressions, ‘is that Hadley Rille? It looks so deep! Look there, I didn’t realize those were mountains! It’s so vast.’

August caught himself enjoying the view. The moon was gorgeous in the pristine lifelessness, and extreme definition. What looked like course papier mache through a telescope was now rocky hills and mountains sprouting up at them. The same sunlight fell on the moon as on Earth, but there was no atmosphere to catch and spread the light cinematically across the surface. There were no blanketing tones or hues that shifted across the globe of luna. She was stark. The mountains a thousand miles away looked just as crisp and bold as the mountains fifty miles away. In some ways it looked like it could be plucked from the sky and held for close and intimate inspection.

August closed his eyes and imagined his toy globe, heavy in his lap. Then he imagined running his thumbs across a sandpaper landscape of great mare, while the ridges of the Great Bombardment craters rose up massaging his palms. The icy far side was chilling and hurt to touch,  the hot  near side burned. Only along the terminator did it feel tolerable, but desiccated like everywhere, pulling the moisture from his hands leaving a gray stain of lifeless dust.  He opened his eyes, and greeted the landscape outside the cockpit window afresh, invigorated, scared.

The descent required the capsule roll-over and fire retro rockets, providing luna the chance to reach out with her gravity and pluck them from the sky. For the rest of the descent the landscape would be beneath their backs and only the black sky of daylight would greet them through the windows as gravity brought them down quickly. The longer the computer fired the retro-rockets, the tighter the grip of gravity retracting the tin can and the faster they fell.

They plummeted toward the surface, letting the moon embrace them in their next task.  

*** 

Gioja Crater scooped into the sky around them as they descended the last kilometer. The wavefront of an ancient asteroid strike  made a rough and rocky horizon in all directions. The Earth, a blue marble, sat at the top of the mountainous horizon, perched like a beach ball that could roll down and greet them as the slopes rose up to greet it.

Jules enjoyed the view, to her it felt like sitting in center of a droplet, frozen just as it breaks the surface of a pond. They were landing in lesser  unnamed crater within Gioja whose surface had similarly broken, collapsing several billion years ago into an empty and expansive labyrinth of lava tubes likely created by the Mare Frigoris. In fact the mountains were already truncating as they settled into the exposed lava tubes. They were about to go cave diving on the moon! Jules was giddy with delight at what was sure to be a geologist’s dream.

Through the entire trip Jules had been enjoying some classical music she rigged her comm system to pipe into to her headphones on a private channel. An alarming beep would interrupt the music should someone try and communicate with her on one of the common open channels. Beethoven, Mozart, a few Gregorian Chants, they were very comforting and provided her with a warm blanket of symmetry in these strange days. Her favorite part of 2001: A Space Odyssey was the trip to the moon with the PanAm flight attendants. They struck her as  so beautiful, so confident, and in such a wonderful profession getting to travel like that.

For a young Jules there was a lot of allure there, she tried to convince herself that her mother had been a flight attendant, and that was why she was never home; she was too busy seeing the world. For a brief period in middle school even Jules allowed herself to romanticize the lifestyle and qualifications, convincing herself that she wanted to be a stewardess on a glamorous rich airline, but not one of those where people smoked. When she told her father he only frowned, but that was enough to pop a bubble she had over-inflated for several years. His frown hurt somewhere deep, a barbed reminder that she was very young, naïve, and that her mother was not off traveling the world like some great explorer. Jules kept that frown in memory, something made it stick more than most events. Whenever she felt herself straying in life it would rise up like a haunting spectre. Every disappoint in herself conjured the image of her father frowning at her. Even remembering it filled her a guilt and sense of judgement only children experience.

Beeeep. Beep-Beep.

Osric was tapping his wrist pad,  signaling for her to change her comm frequency.

“Did you get lost in there?” through the static hiss of a radio his voice still sounded warm to her.

“A little. There are a lot of tubes and surfaces. Still getting used to the return to gravity.”

“I feel great about it, I left earth 190lbs, and now look at me, only 30lbs!”

Osric was like every astronomer Jules had ever met, eager to talk science and find some way to make it fun. That was his gift, the ability to speak and make the people around him feel alive. Jules felt her cheeks blush when he would speak to her.

