Merry Christmas

With DADT going away at some point next year, I have much to be thankful for.

Who knows? I may see what the requirements are to rejoin and try to get back in. I would enjoy nothing better than to be back teaching at the Air Force Academy. I only got to teach for one year before I was forced to resign.

I wish everyone a joyous new year.

DADT now significantly closer to ending

The Senate voted 65-31 to repeal DADT. Two more Republicans voted to repeal than voted to end the filibuster. This was pretty definitive and far better than I anticipated.

We should thank the U.S. Senate for doing what was right and long overdue.

There are many of those whom I knew years ago who were forced out but who died in all those many intervening years. I choose to believe they were here in spirit and certainly are here in my thoughts.

There are two more major steps: the President needs to sign the bill and then "the president and his top military advisers must certify that lifting the ban won't hurt troops' fighting ability. After that, there's a 60-day waiting period for the military."

This is going to be a very happy holiday season for me. After waiting for 31-years, this was long anticipated. However, that does not diminish my joy at this significant moment in history.

---

Filibuster now prohibited

The Senate voted 63-33 to end the fillibuster on DADT.

The Senate will likely vote soon to repeal DADT. Several Republicans have joined with the Democrats to reach this stage of the process.

At this moment, there is a Quorum Call - Waiting for Senators to speak before the final vote.

---

DADT could end today

MSNBC reports that Senator Reid believes he has the necessary 60 votes to overturn DADT later today.

This is it. The final showdown to end decades (and generations) of discrimination against gay people. We've always been treated as second class as much because of this as any other measure or issue.

My fingers are crossed.

---

DADT 11th Hour

The House has passed a final, stand-alone measure and repealed DADT. However, the Senate must still confirm the new bill.

Three Republican Senators have said they will support the measure. Unfortunately, for the last vote in which the measure was part of the defense bill, a single Democrat Senator, the new one from West Virginia, sided with the other Republicans against repealing DADT.

For DADT to end and gays and lesbians to be able to serve without fear of being ousted, one more vote apparently is needed to reach 60 votes for the measure to overcome John McCain's filibuster threat. Either the new West Virginia Senator needs to vote with his Democrat colleagues or one more Republican Senator needs to be found to join with the Democrats to ensure passage.

This will likely be the very last chance for some time to come. The more conservative Republican house members and senators are not likely to revive this issue while they are in control of the house and are closer to control in the senate.

It was a shame that the previous West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd died on June 28th of this year. Had he lived six months longer, he would likely have easily supported the repeal of DADT and we would not be in this predicament of needing one more vote in the Senate to end this enduring nightmare. Same with the late Edward Kennedy.

To be this close is agonizing for someone like me who has waited over 31 years for this to end.

---

DADT Repeal could occur tonight

I received an email from the Campaign to repeal DADT that Senator Harry Reid may bring a vote to repeal DADT tonight.

I emailed my two Colorado (Democratic) Senators who voted to repeal the last time and asked that they please vote to repeal DADT.

Consider calling or emailing your own senators and as them to vote to repeal. Because of the study published several days ago, even a couple of Republican senators have expressed their view that they will vote for repeal.

This opportunity may not come again for a long, long time.

-Greg Sanchez

---

DADT Study

The Pentagon is about to release the study regarding what the troops feel about allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly. Apparently, the results are highly favorable.

Now, not only do the troops concur with oveturning DADT, but most of the top military brass agree (not the top Marine Corps officer, but that's understandable--they're sometimes a bit Neanderthal), and the American population as a whole also believes that we can serve openly.

So who still stands in the way? John McCain primarily. He's changed his position on this issue so many times in the past few years. First, he said he would accept change if the top Pentagon brass agreed to alter the policy. When that happened, he pinned his bigotry on the troops and this study. Now that the results have been leaked and he doesn't like what he hears, he's saying the results of this study are invalid and he now wants to conduct lengthy hearings--again--to get the results he wants. He wants to keep this from happening. One man; one bigot, trying to stop the future.

