New Age

So high, she cared only for the music, the excitement and the fun, euphoric feeling inhabiting her otherwise dull, boring life.

They danced to three songs before heading back to the table. Getting late, a few of their friends left for home.

"Where is everyone?" A cocktail napkin in her hand, Tilley waved it in front of her perspiring face, and appeared concerned.

Maggie, who again gave everyone shots of tequila, smiled.

"They took off and left us. They mumbled something boring about husbands, children and responsibility. So that means we get to do their shots."

Tilley didn't see any problem and drank two in a row.

"Yeah, we're leaving, too," Michelle said.

Maggie spent the evening gaping at a cocky, shaved head cowboy and he finally came over.

"Not yet." Maggie crooked her head his way. "I want to go two-step with John Wayne here." Her hand out, he grasped it and they headed to the dance floor.

Annoyed, Michelle glanced at her watch and shook her head. "All right, a couple more songs and then we're leaving." Ensconced in her chair, she sipped water.

A slow song played and Steve led Tilley to the dance floor.

"I shouldn't be doing this," she slurred.

"You aren't allowed to dance with a friend?" Steve smiled at her sweetly. "Think of me as a friend."

Rhythms from the song melted her body into his and she pulled Steve close, her head on his shoulder, her face turned away. His hands on her hips, he moved them down to the round of her bottom and she felt he'd grown as he rubbed against her.

Facing him again, her lips caressed the stubble on his neck, just below his jaw line. His scent, intoxicating, she put a delicate kiss on his beating pulse.

Michelle witnessed the entire tawdry scene and showed signs of disgust. After they finished and sat down, she glared at Tilley.

"If you want a ride, you have to take it now," she said. She let Tilley know she didn't appreciate her behavior. "I'm leaving."

"I'll take you home later if you want," Steve interrupted.

"Really! Great, yeah," Tilley said. "Thanks."

Michelle gave Steve a deadly stare. "She's coming home with me."

"Tilley's a big girl, I think that's her decision to make," he said.

"Tilley's had too much to drink," Michelle said sarcastically and yet firmly. "So, I think as her friend, I should do what's best for her."

"I'll be fine," Tilley said. "Steve's a friend. We know--each other from w-work. Don't worry. Besides, I'll be with Maggie. Go home."

"You've had a lot to drink, Tilley," Michelle said. "I'm worried. I think you should come home with me."

"God, I'm not friggin four-years-old," she said. "I'll make up my own mind, hiccup, when to go home, thank you very much. I'll thank you to keep your nose out of my, hiccup, business. Steve is a friend. He'll drive me and Maggie home."

Michelle, upset, left reluctantly. Tired of arguing with Tilley, she hoped for the best and depended on the fact Tilley knew Steve from work, although she'd never mentioned him before.

As if bounced out of a time machine, allowing her to replay her days as an unattached college girl, Tilley lived in the moment.

They did more shots and Steve pulled Tilley tight as the night wore on. Her inhibitions completely gone, she let him wrap his arms around her and press himself close. Michelle and her other friends gone, taking their judgmental attitudes with them, she felt free to have some fun.

The crowd thinned to a couple dozen people as the lights came on. Ready to go, the room did a spin and Tilley grabbed a table to steady herself. Darting a worried gaze around, she didn't see Maggie anywhere.

"Where did Maggie go?" Tilley asked Steve woozily.

"She skipped town with the urban cowboy." He took her arm. "Come on, I'll take you home."

Hesitant for a moment, she held onto him and they left the club together. His car, parked in the empty lot, appeared expensive and she attempted to open the door. Coming to her aid, he helped and then gently guided her in.

In the driver's seat, he told her he was lonely, never having found the right woman to spend his life with. Feeling sorry for him, she enjoyed the kiss he placed on her lips, felt honored someone so good looking considered her worthy of such adoration, but her mind raced with worry at the mess she found herself in.

He reached over, cupped her face in his strong hands and kissed her again. His lips, soft and inviting, welcomed her kiss in return. The first man, other than her husband, she'd kissed in twenty-five years. Warm in his car, Tilley pushed a button to lower the window, but it didn't move. Sick, hot and claustrophobic, she only wanted out. "I'm so attracted to you," he said.

Unnaturally smooth walls rose fifty metres to where sunlight filtered in through a stained, but once clear, perma-glaz dome. The chamber appeared to be some three hundred metres in circumference with several openings to the outside. To his left, a broad staircase swept up to a gallery. He checked carefully for signs of Priest or Activist. Finding none, Rhyka started across the floor for the gallery. About halfway across, a harsh booming noise froze him in his tracks.

