Preternatural

Guts! Virid's tentacles quiver at such crudeness, though s/he loves it. Let it be the Falcon if the narrative requires. It sounds more interesting; anachronism always does. For what is Time?

Thank you, Albert Einstein! Azure chimes in uninvited.

Ignoring their clamor, Karen writes:

#

What prompted this thought, near-blasphemy? Herihor wondered as expertly he severed the slippery intestines from the contiguous organs, placing them in the jar which bore the head of Qebekh-sennuef the Falcon. (Virid gloats; Amber chooses not to notice.) Was it only the memory of that moment which had almost altered the high priest's life forever, the fated morning when the strangely feminine king and his most beautiful wife came out upon the parapet to greet the dawn of Amun-Re as they did every morning - excepting in the recent dark days when the king had struggled with some deadly illness, an illness which a king who has fathered only daughters could hardly afford - and the king, perhaps speaking out of the lingering fevers of that illness as some suggested after the fact, raised his hands, their palms outstretched, to greet the Great God as he rose over the horizon, addressing Him not as Amun-Re, Father of all who dwelt in the valley of the Two Niles, but as Aten?

Aten -? The sound had been repeated by a thousand mouths in the courtyard below, as the faces behind those mouths stared upward in disbelief. Who or what was this Aten?

It would take eighteen floodings of the Nile for the people to learn that Aten was the Whirlwind, Aten was Despair, Aten would steal first their work, then their homes and children, and finally their souls.

Yet Herihor would bury this king, if only because he, Herihor, though dedicated to the temple of Amun-Re from birth, had felt that uplifting of his soul with the uplifting of the pharaoh's hands, as if his soul were held small and safe within those very hands, and knew in his heart that it was Aten, not Amun-Re, whom he greeted with the rising sun.

#

The sun wasn't up yet in Westwood. Lying in bed meditating upon this fact, Max Niemark couldn't remember if he was on Actor Time or Director Time. As the sky lightened, he decided: Must be Director Time, or I wouldn't be so relaxed. Subcategory: In Development.

Meaning I can sleep late, he thought. Otherwise I'd already be on the lot and in the chair listening to Vic rhapsodizing about some new astringent he'd discovered, guaranteed to tighten even my pores, and was I sure I'd shaved this morning because he could already see the shadow in the valleys and had I ever considered dermabrasion? Vic, I'd ask him, how many times do we have to have this conversation? What you see is what you get. I've earned this mug, every crosshatch of it. Jack Palance has a decade and a half on me and suddenly he's a sex symbol. Let it alone!

Beside him, Carole stirred, reaching over to lace her new environmentally-friendly fingernails through his chest hair.

"Ow!" Max's morning voice resonated through the boxsprings. She'd pulled too hard on purpose, and now she was circling his left nipple with the tip of her index finger; he was getting goosebumps. "What, again? You didn't get enough last night?"

"No such thing as enough of you!" Carole murmured, lifting her pillow-creased face up to nibble his earlobe.

Max sighed, closed his eyes, let her claim him. It was one thing to stir the unrequited desires of ten thousand fangirls, another to be a sex object to your own wife.

It hadn't been that way the first time around.

Carole propped herself up on her elbows to kiss his brow in the exact spot where Vic always glued the appliance, Benn's Third Eye. Yes, Max Niemark was Benn, unlikeliest sex object in the galaxy. Or was he?

An early volume of memoirs, written in the dead zone after the darkhorse Sixties space-opera that had vaunted him to unlikely stardom was cancelled following a tumultous three-year run, stated in its very title that he was most decidedly not Benn, the all-wise but ever-vulnerable floss-haired three-eyed solitary alien crewman on a human space ship hurtling through parsecs of low-budget f/x to save the universe week after week. But, oh, that Max! his fans said, He's such a kidder! I Am Not Benn he states with Benn's characteristic solemnity every time he gives an interview, but we know better, don't we?