The senator is the consumate flip-flopper and always has been. He's been what's wrong with Washington for decades even though he can be found to say that the system in Washington is broken and needs to be fixed. He's been saying this while he's become more and more the reason Washington is perpetually broken. Now he wants to filibuster even when the American people, the top Pentagon brass, and now the troops have spoken otherwise. While the voters were sacking many incumbants this fall, primarily Democrats, the people of Arizona should have sacked John McCain. And the rest of the nation should have sacked several other Republicans who have contributed to the mess the country is currently in yet got away with retaining their political offices this fall.

So, we are on the cusp of an historic moment, if the Senate acts now to right this wrong. If it is not repealed this time, the nation will see that it was primarily the Republicans who are against progress and for bigotry and prejudice, as they have been for decades. Bashing gays and standing firm against our achieving equality and fairness has been their party's mantra in winning just enough votes from the bigots out there, to keep themselves in power.

Their agenda is that of "No". No to equal rights. No to equality and fairness. No to the middle class and the poor. They can only say Yes to the rich and the corporations, who lavish them with millions of dollars every election year so that they themselves may be rewarded, in turn, with more tax cuts they do not need. They say Yes to the bigots out there who blame their failing marriages and cultural blunders on anyone who doesn't fit the norm they have promoted.

We shall see what results now that the troops and the brass and the American people have spoken. We shall see if John McCain and his right-wing minority of cultural zealots will attempt yet again to stop us with all means, legal and illegal. The Republicans said in the fall that they have learned from their mistakes in the recent past. We shall see if that is true or not.

---

Vote

Vote. And don't vote for Tea Party bigots who variously believe we should not be able to adopt, not be able to teach, not be able to serve openly in the military, and who believe being gay is a choice akin to alcoholism.

---

Recruiters told to accept gay applicants

Wow.

Well, who knows how this will play out in the long run. But in the short run, this is quite a surprise, even a shock.

We shall see what develops.

---

DADT lives, unfortunately

Some flaw in this system wiped out my post on this issue. I haven't the heart to rewrite what I finished writing moments ago.

I suspect that the vote yesterday was the high water mark of our being able to serve openly. With the country veering again to the right, no Republican will ever vote to help us achieve equality. We will have to continue to serve, and die, in silence for the rest of my lifetime.

---

America: The Story of Us

I've been watching this fascinating History Channel special the past couple of days. In the second part, Revolution, we are told about Baron Von Steuben. The narrator boldly mentions that Von Steuben had been forced to work elsewhere because he was homosexual. (Wikipedia more timidly mentions that it is not known for certain that he was homosexual or not--though the rumors did exist.)

So he traveled from Europe to America and eventually came to train American soldiers for General George Washington. He showed the developing army how to employ the bayonet and, most importantly, to practice hygiene in the set up of their camps, to cut down on the impact of disease, which often killed more troops than enemy bullets.

It is important, then, to realize that without Von Steuben's help and tenacity and skills, America might have had a much more difficult time obtaining its independence from Britain.

If he was homosexual, then this is yet another example, at the very creation of our nation, that homosexual soldiers have made invaluable contributions to American freedom. He is yet another reason that DADT must be eliminated.

On Sunday, in a related matter, I volunteered for HeyDenver, a Colorado AIDS project confidential testing site, at a BBQ of Element, a gay men's group. Two of the young men I sat with are Air Force enlisted men. Each expressed his optimism that DADT will be overturned and they will no longer have to fear exposure and expulsion.

Let us hope their optimism is well founded.

---

DD 214

A DD 214 is the form that is a service member's "Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty".

I lost my original because a former friend turned pyscho and destroyed many important legal documents of mine in 1999, including all of my various diplomas from junior high school through my Master's Degree, many tax records, my Air Force discharge certificate, and my DD 214. Since I am attempting to refinance my mortgage and get a VA loan to take advantage of current, lower interest rates, I had to go online and apply for a replacement copy, as well as sign a form and mail, or fax, it to the St. Louis records office.

(While the nation is still debating the wisdom of eliminating "Don't ask; Don't tell" and moving to a situation where no one can be discharged from the military in America simply for being gay, I think it would be valuable to review my two discharge forms.)

