Lordy.
I was more than tired. Weeding the cliffside garden meant I wore my son's high school navy plaid flannel shirt. Sure there were a few paint marks around the cuff. That happens with a twenty year old shirt. Besides it was the only shirt big enough to go over my work clothes. I didn't want to wear dark pants, but yoga pants were the only things old enough to do garden work. Sitting on the soil with my knee pad. Rubber bands nearly closed off my circulation at the cuffs and ankles.
No-seeums seemed to enjoy my oliver skin. Like the time four summers ago when they zoomed in for the attack. Across my untanned midriff. Like dots in Morse code. Only larger. It took three months of non-stop pain and itching for the welts to heal. That I didn't scratch once was a miracle. That I was still raw for the wedding says a lot about their determination.
A basket weaved sombrero provided much needed shelter for my face in the intense southern sun. Mosquito netting around my face would have helped. None was to be found. It wasn't just the no-seeums. Gnats and mosquitos also made a beeline toward raw flesh. Bzzzz. Ouch! Six dots that grew in the week to come.
The air was thick with moisture. Buggy. Oppressive. With the nut grass removed and composted over the hill, it was time to get ready to meet my new friend.
Carol was some forty-five minutes over the mountains to the northeast. I'd met her at a local UFO Conference. She spoke about numerous encounters that night in town. The conference center was packing. Many stood even outside the doors. Meeting this eclectic woman was like dining with a butterfly. I kept wondering where and when she would land.
Almost immediately, I was whisked to her garden. Mystical, magical, Yoda-like. She told me about the waterless stream on her property.
"I dug the creek myself. Some neighbors came by to help. Look at it. There was no water here and now it is abundant. After seeing the spaceship and setting my intention, the water appeared one morning. A splashing brook."
She ushered me into her more than comfy home and left to prepare our meal. Carol said she
preferred to make dinner. I hadn't eaten all day. Since I hadn't
tasted South African food before, I was excited to eat. After a few minutes, Carol appeared from behind the tiny bar in her tiny closet sized kitchen. A plate with four hind quartered chicken was served. They had been roasting for some time. I learned that evening she didn't use spiced. That was the meal save for dry red wine. An hour later, her friend met us on the balcony. Her friend stayed while she spoke. Carol softly retreated to the chaise.
As the evening faded, I left to go home to eat. Foreshadowing was everywhere. The air was still and silent. Once I left the gravel road and densely covered woods, bright lights appeared in the sky. They seemed to leapfrog. I was glad to know the winding road. The lights followed me until the road became more circuitous and my eyes were firmly planted on the road. The Highlander followed the road down toward the basin.
It was only when I made the u-turn from the Webster Road, that the sky seemed to darken. I couldn't find the lights in the sky as the canopy opened. Coming off the mountain felt like being in the zone. Something beckoned me to look up. There it was hovering over the road as I crested the innocuous hill. At first I thought it was crashing. On a closer look I could see it was tilted to the right, stopped in midair. Motionless. Quiet. This metallic-looking structure was about fifteen to twenty feet tall, about sixty feet wide. It looked very 1950. As I turned my head to the right, I could see two white sedans in the distance. One was further back than the other. The one in the fast lane behind me was closer, some one quarter to a half mile away. The other vehicle at least half a mile away. There speed was constant for a while.
My body tingled gently. I was more aware than I ever imagined. The five narrow dimly lit salmon-rose windows on the spaceship revealed no beings. As my eyes scanned the ship some thirty-five feet over the ground, I heard a jet in the distance somewhere to the right and behind the ship. I never saw the jet.
Fully sentient, I felt the presence of something evil lurking. Perhaps it was just over the ridge at Cowee Mountain.
To be continued...
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