New Story: Elves in Space (or Not . . .)
On a Florida beach in 1962, a young woman witnesses history . . . and something more. Drama set in the Not Fade Away series. Thranduil, Galion, Legolas, Original characters. Rated T.
The Elves belong to JRR Tolkien. I merely add my voice to his song.
The Surly Bonds of Earth
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed . . .
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee Jr. High Flight
Trish had sand in her crotch.
She had started out the day tidy enough, but Buzz -- drat him, anyway -- had decided to get all grabby. Not that she usually minded terribly when her boyfriend tried to cop a feel, but that was when the two of them were alone in the front seat of his car, at night, at their favorite 'parking' spot. Letting him grope her at 9:30 AM on a public beach was a different matter entirely. Trish had twisted away and scooted off the edge of the beach towel. That was all it took for the sand to get in.
Ten years ago, she wouldn't have thought twice about running into the surf, squatting down, hooking her thumb into the leg-band of her swimsuit, and giving her fanny a quick shake to loosen things. Problem solved. But at the mature age of seventeen, a girl had to show some dignity.
Ladylike behavior aside, the waters of the Atlantic in February were too cold even for a quick dip. The air was warmer, but Trish still wore a cover-up over her new swimsuit to keep the goose bumps off. Much to Buzz's disappointment, it wasn't one of those really daring bikinis that were so popular these days, but it was a real two piece that bared enough midriff to be chilly and stopped just short of showing her belly-button.
Buzz's tiny transistor radio blared out the final verse of Duke of Earl, top on the chart for the second week in a row, and then went on to play One-eyed One-horned Flying Purple People Eater, no doubt in honor of today's event.
On the opposite corner of the beach blanket, Brad, Buzz's best friend, sat chain-smoking Camels and listening for the news updates which broke into the regular programming from time to time. Brad never missed one of these launches if he could help it. He'd been there with his dad as a twelve-year-old back in 1957 when the Vanguard rocket, the one they called Kaputnik, rose all of four feet off the pad and then blew up. He'd seen some other explosions in the years since. Trish had a sneaking suspicion that Brad was hoping for another blow-up, in spite of the fact that this time it wasn't just a piece of hardware the big Atlas was carrying into space.
The mission had already been postponed twice since January because of weather and once for about forty-five minutes this morning because of last minute repairs to the rocket. Chances were good that something would come up again and they'd all go home without seeing anything except a nice sunny day at the beach.
Trish had gotten bored and was staring at her toes, trying to find a position where the sand wouldn't itch, when she heard Buzz say, "What the aitch-ee-double-hockeysticks. . .?" and then Brad snickered something nasty. A group of the most astounding people had come strolling down the beach. All three men were in full tourist regalia of flowered Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts. They were all tall, all good-looking, and the hair on all of them! Trish had never seen anything like that long, flowing hair down below their shoulder-blades outside of a book about knights and ladies and days of chivalry.
She knew Brad didn't mean the kind of 'fairies' that danced in toadstool rings in the meadow at midnight. She was pretty sure he meant that the newcomers were what her eccentric great-aunt always called 'theatrical types' and her mother called 'confirmed bachelors'. Her dad was more plain-spoken. She didn't think these guys were homosexuals though, because they had women with them, two dark-haired willowy women, who made Trish, with all her youthful slenderness, feel thick in comparison.
She hoped they would pass on by so she wouldn't be outshone, so of course they did not. The dark-haired man was carrying a wicker hamper out of which he produced a huge blanket to spread on the sand next to where Trish, Buzz and Brad had staked their claim. Next came a set of crystal glassware, several bottles of wine, and a silver ice-bucket into which he dumped a bag of cubes. They had obviously come prepared.
Well, it wasn't as if there was a lot of space available, what with half of East Florida turned out to watch the launch two miles to the north. Trish would just have to look dowdy.