My replacement copies arrived the other day, and now my loan application can proceed. But the two-page form from 1979 is a fascinating, if brief, look at my Air Force career that ended almost 31 years ago next month.

The "authority and reason" for my discharge was "AFM 39-10, PARA 3-8A, SEC B, CHAP 3, CONVENIENCE OF THE GOVERNMENT (SDN 21P)". Even though I was discharged for being gay, the deal my attorneys made was for an HONORABLE discharge, which I received.

On the DD 214 form itself, there is a nice collection of revelatory information:

I was separated at HQ USAF ACADEMY CO.

My primary specialties were "1825G, Missile Combat Crew Commander, 4 years and 2 months" and "0940, Instructor, English, 1 year and 4 months".

The "Decorations, Medals, Badges, Citations and Campaign Ribbons Awarded or Authorized" to me were "Small Arms Expert Marksmenship Ribbon, National Defense Service Medal, Combat Readiness Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal, Air Force Longevity Service Award".

My Military Education consisted of "SAC Missile CCR ORT 182100 G-1, 10 weeks, APR 74. Missile Launch Officer Course, 4 weeks, FEB 74. Officer Basic Military Training, 12 weeks, DEC 73."

Because I earned a regular commission, I was entitled to a certain amount of severance pay based upon the length of my service. "Severance Pay - $9,088.20".

Of course, since I was out of work beginning with my separation date of OCT 12, 1979, with no other income, that money began disappearing at a rather rapid rate as I was forced to pay bills: mortgage, electricity, phone, car, food.

The final indignity of the DD 214 was typed near the bottom of the form: "NARRATIVE REASON FOR SEPARATION Voluntary discharge - unfitness, unacceptable conduct".

I was forced to sign the upper four-fifths of the form and initial the "SPECIAL ADDITIONAL INFORMATION" at the bottom, which contained the above declaration. I thought that statement contrasted rather crudely with my several awards and accomplishments in the service.

The primary reason for my discharge was that the Air Force had learned from a screwed up cadet (and from the letters I wrote to him which he provided to them) that I was homosexual.

Of course, this same cadet was forced to resign from the Air Force Academy a week before I left because he had lied repeatedly during the investigation, thereby violating the Cadet Honor Code. The entire situation had become so sordid that the Academy did not allow his case to be tried by a cadet honor board. A board of officers was forced to meet and determine that he had violated the Honor Code and would have to leave the Academy.

Perhaps, at long last, this absurd and discriminatory (and certainly unconstitutional) policy will finally be overturned. DADT was an interim policy, a temporary compromise never meant to continue indefinitely. It was certainly better than the policy I served under which almost always automatically required discharge of the service member.

But any policy that forces gay service members to be discharged needs to end. And it needs to end now.

---

Water Damage

The condo above mine has been undergoing renovations for the past eight months.

It has seemed even longer than that. The noise alone and the constant disruptions in a house built in 1896 have been excruciating enough.

A week and a half ago I noticed stains on the ceiling in my bathroom. Two days later yet another stain appeared. I reported these to the new owner who has had all of these alterations made, to let him know that water is leaking down from above.

How does all of this affect the Rainbow Arc of Fire?

About a week ago, while searching in a storage area just below my bathroom (and further below the kitchen in the condo on the top floor of the house where the leak first occurred), I noticed the tell-tale sign of even more water that had doused some cardboard boxes where I had stored items that I had saved over the years.

As I began to explore further, I discovered that several cardboard boxes, and their contents, were almost entirely soaked.

At least two of the boxes contained full manuscripts and revision copies of sections of RAoF manuscripts. They were all damp and effectively ruined.

Another box contained copies of magazines and newspapers where RAoF was mentioned over the years, including a full interview with me in one OUT FRONT COLORADO publication. Many were fully ruined and could not be salvaged. I was able to recover a few issues with that interview that weren't so water logged and lay them in the warm sunlight to dry them out.

I also lost many stacks of booklets containing my journals that I had kept, and written in, by hand, from the very late 60's until the early 80's. Several were severely soaked and totally ruined.

