Two boys huddled on the battlement wall, wind-blown and on fire with An Idea.
Between them the small catapult waited, fragrant with fresh-tanned leather straps. A pile of stones glittered, rubbed free of ocean, with chapped hands and tunics needing a wash. Continue reading

Smokey sighed and sniffed the shirt front and wide-brimmed hat of the abandoned Park Ranger uniform. It had been dropped near the scenic overview, next to the Michigan-plated Lexus. Betsy likely hadn’t even noticed that her guide had paws, not hands and feet.
Her 1997 Honda rocked and groaned through the narrow city streets.
She wrapped her hands around the hand-thrown mug, coffee scent misting the still-cold morning in an exhausted cloud. The metro newspaper lay splayed before her on the kitchen table, moaning headlines and sub-stories of international terror threats, environmental ruin, domestic violence, a floundering economy, and the collapse of another small local non-profit. 