The five newcomers settled gracefully onto their blanket and began to share the first bottle of wine. Typical northern tourists -- all bare arms and bare legs. They all came south with the expectation that Florida in the winter was the tropics, with waving palm trees and hot sun, which of course it wasn't. This bunch didn't seem to be feeling the cold, though. Not a goose bump to be seen on all those slender, smooth hairless limbs. They had the typical pale northern skin too, with not a bottle of Coppertone amongst all the wine. Trish thought that if they weren't careful, those perfect limbs would be lobster-red by nightfall.
The first bottle of wine disappeared rapidly. "Pop the cork on the champagne, Glenn," said the man with the brighter gold hair of the two blonds. His Hawaiian shirt had brilliant parrots in red, blue and purple on it. "This is a special occasion."
"This isn't exactly the first orbital flight, Aaron," said the dark-haired man, as he removed the cork from the magnum bottle so expertly that it didn't even foam down the side.
"It's the first time for an American," replied the first, "and the first time I've been here to watch it happen."
"He's got you there, Glenn," said one of the women with a laugh. She had pretty grey eyes so pale that Trish wondered how she could stand it out on the bright beach with no sunglasses.
"It would serve you right if your champagne jinxed it and they scrubbed the mission again," said the third young man, a tow-blond whose shirt had a pattern of green ferns on it. The other young woman gave him a shy look that made Trish hope for her sake that this one, at least, was no confirmed bachelor.
"It'll go ahead as planned, Leif," said the one called Aaron.
Sure enough, at that moment Trish heard Buzz's radio break abruptly in the middle of the strains of The Lion Sleeps Tonight into the deep tones of an announcer. "Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this program to bring you live coverage of the launch of Friendship Seven from Cape Canaveral Florida."
"See? I told you so. I know these things." Aaron raised his full glass in a toast. "To space-flight!" He drained it dry in one gulp.
A voice began to count off the seconds in reverse . . . "Seventeen . . . sixteen . . ."
Unconsciously, all heads turned to the north to stare at a spit of land visible in the distance, and a collective hush fell over the crowd. "He's got some kind of balls riding that stick of dynamite," Buzz whispered.
"Eight . . . seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . ignition. We have ignition. May the good Lord ride all the way." And a second voice added, "Godspeed, John Glenn."
They saw the rocket exhaust -- a growing cloud of flame capped by a tiny white needle -- before they heard anything. It seemed motionless at first, then slowly rose and picked up speed as it flew heavenward. Then came the roar, and the ground began the shake, a grinding vibration that Trish felt from the soles of her feet to the pit of her belly. She took hold of Buzz's hand, thinking that if he wanted to try for third base the next time they were alone she might not tell him no. She might even be willing to get into the back seat.
The entire crowd had risen to its feet and begun to cheer, spellbound as every eye watched the rocket climb higher and higher into the clouds and the stages separate. At the very end, when the tiny craft had become no more than a faint speck against the sky, Trish noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye. The big man in the parrot-shirt, Aaron they had called him, suddenly crumpled as if all the air had been let out of him and pitched face-forward onto the sand.
"Big pansy can't hold his liquor," said Brad with a sneer. Trish thought it was much more likely to be too much sun, and she watched with concern as the man's friends rushed to attend him.
The pretty woman with the pale grey eyes rolled him over onto his back and put his head in her lap. The other young woman put her wrist to his forehead and said, "He's cool. It isn't sunstroke. It isn't like him to faint." The dark-haired man splashed his face with a handful of cold water from the ice-bucket. Aaron's eyes snapped open, and he came up spluttering.
"What happened to you?" the tow-haired young man asked. He sounded anxious.
"It's true," said Aaron, slowly. Trish would have described his expression as 'stunned'.
"What's true?"
"About our fate."
"Now you have me worried," said Glenn. "You're talking nonsense."
"No, you don't understand." Aaron shook his head. "When that brave man rode the rocket into the sky, I let my spirit go along with him. I was with him in that little cockpit, sharing his fear and his exhilaration. Never have I experienced anything like it -- the sense of speed as the clouds slipped past. Then it became quiet and the pressure stopped and the light changed. Oh, it was so beautiful! And I thought, I am beyond the circles of the earth . . . in the void. And then . . ."
