RDP Wednesday – SUNFLOWER
Artist Unknown
In sharing this moment I could paint a picture with words about a Mother and her child sitting at her desk and you would know that they were on a spaceship because I would describe the smooth metallic walls, the functional furniture ( light green and blue ) . I could show you that the light in the cabin was to bright to manage without sunglasses and that the air, what was there of it smelled faintly of burnt matches and bad eggs and you know that the Mother and her child were not human.
But in this story, that doesn’t really matter that this Mother and her child are not human and that they are on a spaceship because this a story about flowers.
The Mother was working at her light green desk. She moved her hand across the table top and then she tapped it with her short fingers. Her child, who was standing near the door and shifting from one foot to the other asked her a question and she nodded. Her fingers danced.
The system that burst to life on her table was her project. She had been charting it for years and before that her own Mother and Grandmother and done work on this part of the System too. They had all visited it from time to time as well. All of the worlds were rich with promise, and all but one could have supported life. There had been high hopes for this project and where it could lead.
She looked up at her daughter and smiled. She told her she was almost finished. The project was over, she said a little sadly. But then she caught herself and told her daughter that she had been assigned a new project and that it was very promising and one day, if her she qualified it would be her project too.
The daughter went to her Mother’s desk and looked down.
The planets that her Mother had great hopes for were gone, even the one that her Grandmother called the Blue Death was gone and in it’s place was-
she touched the screen and the image flew up from the screen and it pulsed just a little above their heads.
” What is that? “
The star hanging above her desk had died and upon occasion it would wake up and die again. She didn’t know why. Let that be a question for someone else to find an answer for.
At that moment the Mother was not a scientist, she was not a pilot, she was not an explorer of poisonous worlds and rogue planets. She was a Mother who had watched a half dozen worlds with all the hopes for what they could have become disappear into the belly of a raging beast. Today she was a Mother who did not want to talk about death. There would be years and years for her daughter to become familiar with that topic, but today was not the day.
The Mother looked at the Red and gold bubbling mass and she said,
” Its a Sunflower.”
Her daughter looked up at it and she smiled. ” It’s very pretty” she said.