Fortunately, I was able to salvage the typed manuscript of those journals from the 70's that I had typed in 1990. I also saved a box containing the typed manuscript of Sons of Men, my poetry that was originally written in those same journals, along with my thoughts at the time the journals were composed. There was also a box containing a manuscript of letters I had written and typed about two decades ago.

All of my Air Force missile certificates were damaged to one degree or another by water. I lay them in the hot sun to dry them out. Many were from my years as a Combat Crew deputy and commander in Minot, North Dakota, from 1974 through 1978. I had received seven highly qualified ratings during missile crew member evaluations over that time. The box containing my Air Force commendation medal was also stained and dirty. My two ancient stuffed animals, the first of which I received on my first Christmas in 1949, the second which I had gotten in an early birthday, my seventh, I believe, were also wet.

Several boxes of color slides from the late 60's through the early 80's were also slightly or moderately soaked.

This was the second time that items from my past were damaged in that storage area after being safe there for years. About a year or so ago, most of my military-era memorabilia from Marine OCS and the Air Force was soaked from a different leak. I had to throw away much from my past then. The rest I dried out in time and then put them into a more protective plastic storage container. I should have gotten other containers to protect what had been spared that first time.

That first leak was almost exactly 30 years after my forced resignation from the Air Force. So, while I had had no intention in 2009 of recalling that sorrowful time and those disappointing events, fate forced me otherwise to relive those months and years upon that 30th anniversary. I had to pull apart everything that was wet and hope it dried out. What was ruined, I had to pitch.

Not only do such experiences such as water damage force us to realize our own mortality, they also demand that we understand how fragile the existence of our personal effects can be. When we are gone, who is going to care about manuscript copies of even a writer's books? We become like Charles Foster Kane, whose precious sled is consigned to the fires by unknowing workers, asked to destroy what seems unnecessary or uninteresting among the thousands of items he'd collected over the decades of his significant life.

Those of us who are far from significant cannot expect that those personal effects we once treasured will endure after we are gone. I suppose it is easier to simply pitch them out ourselves at times such as these when the elements such as water, or fire, make their way through these precious objects before we can no longer prevent such losses after we are gone.

---

Fight Sequence Rainbow Arc of Fire: Olive Branch

Even with the title, this one was also filled with fight sequences. The following does, of course, contain much spoiler information, so be forewarned.

Chapter Twenty-nine

A moment earlier, Mercuria spots a vessel ahead, low on the horizon in the early morning darkness, silhouetted against the fading star field background. She rips through extensive ruins, gutted buildings, and burned out vehicles that litter this hotly contested region, sprinting to catch up to the unknown ship before it moves off.

She feels her leg muscles almost burning with the increased effort to push herself beyond her limits, to become even fractionally faster, to reach the target ship before it moves off. Mercuria notes that the vessel seems preoccupied with its mission of disarmament and does not seem to notice her sudden arrival as she streaks across the landscape as barely a blur, toward the still unwary ship.

When she is near enough, she times her leap perfectly. Planting both feet and then pushing off with a powerful double-leg kick like a track athlete attempting a very long, long jump, she mentally activates the flight properties of her shield belt at the split second her feet leave solid ground. This added thrust allows her to soar aloft with increased speed, directly at the ship that looks all too familiar to her now, up close.

Pulling her legs up under her as she begins to sail above the vessel, she waves her arms and feet to slow her momentum until she hovers over the white fuselage. She then begins pummeling the top of the hull with rapid thrusts of her stamping feet, as if she were dancing in place, to force the vessel downward.

The uncooperative ship, however, does a complete flip--to topple her off--then kicks into high gear and is gone, leaving the still airborne woman floundering in its wake. Frustrated, she knows that even if she were able to reach the ground as fast as the flight belt can take her, and if she then rapidly pursued from the ground, she would never be able to catch up since it already has too great a lead. While she may be nearly as fast as any Alliance ship within an atmosphere, she is definitely no faster.

With silent acceptance that her impromptu ploy could not have succeeded, and knowing now what kind of ship she was tangling with, she simply allows the versatile belt to drop her straight down to earth like an elevator whose cables have suddenly snapped. When she reaches the ground, she activates the homing device in her belt, to let the others know where to rendezvous with her. She then patiently stands in place and awaits their arrival.