He sank back into the lady's lap and took a shuddering breath. "And then it was if something or someone put out a hand and pushed me back saying, 'You may not pass. This place is not for your kind.'
"They lied to us about fading. But this -- this part was true. We cannot leave."
He looked at the pale-haired young man. "You were right, son, when you told me we had to move out into the world of Men in order to survive. It has kept us strong. But I know something else now. This is the only world we will ever have. We need to protect and nurture it."
Trish felt the tug of Buzz's hand on her arm. "There's nothing more to see here. We can listen to the rest of the flight in the car."
Sure enough, now that the launch was over and done, most of the people on the beach were gathering up their things and beginning to leave, the group next to them as well. They walked off toward the highway with Aaron's arm around the girl with the pale eyes, and the dark-haired one carrying the picnic hamper. The tow-haired one in the green shirt that Aaron had called 'son', although the two of them seemed more like brothers in age, flashed her a gentle smile over his shoulder as if to indicate that he knew very well that she had been listening to them and anything she heard was the result of too much sun and too much wine.
Maybe so. Yet the words stayed with Trish as she bent to fold up the beach towel. The only home they would ever have and it must be protected. Her thoughts went to the lone man circling the earth in orbit above them, as he looked down and saw the planet as a fragile vessel for the unique life that it held safe within its atmosphere. Just as fragile as the tiny capsule that carried him through the void of space.
With the people leaving, the beach looked a mess, filled with paper wrappers, cans and bottles. The tide would come in and carry most of it away. Never before in her life had she bothered to think where the receding waters took the debris. It was simply there at night, and then it was gone by morning.
A pile of cigarette butts remained in the sand near the spot where Brad had sat.
Slowly, thoughtfully, Trish bent to scoop them up, letting the sand run out between her fingers. She put the remaining handful of butts into the pocket of her beach cover-up, to drop in the litter receptacle out at the road.
Her gesture was a small thing. But it was a start.
~O~
Author's Note: In Tolkien's legendarium the Elves are bound to Arda until its destruction, while Men may leave the circles of the earth. Readers of Not Fade Away will know who these particular elves are.
The Elves belong to JRR Tolkien. I merely add my voice to his song.
The Surly Bonds of Earth
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed . . .
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee Jr. High Flight
Trish had sand in her crotch.
She had started out the day tidy enough, but Buzz -- drat him, anyway -- had decided to get all grabby. Not that she usually minded terribly when her boyfriend tried to cop a feel, but that was when the two of them were alone in the front seat of his car, at night, at their favorite 'parking' spot. Letting him grope her at 9:30 AM on a public beach was a different matter entirely. Trish had twisted away and scooted off the edge of the beach towel. That was all it took for the sand to get in.
Ten years ago, she wouldn't have thought twice about running into the surf, squatting down, hooking her thumb into the leg-band of her swimsuit, and giving her fanny a quick shake to loosen things. Problem solved. But at the mature age of seventeen, a girl had to show some dignity.
Ladylike behavior aside, the waters of the Atlantic in February were too cold even for a quick dip. The air was warmer, but Trish still wore a cover-up over her new swimsuit to keep the goose bumps off. Much to Buzz's disappointment, it wasn't one of those really daring bikinis that were so popular these days, but it was a real two piece that bared enough midriff to be chilly and stopped just short of showing her belly-button.
Buzz's tiny transistor radio blared out the final verse of Duke of Earl, top on the chart for the second week in a row, and then went on to play One-eyed One-horned Flying Purple People Eater, no doubt in honor of today's event.
On the opposite corner of the beach blanket, Brad, Buzz's best friend, sat chain-smoking Camels and listening for the news updates which broke into the regular programming from time to time. Brad never missed one of these launches if he could help it. He'd been there with his dad as a twelve-year-old back in 1957 when the Vanguard rocket, the one they called Kaputnik, rose all of four feet off the pad and then blew up. He'd seen some other explosions in the years since. Trish had a sneaking suspicion that Brad was hoping for another blow-up, in spite of the fact that this time it wasn't just a piece of hardware the big Atlas was carrying into space.
