The Last Holiday

CHAPTER ONE

Chapter 1:

The cloud was in a good mood today, filling the sky with pump and festivity, marking the sunset with her earthling humans today, as her children and relatives gathered around, in diverse shapes, ranging figures and multicolors, turning the sky into one only seen with your mind's eye in a mythical story told by elders under the moonlight, amidst joyous songs and flickering firelight, with the mind slowly digesting every bit it was fed.

       Many residents came out to watch the sky as she displayed her family and well wishers in their element; splashed in clothes of different shades, one cloud sporting a tiger orange, another an ádiré of a slight pink blush, a fairly gigantic one garbed  in a danshiki of diverse colors, with fuscia, artic blue and a cantaloupe prominently showing.

     As though to drive home the point that nature was indeed at peace, a sweet smelling cool breeze blew gently on the faces of those admiring the sky, caressing them with loving tenderness, as the trees did a gentle jiggle in appreciation.

     The world fell silent as everyone closed their eyes to bask and reel in the moment.

    It felt Divine, as though the Creator was reaching out a helping hand in connection with creation, and most people, including me, closed their eyes, head lifted to the sky in a moment of ecstatic but unexplainable joy.

     In that moment, the world fell behind me, and as I took in a deep breath that smelled mostly of wet but not mushy soil and ripe soursop, with a faint whiff of rotting oranges, I felt my heart expand.

  I felt in control.

I didn't know when I stretched my arms beside me, wishing I could fly, up, up high above to lick off some of those juicy, colored, mouthwatering clustered flocks of gas above.

     I fancied the blue flecked ones to taste like blueberries, though I have no idea what they taste like, the garnet red to be strawberries, the violet ones to be pomegranates and the orchid to be green apples.

   Lost as I was in the moment, I didn't hear the football thud off the legs of a footballer, sail with a whiz through the air, until it struck me at the back of the head, at that tender spot below the occiput and above the nape of the neck.

   My head struck forward suddenly, and I was too off balance to regain my composure, that I fell, quite heavily too, to the ground.

     In an instant, multiple hands were raising me to my feet, steadying me and dusting my clothes to rid off the dust that clung to me tenaciously.

    "Oh shit!", I groaned, my eyes closed from the pain, rubbing the spot.
It was a good hit.

"You guys totally ruined my moment!".

A chorus of "oh! So sorry!", filled my ears, and my eyes shot open.
Not because I didn't expect the apologies, but because these were female voices.

Standing in an almost perfect semicircle around me stood ten buxom  Amazonian females kitted in football jerseys.
Looking at me with cute puppy dog eyes, expecting to hear one word.
I gave them.

"Oh, its okay!", I grinned nervously, bending down to pick their football.
It was an 'azard' size five, fully pumped.