She hasn’t long to remain in place before the cruisers Asgard and Mount Olympus II, as well as the scout ships Condor, with Harvest and Pulse aboard; Griffin, carrying her partner, Liquide; and Valkyrie, with Firefrost and Enchantra, to silently begin hovering around her like pigeons in a park, or vultures over a corpse. Then, almost in unison, all five ships immediately land nearby.

---

Fight Sequence Rainbow Arc of Fire: Shattered Dawn

This was another volume in the series with a number of different, and complex, fight sequences:

Chapter Eight

Before any of them can react, Liquid Lord raises his hands and strong blasts of water emanate from each like the focused spray of a powerful fire hose, knocking them down or aside and soaking them all thoroughly.

As she is being tossed backward, Cleo, who has selected the name Haunt because she can become either invisible or a phantom, immediately switches to this latter state. She feels her backward momentum quickly slow as she watches the powerful water blasts now pass harmlessly through her ethereal form. But in doing so, she realizes that she has thereby taken herself out of the conflict, at least for the moment.

On the other hand, Jane, who chose the name Redwood, knows that she cannot utilize her ability to grow enormously or shrink since she could easily injure someone nearby, or injure herself, by changing size in all of the confusion. She cannot see where the others are since they are all under assault, and the intensity of the deluge continues to stagger and blind her.

Paul quickly recovers and exerts his awesome power over water. He feels the intensity of the moisture but begins to divert the relentless flow around his body by seizing the very molecules and manipulating them, though he knows this requires that he fully focus his thoughts and attention. Therefore, he is unable to go on the attack for the time being.

Joan tries to channel her thoughts, to divert the water by causing the spray coming at them to become lighter than air; but since Liquid Lord continues to bombard them all, she sees that she is merely holding her own, for now.

William recognizes that he cannot utilize his lighting or electrical powers since he and his teammates are all being doused with water and are also touching the ground. Any number of them might become electrocuted or dangerously shocked if he were to try. He also realizes that his magnetic powers are useless at the moment since neither Liquid Lord nor Mercuria appears to be wearing anything metallic that he might attract or repel, so he merely tries to crawl out of the path of the intense water pressure.

Greg attempts to focus his abilities, to create illusions that will confuse their two foes; but he is having a difficult time concentrating as the blasts severely disorient him.

Joseph and Marina have the best chance to launch a counter assault since they were standing at the periphery of the group; but as Harvest’s thoughts begin to reach out and manipulate the grass around Liquid Lord’s feet, he is suddenly spun around and around by some force that he can barely see because it moves so swiftly. He soon falls to the ground, dazed.

Firefrost raises a hand to blast Liquid Lord with strong light, but she stares in amazement as the bright beams slowly ooze from her fingers as if they were being projected in slow motion. She certainly feels her incredible abilities flowing forth from her hands, but she cannot seem to increase the intensity of those beams of light. Suddenly, she, too, is spun about and made to feel so dizzy that she wants to vomit.

With the others sorely pressed, Elemancer seizes the ground underneath himself with his manipulative thoughts and begins to create a tunnel with his powers over earth, to strike their foe by surprise and from beneath. He rejoices as the soil leaps up and outward as his abilities force the very dirt to do his bidding. Though he has utilized his powers on so many previous occasions, he still feels a sense of exhilaration that what he does is virtually remarkable and that his thoughts can so readily be translated into action by merely concentrating and making it so.

Sensing what his partner is attempting as Elemancer disappears into the ground, Oculus directs his own thoughts to help guide his partner toward Liquid Lord since Mercuria has apparently disappeared from view.

When Elemancer reaches a point beneath their enemy--with his location confirmed by his partner--he suddenly emerges up from out of the ground. However, Liquid Lord blasts aside the dirt and grass and grabs Paul, staring hard into his face while intensifying his own powers. As he struggles to free himself, Paul begins to gasp, wondering what is happening to him because he feels as if he is literally dying of thirst.