The mission had already been postponed twice since January because of weather and once for about forty-five minutes this morning because of last minute repairs to the rocket. Chances were good that something would come up again and they'd all go home without seeing anything except a nice sunny day at the beach.
Trish had gotten bored and was staring at her toes, trying to find a position where the sand wouldn't itch, when she heard Buzz say, "What the aitch-ee-double-hockeysticks. . .?" and then Brad snickered something nasty. A group of the most astounding people had come strolling down the beach. All three men were in full tourist regalia of flowered Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts. They were all tall, all good-looking, and the hair on all of them! Trish had never seen anything like that long, flowing hair down below their shoulder-blades outside of a book about knights and ladies and days of chivalry.
She knew Brad didn't mean the kind of 'fairies' that danced in toadstool rings in the meadow at midnight. She was pretty sure he meant that the newcomers were what her eccentric great-aunt always called 'theatrical types' and her mother called 'confirmed bachelors'. Her dad was more plain-spoken. She didn't think these guys were homosexuals though, because they had women with them, two dark-haired willowy women, who made Trish, with all her youthful slenderness, feel thick in comparison.
She hoped they would pass on by so she wouldn't be outshone, so of course they did not. The dark-haired man was carrying a wicker hamper out of which he produced a huge blanket to spread on the sand next to where Trish, Buzz and Brad had staked their claim. Next came a set of crystal glassware, several bottles of wine, and a silver ice-bucket into which he dumped a bag of cubes. They had obviously come prepared.
Well, it wasn't as if there was a lot of space available, what with half of East Florida turned out to watch the launch two miles to the north. Trish would just have to look dowdy.
The five newcomers settled gracefully onto their blanket and began to share the first bottle of wine. Typical northern tourists -- all bare arms and bare legs. They all came south with the expectation that Florida in the winter was the tropics, with waving palm trees and hot sun, which of course it wasn't. This bunch didn't seem to be feeling the cold, though. Not a goose bump to be seen on all those slender, smooth hairless limbs. They had the typical pale northern skin too, with not a bottle of Coppertone amongst all the wine. Trish thought that if they weren't careful, those perfect limbs would be lobster-red by nightfall.
The first bottle of wine disappeared rapidly. "Pop the cork on the champagne, Glenn," said the man with the brighter gold hair of the two blonds. His Hawaiian shirt had brilliant parrots in red, blue and purple on it. "This is a special occasion."
"This isn't exactly the first orbital flight, Aaron," said the dark-haired man, as he removed the cork from the magnum bottle so expertly that it didn't even foam down the side.
"It's the first time for an American," replied the first, "and the first time I've been here to watch it happen."
"He's got you there, Glenn," said one of the women with a laugh. She had pretty grey eyes so pale that Trish wondered how she could stand it out on the bright beach with no sunglasses.
"It would serve you right if your champagne jinxed it and they scrubbed the mission again," said the third young man, a tow-blond whose shirt had a pattern of green ferns on it. The other young woman gave him a shy look that made Trish hope for her sake that this one, at least, was no confirmed bachelor.
"It'll go ahead as planned, Leif," said the one called Aaron.
Sure enough, at that moment Trish heard Buzz's radio break abruptly in the middle of the strains of The Lion Sleeps Tonight into the deep tones of an announcer. "Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this program to bring you live coverage of the launch of Friendship Seven from Cape Canaveral Florida."
"See? I told you so. I know these things." Aaron raised his full glass in a toast. "To space-flight!" He drained it dry in one gulp.
A voice began to count off the seconds in reverse . . . "Seventeen . . . sixteen . . ."
Unconsciously, all heads turned to the north to stare at a spit of land visible in the distance, and a collective hush fell over the crowd. "He's got some kind of balls riding that stick of dynamite," Buzz whispered.
"Eight . . . seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . ignition. We have ignition. May the good Lord ride all the way." And a second voice added, "Godspeed, John Glenn."
