Wishful Listeners

Ron Koppelberger

Wishful listeners

The tribe lived on the distant moon of galiumnet number eight. There were five or six hundred of them and they were a rare sight to see. They kept to themselves, hunting snakes and wild chickens brought by the Earthers. They lay still by the edge of a great gully, all waiting, prone, listening for the sound of the hover crafts. They held lassos and large hooks designed for their thick braided fingers. They waited and listened as they had been for the last several years. If they were never seen there was a reason, they did not want to be seen. The purity of their mission was simple, to kill and capture as many of the humans as possible, learn the hover crafts and take the mother ships, and so they waited with an amazing patience. Gossamer webs of light lit their eyes as the sound of approacing crafts neared and they said Amen, for theirs would be Eden. One of the females sighed and adjusted the hook on her hand. What of her storm, the vesture of her life on this world, what would she become as a future mother and wife. She closed her eyes and crawled away from the gully and the advent of an endless war. She would be free, with child and free.