“Shall we?”  A long arm was gesturing toward the hatch. The capsule had been depressurized and August and Riley were going to monitor the systems for the egress.

Percolating at the chance to set foot on the moon, just as a geologist or any other kind of human being, made her teeth chatter.  The representative first member of the second generation of explorers, chattering teeth gave way to wobbly knees. Excitement and anxiety pulled togeth in an ugly combination of bodily responses. Then remembering the circumstances of how they came to be here on the surface of the moon, the ‘theft,’ what it meant, the ignoble welcome waiting for them back on Earth, she could only see the face of her father in Osric’s faceplate, frowning at her.

“After you,” she let out weakly.

Then a sweet smile from Osric,  made something else inside her begin to glow.

“Ladies first.”

***

Privateers. It was a polite alternative for Pirate.

The silken fines of the lunar surface had waited the better part  of a century for man to return, and she was considered a Privateer for it. There was little ceremony given, a few mild remarks mostly between here and Osric, and a couple brief photos. The onboard cameras certainly were recording everything, but no one was watching the broadcast.

Time was precious and they were here to harvest, not to make history.

Osric and Jules crawled out and down the landing attachment on the Chimera craft, followed shortly by Riley and August who both took generous time to survey the landing sight before dismounting. For the second set of first steps on the moon Jules certainly did not feel like a historic icon, and made no intention of becoming one. Looking around at the criss-crossing and zigzagging tracks from automated rovers she certainly didn’t feel like she was some explorer of a new world. It was plowed, beaten, and bruised by man-made machines already without her planting any flag.

The craft had landed nicely on top of a broad bulge in the center of the cavern floor, with the shelf of the lunar surface jutting out over the blackness of the cavern. Seventy five meters in every direction,  the cavern opening was perfectly circular with  the bulge raising only  high enough to give them a limited view of the rocky horizon.  Earth scraping to peak over the mountains at them.

Riley and August could be heard brooding over the comms. They had already seen what Jules was looking at now. All the rover tracks came together in one place, nearly a dozen tank-width pairs of treads converging on a point about forty meters off. There were no rovers at the end of the tracks though, instead she saw fresh new crater and what could only be described as scorched earth.

Commander Riley was tense in his voice, anger ready to unleash at the first person to cross him. His words came out terse and brief.

“Did you know, August?”

“No.”

“When then did it happen?”

“Does it matter? It’s done.”

The two men were staring at the blast radius examining scraps of metal and burnt fuel contemplating their next move, deciding whether or not to inform the other.

Osric came online, “It looks like a missile strike. You can tell by the debris. Do you think the lander is in danger?”

August’s comm clicked on,  but Riley spoke over and first, “ They don’t want to kill us only stop us.”

“…they’d warn us first,”  August finished. “I’m guessing they instructed all the rovers to converge together. I’d think there would be easier ways to sabotage them than blowing them up.”

“They probably thought we’d be crafyt enough to fix them,” Osric offered.

“They’d be right,” August corrected.

“Where does that leave us?” came in the chilling tone from Riley.

            Jules saw this as an opportunity to distract and cast a positive tone, “We’re still in great shape!”

            “How?”

            “The other two rovers! They didn’t know we had to invert the geographic commands on one of the rovers in order to navigate it, so wherever they told it to go, it’s gone somewhere else on its own! Probably somewhere in the local caverns. The radio relay has been destroyed by the blast so they can’t possibly know it’s still operational. Of course, that also means we don’t know how to find it without going on foot… We just have to find it, then reprogram it and set up a new relay. We just have to find it.”

            “That’s one rover.”

            “No, that makes two. The other rover is right over here near the cavern wall.”

            “I thought it was broken. A rockfall damaged it.”

            “Well…” Jules felt herself shaking a little, she had spent too much time in the spotligjt speaking. She preferred being in the audience as a safely removed spectator, “well, …it is broken… but we can fix it! We just have to figure out how.”

            “Oh good.” The commander was less than amused at the prospect. “What about the fuel? Do we have any reason to believe they didn’t burn it all?” He emphasized the last word framing the missile-burned crater and rover detritus.

            “How long ago did we know for a fact that they were active? The rovers.”

            “Right after we departed the station, I was reading a log of their manifest.”

