Twinkle, Twinkle 💫

Alphabetized all my books.

Can Spiders Fly?

Yes, spiders have at least two methods of flight. One method they have is to use a spider-silk thread that carries them on the wind. The other, I discovered recently, is to use their legs. I was walking on a newly-paved stretch of path, minding my own business, when I noticed coming up along-side me a strange-looking bug. At first, I thought it was a flying insect, but it didn't look like any flying insect I'd ever seen before. It was just hovering along-side me at eye-level, going just slightly faster than I was walking. I inspected it a little closer... it was a spider! It had the look of a top-heavy flight plane where the wings are fully under the body. The 'wings' were actually the spider's spindly little legs tremulously undulating in the wind. It appeared to be attempting to follow the same pathway I was following and eventually I watched it land a few feet in front of me on the pavement. I was able to say 'hi' and get a closer look. It wasn't timid at all but kept trying to climb up on me. Maybe it thought it would get a free ride! Now I have a new respect for spiders with spindly legs. ❤️

More photos of yesterday's storm.

Blueberry Banana Oatmeal Recipe

Water

Raw oats

1 banana

Blueberries

Flax oil

Salt (optional)

Cinnamon (optional)

Mix water and raw oats and add banana, blueberries and flax oil. So simple, yet delicious!

Changeling

The night sky was dark and nothing stirred.  Stars twinkled overhead.  A trailer park spanned the street block and the blue flicker from a television set shone down through an open window to the gravel where nothing grew.  Beer bottles lay strew here and there, along with shards of glass that were the ghosts of beer bottles past.  It was an unusually quiet evening and there were not even the usual domestic quarrels that could normally be heard throughout the park.

A comet flashed briefly overhead, and another, and then another.  No one was looking at the sky, though.  That was okay because it wasn’t long before one of the comets landed squarely on the trailer park.  The residents had no choice but to acknowledge it then.  Thirty people came out from their tiny abodes with tousled hair, slippers and nightgowns to see what had happened.  The only residents who didn’t come out were the two occupants of the trailer that was hit, a girl of thirteen and her mother.

Smoke billowed out from the pink and white trailer.  People began to gather around it and someone knocked on its door.

“Everything all right in there?” the neighbor called from outside the trailer door. 

“Someone should call the fire department!” another neighbor yelled.

 “I’m on the phone with them now,” an elderly gentleman said. 

“What was it?  Was it a bomb!?” one woman in a rose-colored nightgown asked.

 “Probably just a cooking accident,” said a disgruntled, sleepy man with white hair.  This was met with several looks of disbelief and a few shrugs.

Finally the woman and her daughter came out, appearing unharmed, though also looking terrified and exhausted.

“What happened?” several people asked her at once.

“I don’t know,” the woman answered.  “We were sleeping and then it was like a bomb went off; we found this,” she held up a fragment of what appeared to be a metallic substance.

“A meteor?” one man said with an amazed look on his face.

“Wow!” came a chorus of voices but after the fire department came and made sure there was no more danger, they all went back into their myriad trailers and went back to sleep as if nothing had happened at all.

Three weeks later, the mother was dead and Lilly, the daughter who’d kept the shard, was fighting for her life and no one could figure out what was wrong.  Her fever had been 114 at one point, and no one expected her to live after that, but she did.  She should be brain dead, blind, deaf and dumb but she wasn’t.  She went in and out of consciousness but there was no loss of sensation, when she was awake, and she could still remember her own name.  She would classify as a medical miracle if she got better and they told her so in an effort to cheer her up.

It took three years for the fever to fully pass, and two years of intense physical therapy for her to be able to walk and talk with ease.  She wouldn’t ever be normal again, though.  She spent a lot of time reading and trying to catch up on a life that had passed her by.  She dreamed of doing normal things, having a boyfriend, going to college, taking walks in the park.

Very soon, she was doing all of those things.  She found a tutor and within a year had her GED and a full scholarship.  She had a dark haired and mildly-chubby boyfriend, whose name was Ethan, with whom she spent her days.  He made up for his chubbiness with his good cheer and kind ways.  He always opened the door for her and made every day special, which meant a lot to her, since she had fewer days than most.  Together, she and Ethan made every day special.  Although she was doing well, she felt that it was only a matter of time before the shadow cast over her short life would unequivocally reappear, and without warning.  Next time there might be no miracle for her.

She enjoyed their days together immensely and more than he ever knew.  On one of those sunlit days their walk had taken them to the heart of a forest park.  They were pushing back branches from the path when a branch broke off in Lilly’s hand.  Something about it caught her attention.  What was it?  She couldn’t tell.  It was as if she became frozen in rapt fascination.  Her fingers glowed, ever so slightly, and then turned the exact color and texture of the branch.  Then they turned back as easily as they had shifted.  Ethan turned around and looked at her.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, although her heart was pounding.  She was wondering if she was hallucinating, actually.  She dropped the branch and Ethan put his arm around her.  They held hands the rest of the way home.  If he suspected anything, he was quiet about it.

She developed a fascination with colors.  She especially liked solid, bright colors.  She would put her hand in front and watch the skin morph its color to the exact same shade.  It didn’t take any effort.  It was effortless, even natural, to her.  She began to crave new and different things to morph into.  When she meditated, she began glowing and becoming translucent so that she could view her own insides, the structure of bones and ligaments, and the pulse of her heart pumping the liquid light through her veins.

It was hardly the shadow of death that she’d expected to fall over her life again, but she wasn’t sure what Ethan would think.  She felt a gnawing realization that he wouldn’t be able to deal with it at all.  She was certain that he would leave her if he ever found out about her newfound ‘ability’. 

Depression came and went for Lilly.  She was moving to college soon, anyway.  Ethan didn’t know what preoccupied his Lily.  He only felt her becoming more distant and he assumed it was another guy.  When she moved away to college, he felt it in her voice, that she was saying goodbye, goodbye.  He had no choice but to accept it.  He held her in one final embrace before she departed; he tried not to think about a future without her.

“I got you this,” he said, fighting tears.  He held up a golden necklace with a heart-shaped pendant of blue crystal.

“Thank you,” she said.  She took it and put it on.  She was desperately trying to hold back her tears, too.  “Goodbye,” she said.  She turned away and boarded the plane.

It was the last time he ever saw her.  He didn’t have another girlfriend after that.  He stayed chubby and good natured and went to church and gave all his money to the poor.  When he was forty, a bird came to visit him.  It appeared to be a raven.  It would fly near his house every day and even seemed to wave to him.  Eventually, when he began feeding it, he thought he heard it say “hello,” back on more than one occasion.

After some time, the raven left, but an enormous eagle came to eat the breakfast he left for the raven.  Ethan thought the eagle had the most beautiful golden eyes he’d ever seen.  They actually glowed.  He was sure of it.

He made a leather sleeve to wear so that the eagle could perch on his arm.  They spent many years together, like this.  Occasionally, she would repay his kindness by bringing him freshly caught fish to eat for dinner.  One thing puzzled him, though.  Sometimes, she appeared golden brown, and other times reddish brown, and sometimes almost white.  Every day her coloring was different. When he was very old, long past ninety and nearing one hundred, when his curly dark hair had turned white, and his heart had not many beats left in it, the eagle came to him one last time.  He ambled, with some trouble, to the open window where the unearthly raptor perched, waiting for him.  In her beak she carried something shiny, golden and familiar.  The years of solitude and loneliness melted away as he recalled, in perfect detail, the day he’d given it to her; it was the golden necklace with the blue heart-shaped crystal pendant.