Undead Astronauts

 she visits my dreams again and again… i feel i should be with her… yet time stands in our way… all the while she beckons forth…  will we ever cross paths?…i feel like we must… we must…

Her beautiful face belongs to no one I have seen in life.  A face familiar yet so foreign, a face more beautiful than I could ever imagine.  

She smiles in the dream, filling my heart with a warmth and comfort that evades my waking life.  Did I create her?  Is she real like me?  Does she worry?  Does she dream?  Is she just a beautiful figment and nothing more?  She can’t be.  She can’t.

I need to see her- a glimpse, a photograph, anything.  Just once – I need to know she exists.  She needs to exist.

How will I know when our lives cross?  Will memories of dreams serve me at that most crucial time?  Will I just know, just as countless lovers know when their affairs beckon them forth?  Does she exist?  I must find her, she must exist.

She must – my heart affirms it.  She is out there somewhere, living, breathing, dreaming – my heart says she must be.  She must.  She must.

As for the three heavenly elephants who landed in the ocean… the first fallen one landed in the Indian Ocean and fortunately remembered how to swim back from his days back on Earth.  However, tragedy soon befell him as he was torn apart by a pack of sharks.  The second elephant landed in the Arctic Ocean and, despite also remembering how to swim, eventually froze  to death in the icy waters.  The third fallen one did NOT remember how to swim.  Ironically, she was the only one to survive of all the fallen elephants.

She crashed into the Pacific Ocean near the coast of Australia at a point that was experiencing particularly aggregious weather.  A large fishing vessel was also caught up in the storm, and after the surviving elephant’s entry into the waters it was obliterated by the crashing waves.  The said elephant would find herself entangled by the vessels’ giant fishing net, which in turn was entangled with a large floating piece of the ship’s hull.  The elephant quickly fainted from the tremendousness of the events that had befallen her, and when she finally awoke she found herself washed ashore, more wrinkled than she had ever been, but fully intact, without so much as a bruise.

All of the heavenly elephants were in a tizzy.

It was Wednesday, and a fourth elephant had fallen down to Earth from Elephant Heaven. Unlike the previous elephant falls, this one missed the vast oceans below and crashed in a rural village in Sub-Saharan Africa, killing a family of three. The small village, highly superstitious as most rural communities are, took the elephant crash to be a sign of the End Days and had begun to prepare themselves for the inevitable Armageddon to come. First elephants.  Then maybe giraffes, or alien space-gods next. An elephant falling down to Earth opens the door to a lot of free thinking.

Elephant Heaven wasn’t in good shape either. Global warming had begun to thin the once stable clouds which formed Elephant Heaven’s floor. Things had gotten to the point where an unlucky elephant would step onto an incredibly weak part of a cloud and come crashing down to Earth. Heaven was beginning to lose its transcendental appeal.  Something clearly had to be done.

A petition was sent to God directly, but petitions often took 6-8 weeks to process. Decisive action had to be taken in the meantime to minimize unwanted falls and subsequent second deaths that had befallen four of their own. None of the elephants in heaven knew what a second death would be like.  Furthermore, none of the fallen elephants had returned to Elephant Heaven.  This was a fact that deeply disturbed even the most pious of elephants.