            “So, three days?” Jules did some quick arithmetic in her head. “Just a moment, let me think,” she hated math. That was one of the many reasons she liked geology. No math. But now she was growing self-conscious doing arithmetic in her head in front of a bunch of ego-fueled engineers. “I think that means, that at worst there should still be at least something like 20% of the manifest left.”

            She was greeted by a doubting silence.

            “The rovers only move so fast. If they were commanded to pack up and move the entire fuel inventory to this spot right after you read that report, and then got themselves blown up just before we got here, they would only have been able to move 80% of what they’ve mined from the storage in the lava tubes. Chances are good they haven’t been at it all this time.”

            “Then why bother to blow them up?” Osric queried.

            “Because 20% isn’t enough.” the commander considered. “ They want us marooned and obedient, and 20% isn’t enough fuel for us to go anywhere. Even 50% is too little for comfort.”

            “So now what, we just go back?” Jules’ heart was racing, her cheeks flushing read, sweat soaking her backside at the thought of what waited for them back home,  and the idea of everyone on the ground wearing that face of her father, “we go back because the rovers didn’t make enough fuel?”

            It was unexpected when Commander Rilery replied, “I thought you said you  could fix it?” It was even less expected when he smiled at her, like having given a child back her happiness with a small gift.

            “Then I guess we have a plan.” The craggy voice of August sounded a little less afraid as well,

            “Yes,” Riley agreed, “I’ll go check the remaining fuel inventory, afterward I’ll join Dr. (Osric’s last name) in helping him ready the Salyut as our station.  Dr. (Jule’s last name) will start working on the broken rover, And what would you like to pursue, August?”

            “I’ll search for the missing rover.”

***

Albatross: Scene Treatment

 “Look, lithium perchlorate canisters.”

Osric’s voice was subdued, his English accent barely more authoritative than a whisper. What little force  he put behind it was only intended to carry the sound out of the plastic oxygen mask pressed over his nose and mouth, and into the headset microphone along his jaw.  The sound muffled out and died  before reaching its destination. Osric rotated a compact video camera to point at the cat-food-like canister floating adrift, and repeated himself a little louder. He halted to examine it, taking mental note of its condition and location inside the capsule. They were not trained to perform a forensic investigation, neither were they intending to, but like any scientist approaching the suspicion of a discovery he moved with an expected glacial patience and caution. Patience was mostly ulterior though, because  every observation he made and took time to note was also a postponement  of what he already knew waited inside the next module.

“Could that be responsible?” The authoritative and American baritone of Commander Riley came over the radio, violating the silence.

“Not likely,” Osric responded, just audible, “I don’t see any evidence of fire damage in the interior. The canister itself is still intact, it hasn’t been ignited, and the trigger looks untouched.”

Riley was unconvinced, “If the Cosmonauts had opened a supply of canisters, that’s indicative of an O₂ problem. “

“Agreed,” Osric replied, quickly appreciating the Commander’s concern. Any issue which sent a crew to open a reserve oxygen supply could suggest serious implications on the integrity of the craft. Osric quickly glanced at the digital barometer fixed to his forearm, “700 mm and holding.”

The relay did nothing to dissuade the Commander. It was an appropriately funereal tone as the  loose artifact floated off near the immediate bulkhead.

 “We’re coming up on the start of a day cycle in 5 minutes, I want regular readings. If the pressure is still holding after 15mins I’ll let the photographer join you and we’ll cycle the air”

“Understood.”

The sun would fall across  both craft soon. If they had planned correctly this capsule would remain in the shadow of the space station during the bulk of the daylight pass and the shadow of an extended solar array for the remainder. Any holes in that umbrella and sunlight would begin to heat the capsule unevenly. It was likely going to get rather warm, and the delicate Englishman only hoped the heat was drier than those summer days in Houston.

Osric pulled the headphones away from his ears and listened to the silence. The craft was powerless, there were no whirring fans, buzzing electronics, the massive batteries likely drained long ago. He had forgotten how noisy the background of a space station is. The only noises he consciously noted were the motors of solar arrays orienting to the sun, or the little vibrations of ceramic gyros reorienting the station. The latching of a spacecraft door though was always unmistakable, and practically violent to the white noise aboard.

…thump…

The Englishman’s eyes grew large.

