Author's Note: Remember that old saw about forests and trees?
Well, it
would explain a lot about the events of Rogue Planet
*****
"Psst....
Audrey?
Audrey, are they gone yet?"
"Hmmm... I think so."
"Oh, good...."
There is an enormous rustling, as of a typhoon sweeping through a
forest.
"... simulating bark always leaves my skin so dry." The speaker, a
slender, dark haired nymph, scratches furiously.
"Mine, too" rejoins her sister. She makes a show of wiggling her toes.
"Ugh! I thought they'd never leave...."
"Well, they would have left a lot sooner if Cailin hadn't insisted on
teasing them. What is *it* with her anyway?... If you're done with
that
lotion, Linnet, could you pass it over here...."
" I don't know....if she would just cooperate for once and turn into
a tree
like the rest of us, those nasty hunters would just stomp around the
woods for a while, drink a lot of beer, tells dirty jokes..."
"...and piss on trees..."
"Ugh! Don't remind me! I was trying to forget all about that part...."
The nymph sisters made identical fetching moues of distaste.
"Anyway,....if there wasn't anything here for the hunters to hunt, they'd
go away and never come back . And we'd never have to pretend to be
trees again."
"Hmm.. maybe. But it could be worse..."
"Worse? How could it get worse?"
"Well, instead of hunters, we could have gotten scientists. Maybe even
female scientists."
Audrey screws her pretty face into a look of utter horror. "Oh how
dreadful! Don't even joke such a thing! Scientists would never leave.
Not until they had ferreted out all the answers about this place."
With a
negligent hand the nymph indicates everything around her--the
anomalous planet, the inexplicable ecosystem, the volcanic vents capable
of heating an entire world adrift in the icy void of space. "That would
be
very bad...."
"Awful," agrees her sister, "Maybe it's time for alternate plan."
"And you have one?"
Linnet leans in to snatch back the bottle of skin lotion and smiles
conspiratorially. " Of course I do! If we were to park the planet in
orbit
around a sun, tweak the landscape a little bit and call it resort...."
" No one will ever suspect." Audrey claps her hands in glee. " I love
it. I
love it. I even have the perfect name...." A sly grin spreads across
her
face. "Risa."
The End