3ww: West of the Sun or East

Hello, Three Word Wednesday! I swear I'm going to be brief this week.


West of the Sun or East
Immense, shimmering disks hung over the southern desert. Scorpion and rattlesnake made warnings, rabbit ran for his life. Roadrunner paused, head cocked.

"Hey," he called to the inhabitants of the disks. "You're too late. They made themselves extinct. There's nobody here to abduct anymore."

The disks wavered, mumbling to themselves like low thunder in the clouds. Finally, one belched, a roar that shook the cacti and blew the roadrunner back ten yards across crumbling asphalt. When all had gathered their wits again, they saw on a bed of tumbleweeds a small child, tucked like a baby bird into itself. The disks were gone, sunshine pouring onto the land again. The animals stared.

"He's gonna bake," said roadrunner.

"So?" hissed rattlesnake.

The child turned and drifted among the tumbleweeds, opening gray eyes. It had been three hundred years since the desert had been looked upon by human eyes. It sighed and looked back. The child's soft feet touched earth. It trembled.

The effect was not lost on the citizens of the desert. They crept forward, cautious.

Except for scorpion, who marched up to the child. "Well, I suppose I shall have to feed him then."

"No!" yipped coyote, springing forward. "Me! Me!"

And they gathered around the little desert prince, hope whispering in their hearts: Perhaps this time, it would be different.

*

Thank you for reading, and your comments are always much appreciated. Thanks to ThomG, who does a stellar job of running the community.

And now, a little self-promotion, but only because, to me, it's kinda big: my first chapbook, "Letters From the Egg Carton," drops this week. If you'd like to win a copy, see this post.