During the moment when Liquid Lord focuses his attention upon disabling Paul, Redwood acts quickly to increase her height. As if suddenly liberated, she senses her form expanding upward. She then tries to reach down and grab their fluid adversary, to rescue Elemancer before Liquid Lord notices her; however, she finds that she cannot move at all, cannot force her body to do her bidding.

Paul suddenly passes out, so Liquid Lord tosses his limp body aside, renewing the water barrage directed at the others who are still barely standing.

Fearful for his partner, Greg crawls along the ground to reach Paul, his only concern at the moment because Paul’s thoughts seem almost negligible.

---

Fight Sequence Rainbow Arc of Fire: A House Divided

This novel, to date, had the most fight sequences of all the novels in the series.

Chapter Twenty-nine

A moment later, Dino reaches for a small vial of scented oil on a shelf and pulls off the stopper to take a whiff. He deliberately holds it up to his nose, pretending to innocently ask, "What's this stuff supposed to do?"

"That's Fire Oil," Joan informs him, returning to his side while peering over his shoulder to read the label. "It can heighten one's courage and strength, as well as arouse a person's passionate nature."

"Ahhhhhh!" Dino suddenly screams, first clutching his nose as if it were burning and then his throat as he falls to the floor in a quivering heap. The glass vial drops from his hand and slowly begins to empty onto an ornate rug.

Cleo, toward the back, and Michael, toward the front of the store, whirl around to watch this bizarre spectacle unfold before them, unsure as to what exactly is going on.

"Dino, what are you doing?" Jane demands, leaning over him and realizing that he's probably begun playing out another of his self-indulgent 'scenes,' only this time he has the ability to make it really dramatic—and destructive.

"I'm changing!" Dino pleads in a helpless voice, almost seeming to shake uncontrollably. "I can't stop myself."

Suddenly, his shifting form begins to writhe and squirm about, knocking over a nearby table and dumping the fragile display items all over the floor. Next, he starts to profoundly alter his shape, shouting at Joan, "You've cast a spell on me, you witch!"

"What?" Joan reacts in shock. She wants to go to his aid but involuntarily steps backward because his metamorphosis is so unexpected and bizarre. Profoundly shocked, she wonders what the heck he is talking about and what is happening to him.

Dino's voice now begins to alter as well, from garbled words to a long, low growl. The growl intensifies until it becomes a piercing roar of defiance as he swiftly changes into a ferocious lion, springing up from the floor, while snarling and jawing viciously, and knocking over another table. He then lunges sideways, as if out of control, and topples over a few shelves left and right, spilling even more merchandise everywhere.

Joan backs up even further, eyes wide in disbelief, but is quite prepared to knock this clumsy lion on its furry ass with her power over gravity—or even shove it out the front door with her telekinesis--should it become a direct threat to her.

"You idiot!" Jane yells, furious that Dino would stage a destructive confrontation in Joan's vulnerable shop, where so many beautiful, delicate objects can get permanently shattered.

Now intensely upset with his behavior, Jane begins to expand, growing upward toward the high ceiling while inserting her now-enlarged, as well as highly enraged, form between Joan and the roaring lion.

Joan is even more startled by Jane's stunning transformation as she ducks behind the two glass counters for protection. However, she cannot take her eyes off of the volatile conflict unfolding before her, like watching two cars rapidly losing traction on an icy road and then spinning completely out of control as they inexorably slide at one another.

Crouching by the door, Michael instantly teleports himself out of the shop because he fears for his safety in such a confining space.

Terrified, Cleo dissolves into a phantom and glides past the grappling duo of Jane and Dino, knowing that she is powerless to confront either one of them at this point.

---

Fight Sequence Rainbow Arc of Fire: Who Has Dominion?

There were a number of fight sequences in this novel. The following was one of the earliest:

Chapter Forty-seven

The look on William's face the moment the spear tears through his vulnerable body is one of sudden incredulity. He knows in that shocking instant he will not survive. His last thoughts seek to reach out to his beloved one last time, but he fails.

"William!" Joseph screams in anguish as his lover staggers toward him but a half step, the spear sticking clear through his thick torso.