….thump… thump-thump…

The noise was definitely onboard. Frantically his head bobbed on an owl-like swivel searching for signs of debris moving in the interior. He was floating in the stark chiaroscuro of a portable work light. Shadows appeared with volume and mass in the freefalling ship, they moved as he moved, responding like animals backing away from a fire. The visual trigger sent his primitive brain into an adrenaline dive.

…thump-thump…

It was on the hull. Probably sunlight forcing parts of the structure to expand. His pituitary gland didn’t care though, the feeling was unmistakable and he could only bite his lip, close his eyes, and wait for the adrenaline surge to pass.  Floating alone in the dark of a dead capsule, Osric fought off the adrenaline by attempting to think of anything accept the environment around him. Not the -250 degrees below zero it was outside, not the +250 degrees above it was going to be anywhere sunlight fell. Not the shifting structure of the craft. Not the unknown history of the ship. Not  the O₂ the cosmonauts scrambled for apparently. Or why. Did their supply dwindle? Did the tank rupture? Did a micrometeorite hole pierce the hull?

…thump-thump…

Perhaps there was a hole, and it had been covered by some small bit of trash waiting for Osric’s clumsy hand to dislodge so he can personally relive the deaths of the men in the next room! Muscles started to tense across his body as his primeval urges hijacked his thoughts into paranoia. The only thing floating with him was an image of what the dead cosmonauts looked like. Their skin taught from desiccation, slack jaws frozen into silent screams, eyes rolled up…  Osric clutched at his mask, his chest was heavy, not enough air. His fingers scrambled to adjust flow rates and squeeze the mask.

“Osric!”

Osric’s blood pressure and heart rate had spiked a warning on the flight deck in front of Riley.

The baritone came over the radio berating, “breath for me. Count it out.”

Osric only froze, he could feel his own heartbeat racing, a bitter taste in his mouth, and sweat beading on his skin.

“Osric!”

“One,” he started between abbreviated clusters of breath, “Two,” another cluster, “Three. Four…” the heartbeat fell slowly. A thump sounded off below his feet, and the blood pressure went up again. ‘Just sunlight,’ he reassured himself, ‘ warming a patch of hull.’  …again, “One. Two. Three. Four.”

“Good. Now tell me where the millimeters are…”

“Still at 700”

“What’s the badge color?”

Osric looked at a piece of paper taped clumsily next to the barometer, “Pink.”

“I’m going to go ahead and let the photographer join you.”

“Okay,” Osric was relieved for company. Taking point alone into the derelict craft was not something he enjoyed being volunteered for.

Of particular concern to Riley before allowing multiple people into the craft was the possibility of off-gassing from the insulation. Earlier American insulations tended to break down well within the temperature range this ship likely experienced. If exposed to prolonged heat from solar radiation, the insulation would let off fumes of deadly toxins and rapid carcinogens. The design of the ship was definitely Russian, or more accurately Soviet, but that was all Riley knew when he captured it four days earlier, no other design information could be found. They filled, vented, and tested the atmosphere four times before deciding it was safe to enter.  The paper on Osric’s arm would rapidly turn black if exposed to certain specific toxins, which were unfortunately only a few on a long list of the strange things used to build spaceships. It would resourcefully also turn black after only an hour of being exposed to oxygen.

The mechanism of the station airlock could be heard cranking away. Light poured in with August’s profile as he floated across the divide, an oxygen mask adorned his face as well, and a second work light brought added color into the room pushing the animalistic shadows  further away.

Click. Click-Click. The mechanical shutter of one of the three cameras ornamenting August oscillated between his eye and the image of Osric’s silhouette in the light. It was an antique among digital cameras, but reliable. August grew up with mechanical film cameras and found the sounds they made comforting. Most of his equipment had evolved passed pentaprisms  and curtain-shutters into digital equivalents which made no sound.  There was a kind of flat-paper camera set to hit the consumer market next quarter which did not even have a lens. It was a clever parlor-trick of fiber optics, the photo-electric effect, and computer interpreted rendering.  Not ‘real’ photography. Not that anyone cared.

Click. Click-Click. August spotted a pantry of canned food. Many cans had ruptured, their contents splattered within the pantry and collected like bird crap on the opposite wall. It was getting warm and spa-like inside.

