The members of Boundless were beyond excited to visit Alex’s realm. They were joking and talking about it loudly as they prepared their dragons for the trip.
Alex watched them from afar. She was excited to go home, but her conversation with Myrddin had left her anxious. The wizard was running all this. To see him at a loss for what to do or think worried her. On top of that, they still weren’t certain when the Dark One’s reinforcements would arrive. Myrddin might be sending Boundless to Earth in the middle of a siege.
In any other situation, Alex would have been ecstatic to go back to Earth, even if it was for a mission. Something felt off about this, though. She didn’t know why she shouldn’t trust Vardis, other than Myrddin’s mistrust.
Jim noticed Alex standing on the upper level, looking down at the rest of the team. “Hey, you going to join us anytime soon?” he called, “We’re going home, dude!”
Alex jumped down and walked over to him. “Yeah, I know,” she said, “I’m super excited.”
Jollies fluttered over to Alex, gushing, “I can’t wait to see what your realm is like! I’ve never seen a lot of humans up close.”
Brath groaned as he dragged the augments he had removed off Furi. “Why would you want to see a bunch of humans? Just imagine Alex and Jim and think about more of them. Though I doubt they’ll be as—you know, what, never mind.”
Gill grabbed Brath’s beard as the gnome walked by. “Were you about to compliment Jim and Alex?” he asked.
Brath slapped Gill’s hand away. “Not even. I was going to say the humans will probably be more annoying than Alex and Jim. Damn. And I’ve told you before, don’t grab my beard. It takes a lot of time to get it looking this good.”
Gill and Jim cracked up as they watched Brath hobble off, huffing and puffing and muttering under his breath. When Jim saw that Alex wasn’t laughing, he came up to her and took her hand. “You okay?”
Alex squeezed Jim’s hand, but she was aware she was doing it more for Jim than herself. “Yeah, everything’s cool. Can’t wait to take you guys to my favorite pizza spot.”
Before Alex could say anything else, the comm interrupted her. “Team Boundless, please report to the hadron collider immediately for teleportation.”
Alex took a deep breath as she tried to smile at the rest of the team. This was it; they were heading back to Earth. This wasn’t how she was expecting her return to Earth to be, but she was with Boundless. It couldn’t possibly be too bad.
The secret weapon capable of destroying the Dark One is buried on the moon. But dragons aren't meant to go to space … Join the Alex and the Boundless in To The Moon and Back!
Author Notes Ramy Vance
April 17, 2020
I couldn’t make this up. I wish I could. I’d be a million, billion, trillionaire if could, but my mind simply couldn’t conceive of such scenarios. And as such, I have been outdone by the greatest storyteller of all: Life.
At the peak of the Coronavirus crisis, my family got … lice.
“How?” you might ask. “Weren’t you self-isolating?” you might ask. “Was someone cheating?” you might ask. Well, I can assure you that no one in the Vance household was sneaking away to have nefarious playdates, revelry and/or non-social distancing activities. We were diligent in our efforts to ‘not see anyone.’
“But how did you get lice?”
The answer, I’m sad to say to say, was that my son must have picked it up on one of his last days of nursery – two weeks ago before we discovered it!
But we didn’t detect it due to a hodgepodge of circumstances that were so coincidental I sometimes feel like a bit player in some farcical production.
Grandpa didn’t get it. His lack of hair made his scalp a veritable nuclear wasteland for our dear lice friends.
I didn’t get it. It seems that my hair is so thick that lice find my scalp the equivalent of a dense, deadly jungle ala ‘Heart of Darkness’ style.
As for the other three – they all got it. But my son seems impervious to discomfort. I once caught him running into a wall over and over again because – and I quote – “I see funny little lights when I hit my head hard enough.”
As for grandma … her excuse was that her scalp always itched. “I’m old. Things are constantly breaking down, aching, itching, creaking. If I complained about it all, I’d never do anything else.”
And as for my wife … she just had surgery and was put on blood pressure medication that has numerous side effect. Number 2 most common side effect: An itchy scalp (I’m not kidding).
Ultimately it was CoVid-19 that was the reason it took us 2 weeks to detect it. Four adults and two kids cooped up in a single household was a pressure cooker of discontent even when we can go outside at will. But with the quarantine in effect, you can imagine we all wanted to be on our best behaviour.
No one complained … much. We knew these were extreme circumstances and we tended to keep our bitching to things we could change. As a result … the three infected just kept it to themselves until one day the itching grew to an unbearable frenzy.
Shaving our heads was a blast. It’s been awhile since I laughed so hard … and as memorable as I’m sure CoVid-19 will be, it will forever be overshadowed by the time we got lice and, as a family, shaved our heads.
Peace fellow humans. No doubt this situation is terrible. But just because it’s terrible, doesn’t mean it has to suck. (And if you’re reading this when Coronavirus is a distant memory … well, I hope my plight of lice put a smile
