Candy's Tasting Sweeter On The Moon
Wasn’t this supposed to be a 2nd Thursday thing? Well, yeah, but the alliteration of third-Thursday was too strong for me to resist. And totally did not have anything to do with me missing deadlines. Nope!
In a change of pace the characters here are from the W.I.P. (Work In Progress) Buried In The Void my Space Opera … Sci-Fantasy … Space Adventure? … whatever … novel due out later this year. This takes place before the events of that story. Enjoy.
Candy’s Tasting Sweeter On The Moon
“Candy’s tasting sweeter on the moon,” said Laitha as she rolled her tongue around the honey flavored lollipop.
Michelle paused, mouth agape, words drifting off into the distance like unattended children, “what?”
“Candy’s tasting--”
“I heard,” interrupted Michelle eliciting a chuckle from Malcolm, her boyfriend. “What does that mean?”
Laitha fought to keep her lips from curling into a broad smile. Feigning ignorance was the only way this was going to work. “Why does it have to mean anything?”
Michelle reeled as though slapped in the face and marched up to Laitha, an accusatory finger aimed at the taller woman. “No, no. You can’t just say that, something like that and go it doesn’t mean anything.”
Laitha cast a glance over Michelle’s head to Malcom who was mouthing the words –thank you-- under his breath. Even breathless Laitha could hear the words and the relief in Malcolm’s voice. No one wanted to fight with Michelle once she had her mind set on something stupid, least of all Malcolm.
Laitha cleared her throat, pulling Michelle’s attention back to her before the older woman’s reporter instincts let the story go. “Well everyone knows moon candy is the best candy.”
Michelle whipped her head around to look at Malcolm, “did you know that?”
“Of course,” answered Malcolm without missing a beat.
Michelle’s brow crinkled in confusion, then her eyes narrowed in thought. “You’re glassing me.”
Malcolm held up his hands as though to word off an attack, “no, no really.”
Laitha stepped forward while Michelle’s back was turned, she hesitated a moment, heart beginning to beat faster and, casually, draped an arm across Michelle’s shoulders. “You’re over thinking it.”
“I am not,” Michelle pouted. “I am thinking it the exact right amount of thinking it.”
Laitha sighed and gave Michelle a light squeeze pulling the woman closer for a few moments. “It’s an old explorer’s phrase.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” answered Laitha as she half lead half pulled Michelle along. The bustle of the crowd going to and fro as they readied to leave the space station or exited airlocks onto the promenade somehow seemed distant and unimportant now. “It’s about the sweetness of effort.”
Laitha pulled the lollipop from her mouth and held it aloft by way of explanation. “Candy is sweet, but if you have to build a candy store on the moon that candy is sooo much sweeter. Because baked into that candy is the effort of making it. In the early days, when we were only in the Sol system before we learned how to dive even colonizing the moon seemed an impossible task.”
“I can’t imagine,” admitted Michelle. “We’re so far out on the spiral arm that making it to a moon seems common.”
“So those colonists,” continued Laitha. “Explorers and terraformers told themselves the same thing. This is hard but, candy’s tasting sweeter on the moon.”
Laitha could feel the tension bleed out of Michelle’s shoulders. She’d given the woman a question and an answer the thing all reporters craved and along the way Michelle had forgotten she wanted to go searching for space pirates.
—-
I hope you enjoyed that little peak into the lives of three new characters and hope you will join me for their adventures in a few months. Until then, stay warm, stay safe, and keep reading.
~S. Wallace