“Did heat do that?”

“Most likely,” Osric responded,  evenly recovered,

There was no rank smell, or foul odor. The food had rotted only so far as the natural enzymes had broken down on their own, and all the water had likely evaporated away into more absorbent materials aboard or out into arid space.  The cans would have been irradiated, and anything biological inside the capsule would have been sterilized long before the heat burst their seams. No fungus. No salmonella. It was the cleanest pile of rotting garbage August had ever seen.

August reached for another pantry door, and tugged at it. A green globule grapefruit-sized drifted out, dragging and breaking up across the face of the door.

“August! Don’t touch that!” Osric scolded urgently “Quick! Towel it up, but don’t let any of it touch you.”

“Why? What the hell is it?” He asked reaching into a supply bag around his waist..

“Probably ethylene-glycol. You don’t want any of it on your skin or eyes,” August must have only looked confused by this as Osric clarified, “It’s antifreeze.”

Obediently and sheepishly the photographer gathered some towels and puddled up what he could, a few drops scattering off into the shadows. The towels were sealed into Ziploc bags and conservative pieces of duct tape adhered them to the pantry bulkhead. Another towel and some water from his drinking pouch quickly cleaned his hands. Riley would be ready with a scolding when they got back.

 “Ethylene-glycol is pumped through the coolant system as a slurry. A seal must have deteriorated and its leaking out now. Maybe faster after we evacuated the atmosphere repeatedly.” Osric frowned and beat back some more muscle tension, “ Try not to touch anything else. There could be more pooled into corners of the ship.”

Thumping could still be heard in several scattered places along the hull. The panels were yawning in the fresh sunlight. Joints and old structural members were repositioning as the ship heated asymmetrically, the solar side stretching to outgrow the colder parts still in shadow. It was growing less frequent, like distant thunder moving away, but Osric kept thinking back to that hole in the hull. Any panel could flex and whatever was plugging it closed might pop out.

“Let’s get to the cosmonauts and back out before the night cycle,” the Englishman pressed on, eager for more familiar surroundings.  Each orbit held 45 minutes of daylight, 45 minutes of night. There was no desire to linger for another round of thumps, or the freezing temperatures.

Opposite the hatch was the entry portal for the cabin and what would have served as the descent module. It was cluttered with debris. A few electrical lines connected the batteries and command systems for each half of the ship. It all looked make-shift, whether that was by Russian design, or the desperate actions to create a lifeboat was unclear.

On the instrument panel above the portal was their explanation for the lithium perchlorate canisters. The device was a gray cylinder with an opening just the correct shape and size to load a canister into. Once locked in place a heating element would ignite and burn the lithium perchlorate, releasing oxygen. Similar devices were kept on board the space station. This device, presumably the only one aboard, had clearly been dismantled, the protective casing removed and the heating element torn out. The cosmonauts had sabotaged their own backup supply for air. There was no hole in the hull, they had committed suicide.

Osric floated his body toward the portal and squeezed past the detritus in an uncomfortably claustrophobic way. August snapped a few quick pictures of the broad-shouldered and tall astronaut moving into the metallic womb of the ship. Osric had positioned himself on the curved interior opposite the hatch. It was cramped and even from his perch, his face was only a couple of feet away from the mummified remains of a soviet pilot in full flight gear.

Г. Михайлов;  M. Громова; 

The script was stitched into the suits, just under the visor lock.

           "G. Mikhailov and M. Gromova," Osric read aloud reverntly."
          August could only fit his head and shoulders into the capsule without consuming all of what little space was left.

“ What went wrong?” Osric asked the dead Soviets, his passing fears totally subdued. The visor was still locked-down on one of the cosmonauts. A possible animal instinct for protection hoping to breath a few seconds more of air from the suit as an alternative to the hypoxia his crewmember suffered.

“Perhaps they were stranded,” August offered weakly, “If the motor wouldn’t fire, or fired incorrectly and stranded them… it could explain the sabotage.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed, “In orbit, no way home, and a slow death as resources diminish,” Osric paused, “Yeah, I’d want to die to.”

August snapped a few more pictures before retorting in gallows humor, “Just where do you think you are?”

Click-click.