From the corner of his eye, Rhyka spied a gigantic predator rushing out a tunnel mouth, wings spread, arcing downward, thrusting with long tearing claws. His jaw dropped. Its wingspan must be forty metres from wing tip to wing tip. Cruel cat-yellow eyes, the size of a cartwheel, fastened him with a malevolent stare. Filled with unimaginable terror, he stood rooted to the spot. With a sinking stomach, Rhyka realised that his sword would be no more than a thorn to this brute. The beast must be some sort of Priestly watchdog.

The creature’s head was a metre and a half-long, supporting a bright blue crest. Its neck continuously twisted this way and that. Shades of light brown flecked the upper and under wings. From claw to blue topknot, Rhyka put the creature anywhere from fourteen to sixteen metres in height. Its beak was bone yellow as long as a small canoe and mottled brown beneath the jaw. Loose blue flesh hung about the eye pockets. Narrowly avoiding a snapping beak, Rhyka heaved himself to the right. His shoulder went numb when he hit the hard rock floor. Ears ringing, he got up and staggered through an opening to the outside, away from the beast. Weak and confused, Rhyka was vaguely aware that the creature was pursuing him.

Rapid movement caught his eye. It was the beast. He had to move faster. Startled, he started to slip and slide on the cloud-wet rock. Blind panic set in when before him, floating in and out of fog clouds on silent wings were hundreds of the creatures. He fought to maintain his balance and slow his momentum. Still sliding, he looked down the Spire to a flat outcrop directly below. It was a drop of five metres. Under normal circumstances this would prove an obstacle, but with a bung shoulder and fractured ribs, impossible. A fiery pain lanced through his foot like a sword through flesh as he twisted his ankle. His back arched involuntarily, causing him to over balance. He felt himself free falling through space. Time passed in microseconds. Horrified, he looked back to watch the creature pursuing him. It had launched into the soft-wet clouds.

A wake of air buffeted him further into space. As he fell, he turned over just as an incoming beast skidded to halt on the ledge below him. With a bone-jarring thud, he landed directly between the monster’s shoulder blades. The beast let out a squawk as it lumbered up the ramp with a sorely winded Rhyka clinging to its lightly furred back. Hissing loudly, a snakelike neck permitted that enormous beak to snap at him. As he pulled away, blinding pain surged through him. The monk’s world devolved into a nightmare of pain, rock walls, rippling fur-covered muscles and cries of animal rage, accompanied by dizzy body spins as the creature tried to dislodge him. Rhyka fought to maintain control of his senses and, though giddy and disorientated, he sensed the creature pause.

Expecting to be plucked to the ground, sawed in half and munched into pulp, he instead, found himself confined to a rocky alcove twenty metres across and twenty metres high. Coned light and a moaning wind entered via circular holes high up in the wall. The brute that had taken his fall was stationary. A huge head pivoted to observe the tiny human, who must have been no more annoying than tick. A yellow eye blinked twice, a clear membrane followed by a long grey eyelid shuttered down, then up again. A bone-coloured beak speared at him.

Rhyka’s heart hammered. He opened his mouth to scream.

Greythorn had observed many stealthy killers in years gone by, but the apparition, draped completely in mottled grey and black, with a hood that extended from its shoulders to cover its face, sent shivers down his spine, for as the hood billowed slightly, he glimpsed the face within. Dark green, larger than normal, elliptical eyes set wide apart on a pale skinned face above a thin, sharp nose, along with a pointed, cleft chin below a small mouth with thin lips, and no eyebrows, stared at him.

The figures emerging from the bush were uniformly tall, taller than most humans, and lithely built. Even though they surrounded the three companions and were within a stone's throw, they moved with such stealth that Greythorn had still not detected a single footstep. The stark white hair that fell to the warrior's shoulders, within the hood, brought back disturbing rumours of a race long since believed extinct to Greythorn's mind. He could see pointed ears flicking back and forth, examining every sound before the hunter placed a foot cautiously forward. It seemed that the Elwarri were not a legend after all and it looked as if they were going to be killed by them. The figure before Greythorn, lifted one hand off its bowstring to make several intricate finger gestures. In response, the bulk of the band melted back into the forest, and still Greythorn had not heard a twig snap to betray any movement.

He smiled shyly at her and gazed into her hazel eyes. He took her hands for the first time. “It’s going to be okay.”

Marie nodded. She knew it would be and she felt better than she had in any recent memory.

David held her hand, rubbing his fingers over each one of hers. He led her down a long hallway on the far side of the house into what looked to be a child’s bedroom. There were cars and trucks and stuffed toys everywhere, baseballs drawn on the walls and a bright blue comforter with race cars on the tiny twin sized bed.

David didn’t speak. He gently laid her down and undressed her slowly like he’d always done when he was alive.

