Soon all were gathered in the cottage sipping on delicious ice cold lemonade. By this time in the evening, the group had broken into two pairs, Prissy and Bendy to the left, and Lily and Jack on the right. Bendy’s head was afire with passionate thoughts. He spoke to Prissy about now staying on the moon.
“What’s the use in going back?” he asked the mergirl. “I have everything I need here. Good friends like you and Jack and Lily. Good food and drink. And — wait for it — good food and drink! Ha ha ha.”
Prissy chuckled with Bendy. She thought him a very funny person. But what does our future hold? she wondered again. “A mergirl and a robot,” she said aloud. “What strange bedfellows,” and then instantly began to blush. “I mean, not bedfellows,” she furthered, attempting to cover her tracks.
“It’s okay, doll. I think we’d be just fine the sack he he.” He nudged her knowingly and she giggled like a school girl. “Ooo you’re such a tease,” she exclaimed amidst the laughter.
Meanwhile Lily and Jack were talking more earnestly about the appearance of the lemon tree.
“You say you can’t remember the tree being there until you came back from the labyrinth, Lily. But then where *did* it come from?”
“It must have something to do with Bart,” she said in her husky female voice, perhaps an octave higher in register than Jack’s. “Are you sure you won’t have any more lemonade sweety?”
“Nah, I’m fine. Should we even be *drinking* this stuff since we don’t know where it came from? Could be poison for all we know.”
Lily shakes her horned head. “My honed intuition tells me that isn’t so. It’s lemonade plain and simple. From a perfectly ordinary lemon tree — except it totally shouldn’t be here.”
“Totally,” agreed Jack. He looked over at the flirting Prissy and Bendy. “So… do you think they’ll make it together.”
“Who, Prissy and Bendy?” Lily asked innocently, glancing over her shoulder at the still giggling couple. “They’re simply made for each other. Can’t you tell?” She wanted to add, “Just like you and me,” but held her tongue.
“We get along so well with them around. Why can’t it be that way all the time?” Jack looked at Lily with sadness in his eyes.
“You’re head is too much in the sky, in the stars, Jack,” Lily replied, looking into her glass of lemonade. “You can’t feel the ground beneath you until you start navigating the moon, prompted by your good friend over there. And you can’t wait to be alone again so you can climb up on that roof and study the hole you can’t see from your pole.” She wanted to add more, but stopped again. If they had been alone, this would most likely have been a gateway into an argument, following the familiar path of Lily claiming Jack only came here for that hole and not herself. She takes another drink of lemonade and tries to hide the tears forming in her eyes.
“Now now, you know that’s not true.” But it was true he couldn’t commit to Lily and say the feelings he felt for her. He *did* love her. By the way she acted all the time, he figured she must love him too. They were destined to get together in all likelihood. But how? He had his pole. She had her pole on the opposite side of the moon. They were both settled in, she in her cottage and he in his work shed.
Jack wondered again if it would be possible to haul that shed to a different side of the moon through the drift, perhaps *through* a different side to a different pole altogether, if you catch my drift. It would take a whole posse of people. But everyone loved Lily and Jack. It wouldn’t be difficult at all to mustard up a team of willing volunteers for an, albeit, most likely impossible task.
Jack then said something to Lily that had been on his mind for a spell (if you get my meaning again). “What happens if we flip the poles?”
Sunklands 