The Iron Age : Scene Sketch

Romans could still remember the first day he had seen a lawman. 

His father was working in the fields, his mother in the house. The sun shined a deep ripe red overhead. Approaching home it was difficult for a stranger’s presence to go unnoticed. Mother always saw them first. Before a newcomer could round the last set of trees and announce their presence, before making the walk up to the house, she was in the kitchen rendering sweet offerings.

For a young Romans this style of contrivance had made little sense. So much work to please some stranger, so much work that Romans knew he would have to clean up after.  Longer than it took him to understand  women, and longer than it took him to realize  he was wrong on that account, he one day realized the importance of his mother’s way of saying ‘hello, and welcome to our home.’ Father could render another human at ease with a sturdy handshake and firm eye contact, but mother used sweets. Travelers never expected hospitality the way mother expected to give it, and so they were always happy to have made their journey. Whether they came from near or far with their burdens, they always left with strong souls prepared for the next passage.  This lawman was no different to mother’s than any other traveler.

She looked out from her celery green eyes set into a field of red speckles.  Wheatgrass hair tied back, framing her honey warm face, she was soon at work, tossing flour against the counter, and painting her pan with sugars and butters. It was a ritual, which was another important part of the process Romans refused to appreciate as a boy.  Instead he would let his eyes rest on the counter top like almonds, fingers curved over the edge lifting his wafer youth up inch by inch until he could tilt his nose back and let the smell fall into him.

Mother could see a mirror of her green eyes staring up from the counter edge, buried under floppy patches of her husband’s rusty hair,  small fingers spider-walking across the counter for the nearest morsel.  Scoldings were also a ritual she had perfected. But not today. The exact moment Romans expected to feel a spoon tap his knuckles, or hear his name in the thunderous way only mother could say it, nothing happened. He was confused and could feel his stomach make an unpleasant tight feeling as he cheeks grew warm, and the heartbeat of a guilty boy quickened. His gaze reaching hungrily across the counter, he watched both mother and her spoon as he retrieved his hand, chocolate prize held firm within.  She only smiled,  leaned over and kissed his hair. Encouraging her rascal could be dangerous, but today there were other concerns occupying her mind. There was a lawman coming to her door and all she wanted to do was slow time.

The power of the kitchen ritual was a power of meditation, a power of prayer. For mother she always came out of the kitchen with the same strength in her soul her cookies gave to passing strangers. Pain vanished and love grew behind those doors, all of which was needed to face a lawman. Lawmen were always a storm crow , bearers of burdens, who left their quarters darker colder and sadder.

The strange man was approaching the front door, when mother brought her labors out of the kitchen, ready to greet him and his news with the same warmth her ritual demanded. Father had come in by now and greeted the man at the door, inviting him in. The lawman was young Romans noticed. Still too young to see the passage of time, all men in the eyes of this young boy were just Men. This man however made Romans’ father look old, tired, weaker. Perhaps Romans had always noticed the streaks of gray hair, and the leathery  skin of his father, but time never felt so scary until the lawman walked in with his bold youth and even dark black hair. To Romans the lawman looked clean for a traveler, a long coat, a wide-brimmed hat, tall and narrow,  where dirt could be seen tossed across  the salt-stained clothes of his much broader father. The man in his black hair and dark clothes, unbridled himself one of many satchels, unbundling stacks of paper and square parcels for father and mother to inspect. Their faces looked cold.

The conversations that followed were too fast for Romans, too many words. Not enough time. They grew louder at points, and calmed at others, like swells of rain in the sky. No one seemed to be eating the cookies, and even Romans had felt guilty to try and reach for one while mother and father looked so serious. They talked for a long time about the house, about Romans, about the sky. The lawman was unchanged and could only unroll new parcels as explanations for every question they laid before him. Long after mother’s cookies were cold  and the sun had set, the traveler packed his papers together, gave a formal bow, offered an apology and left.

Before sunrise they had left their home and were soon sharing the lawman’s road as travelers. Many things stayed behind, father’s tools, mother’s pans still on the counter. The last thing she managed to save was the parcel of cookies which she hid in her son’s bag to keep him happy. She wanted to spoil him just enough to keep him young especially on days like these. The ritual was all she needed to pack up the most important things she had and keep them safe.