She reached up to touch him and pull the hair from his face. He looked sexy like she remembered. She unbuttoned his long sleeved plaid shirt and revealed strawberry hair that perfectly lay over well-formed muscles.

He sat up on his knees and finished the job of removing the shirt. He hadn’t changed a bit. He still had the same beautiful body and the tattoo.

The Tattoo. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten the time he went to have her name emblazoned on his arm in a deep tribal band. The name itself could only be revealed to the most discerning eye.

Marie traced her fingers over it while memories of all the times they’d shared came rushing back—her fear when she’d first seen it, wondering what it meant for someone to put such a permanent marker on their body for all to see, for all eternity.

Ten minutes later, the girls were on their way home. Natalie’s stomach churned from the moment she and Tracy left the San Felipe Pueblo all the way down I-25 toward Albuquerque. She was worried enough about Lone Eagle, and the flat tire didn’t help any either. Since they were already over an hour late getting home, they were bound to be in big trouble. Tracy’s mom wasn’t very flexible about bending rules. They called her once earlier in the evening to say they’d be delayed. She hoped Mary wouldn’t be too upset. They did call, after all.

“Man we got lucky.” Tracy sighed.

“Yeah no kidding. The officer came along just in time.”

“Yeah, he did, right? He sure knew how to change a tire.”

This made Natalie’s stomach even more upset. “How will we explain the spare tire on the car and the other in your mom’s trunk?”

“We’ll tell the truth – we got a flat and an officer helped us out. No big deal.”

“Yeah but she’s gonna want all the details, you know?”

Tracy sighed again. “I know.”

Natalie and Tracy were both raised to be honest, and this situation was going to push them to the limit. Natalie felt ill. This was all her fault. And she was also anxious about Lone Eagle. He was so upset when they left him. She wanted to talk to him again, but apparently he wasn’t interested and turned off his phone. She tried to push him and his attitude out of her mind, knowing the mess with the car was a far bigger deal, but the situation with Lone Eagle bugged her. While they drove, Natalie tried his number again a couple of times, but there was no answer.
“Still not answering?”

“Nope.”

“Think his phone is off?”

“Yep.”

“Don’t worry about it. He’s probably asleep or something. Try again tomorrow.”

Natalie knew she was right, but the whole thing bugged her more than she wanted to admit. “What am I gonna do, Trace? He must feel horrible. I don’t want him killing himself or something.”

Tracy laughed. “Native Americans don’t believe in suicide, so I’m sure he’ll be okay. You’ll reach him when you’re supposed to, besides, we just left him. You told him everything.”

She wasn’t comforted. She pressed redial again. “Yes, but did you see the look on his face? I don’t think he believed me. He wouldn’t speak to us. I hope he’s okay, that’s all.”

Tracy kept her hands on the wheel, eyes glued to the road. She weaved in and out of several cars until they broke free. “I wouldn’t know. He’s your friend, not mine. Besides, the one person who might kill someone tonight is my mom when she finds out about the car.”

Natalie was not comforted by the humor. She dialed again. No answer. She needed to stop. She hung up and stared out the window at the lights in the foothills of the Bernalillo Valley. She looked up at the Sandia Mountains and thought about the flights she and Lone Eagle had taken. He taught her how to transform herself into a hummingbird while she slept, and the process helped her heal from the accident. He also showed her the energy from the stones in her rock shop and how they could be used to help her heal. She was grateful for the knowledge but needed to know more. First, though, she wanted to make sure he was okay. She had to get a hold of him, talk to him more about what happened and reiterate things. She dialed again. One more time, then she would stop. This time the phone rang and rang. No voicemail. Figures. Lone Eagle was not like other people she knew. He was timeless, not interested in modern technology. Besides, in the few months she knew him, she discovered words never worked with him. There was one way to reach Lone Eagle and make him understand and not by phone. She would need to reach him in her dreams tonight.

 

I write this book from my heart for you to enjoy. It is my desire to share the love, hope and laughter that my animal friends have given me. My hope for this book is that it touches those who view their pets as family members and not merely a creature. That these stories shed light on the unbelievers and perhaps open their mind to new thoughts. And finally, that those who have lost a beloved family member find comfort in their grief through my stories.

Nothing or nobody has ever touched me, changed me or loved me as my animal companions have done. They've made me laugh and cry. They've humbled and impressed me. They've made my house a home and driven unwanted guests away. They've taught me how to love and how to forgive. They've made me want to pull my hair out when they misbehave like naughty children.

Most of all, they offered light in my darkness and made my world a better place. There is not a more perfect love than that of a pet. If you are lucky enough to have obtained this privilege then consider yourself blessed and give that loving friend a hug every single day. Treasure each fuzzywuzzy hug because you never know when that furry hug will be your last.