They saw the rocket exhaust -- a growing cloud of flame capped by a tiny white needle -- before they heard anything. It seemed motionless at first, then slowly rose and picked up speed as it flew heavenward. Then came the roar, and the ground began the shake, a grinding vibration that Trish felt from the soles of her feet to the pit of her belly. She took hold of Buzz's hand, thinking that if he wanted to try for third base the next time they were alone she might not tell him no. She might even be willing to get into the back seat.
The entire crowd had risen to its feet and begun to cheer, spellbound as every eye watched the rocket climb higher and higher into the clouds and the stages separate. At the very end, when the tiny craft had become no more than a faint speck against the sky, Trish noticed a movement out of the corner of her eye. The big man in the parrot-shirt, Aaron they had called him, suddenly crumpled as if all the air had been let out of him and pitched face-forward onto the sand.
"Big pansy can't hold his liquor," said Brad with a sneer. Trish thought it was much more likely to be too much sun, and she watched with concern as the man's friends rushed to attend him.
The pretty woman with the pale grey eyes rolled him over onto his back and put his head in her lap. The other young woman put her wrist to his forehead and said, "He's cool. It isn't sunstroke. It isn't like him to faint." The dark-haired man splashed his face with a handful of cold water from the ice-bucket. Aaron's eyes snapped open, and he came up spluttering.
"What happened to you?" the tow-haired young man asked. He sounded anxious.
"It's true," said Aaron, slowly. Trish would have described his expression as 'stunned'.
"What's true?"
"About our fate."
"Now you have me worried," said Glenn. "You're talking nonsense."
"No, you don't understand." Aaron shook his head. "When that brave man rode the rocket into the sky, I let my spirit go along with him. I was with him in that little cockpit, sharing his fear and his exhilaration. Never have I experienced anything like it -- the sense of speed as the clouds slipped past. Then it became quiet and the pressure stopped and the light changed. Oh, it was so beautiful! And I thought, I am beyond the circles of the earth . . . in the void. And then . . ."
He sank back into the lady's lap and took a shuddering breath. "And then it was if something or someone put out a hand and pushed me back saying, 'You may not pass. This place is not for your kind.'
"They lied to us about fading. But this -- this part was true. We cannot leave."
He looked at the pale-haired young man. "You were right, son, when you told me we had to move out into the world of Men in order to survive. It has kept us strong. But I know something else now. This is the only world we will ever have. We need to protect and nurture it."
Trish felt the tug of Buzz's hand on her arm. "There's nothing more to see here. We can listen to the rest of the flight in the car."
Sure enough, now that the launch was over and done, most of the people on the beach were gathering up their things and beginning to leave, the group next to them as well. They walked off toward the highway with Aaron's arm around the girl with the pale eyes, and the dark-haired one carrying the picnic hamper. The tow-haired one in the green shirt that Aaron had called 'son', although the two of them seemed more like brothers in age, flashed her a gentle smile over his shoulder as if to indicate that he knew very well that she had been listening to them and anything she heard was the result of too much sun and too much wine.
Maybe so. Yet the words stayed with Trish as she bent to fold up the beach towel. The only home they would ever have and it must be protected. Her thoughts went to the lone man circling the earth in orbit above them, as he looked down and saw the planet as a fragile vessel for the unique life that it held safe within its atmosphere. Just as fragile as the tiny capsule that carried him through the void of space.
With the people leaving, the beach looked a mess, filled with paper wrappers, cans and bottles. The tide would come in and carry most of it away. Never before in her life had she bothered to think where the receding waters took the debris. It was simply there at night, and then it was gone by morning.
A pile of cigarette butts remained in the sand near the spot where Brad had sat.
Slowly, thoughtfully, Trish bent to scoop them up, letting the sand run out between her fingers. She put the remaining handful of butts into the pocket of her beach cover-up, to drop in the litter receptacle out at the road.
Her gesture was a small thing. But it was a start.
~O~
Author's Note: In Tolkien's legendarium the Elves are bound to Arda until its destruction, while Men may leave the circles of the earth. Readers of Not Fade Away will know who these particular elves are.