A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA

thelastgoodname and I are once again reading kid lit--this time Ursula K. LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea series.

( SPOILERS FOR A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA )

I've finished the next book, The Tombs of Atuan, and I have much to say about it, so the series does get better, thank goodness.

Can you even spoil for E.T. anymore?

This is a little E.T. drabble I wrote before we moved when Josh and I were watching E.T. with Emma for the first time. I started to wonder what life might be like for Elliott down the road.

Untitled (because Why Elliott Has No Dates at 35 is not a good one)

Elliott learns to keep his mouth shut. They’re always watching him, those men with shadow faces who don’t exist. Just waiting for Elliott to screw up, to give himself away. I’ll be right here, E.T. had said, and he is. Not literally, but Elliott feels him all the same. Or his absence rather. In the astringent scent of marigolds, in the memory of a connection so bone deep and visceral that nothing he has experienced since has come close to approximating. This is what it means to be completely empty, severed—a divorce the human language has no words for.