His life gone, however, William's mortal form falls to the ground, the corpse thudding onto the gray dust with a sickening sound, bright blood surging out of the two gaping wounds, from his chest and his back simultaneously.

Everyone else except Joseph dives to the ground as the sky turns almost dark with the formations of arrows and spears that now fly up from far below, as a continuous fleet of death seeks us out.

With the terrified kitten still in my arms, I leap into the spiritual sanctuary excavations nearby, seeking protection by ducking behind the high marble altar while cringing in fear and abject terror. For, unlike the others, I am entirely powerless and unarmed.

Ignoring the peril, Joseph falls to his knees and scoops up William's lifeless body in his arms, sobbing uncontrollably.

"No, no, no...," he futilely wails to the heavens above; but they only mock his cries with the whoosh of deadly projectiles that continue to fly overhead and sting the ground all around the rest of us, greedily searching for more victims.

Marina angrily crawls to the edge of the parapet and peers over the side. What she sees amazes her: a vast, ancient army of tunic-clad warriors surges toward these high walls, screaming for victory as their shields and remaining javelins glisten in the sparkling sunlight. Even now, many of them attempt to struggle up the crumbling walls all around our vulnerable position, having tossed rope or wooden ladders against the fortress inclines, to easily scale the broken battlements unopposed.

Marina shouts a warning to the rest of us, "Close your eyes!" A moment later, a searing white light flashes from her extended right hand. The army below immediately staggers about in physical pain, their eyes temporarily rendered useless by the intensity of the bright beams, as if the sun above had suddenly dropped out of the sky to punish them. They were fortunate, however, that she hadn't summoned a brighter light upon their vulnerable numbers and blinded them all permanently.

The falling missiles having slowed and then stopped, Joan stands up and angrily gestures toward the multitude of soldiers stumbling around below. Ladders quickly topple over, spilling and dropping those few warriors who had not let go when their eyesight initially failed them. Using her telekinesis, she rolls the entire army backward as if kicking several soccer balls across a grassy field.

Paul joins her, raising a stinging dust storm out over the flat landscape and chasing the befuddled army well back from the ruined walls of Troy, now believing that all of the gods have turned against them at once.

---

Fight Sequence Rainbow Arc of Fire: Harmony of Spheres

The fight referred to in this sequence took place elsewhere:

Chapter Thirty-six

In a large, darkened house, on a quiet side street on Capitol Hill in Denver, a tall, lanky, gray-haired man nearing 60 fearfully peers out at the sidewalk through a small crack between carefully drawn drapes.

"Do you see them yet?" his short, portly lover Henry fretfully asks Richard as he hangs back, well out of sight.

"No, love," soothes Richard, releasing his hold on the heavy fabric and allowing it to close tightly once again. "We shouldn't expect James and Geoffrey to be here this soon with our groceries. They only called a little more than an hour ago to ask us what we needed."

"I know, Richey," Henry sighs, wringing his hands in despair and finally sitting down on an overstuffed sofa in their living room. "I was only hoping they'd get here soon. I'm just terrified each night that we're alone."

Richard rejoins Henry on the couch, holding his lover close and comforting him, "Everything will be fine, hon. Joan and Marina and the others should reach the comet soon enough. They'll immediately alter its course, and then everyone will see that the Earth has been saved. We can only hope that people will quickly return to their senses and stop all of this madness."

"I'm so frightened," Henry confesses. "I really believe that this is what it was like to be gay in Nazi Germany in the 1930's. You're afraid that your neighbors are going to turn on you, you're afraid to walk the streets, and you're even afraid to be with your friends and patronize their businesses."

He looks at Richard wide-eyed, "James told me that a mob ransacked Category Six Books on 11th Street and burned every magazine, book, poster, and flag!"

"I know," Richard assures him, shaking his head. "And arsonists also torched The Triangle bar and The Foxhole."

"Even the Metropolitan Community Church has been vandalized repeatedly," Henry reminds him. "Nothing is sacred to these scoundrels."

"True. But they've also spray-painted hateful slogans on the Presbyterian and Lutheran churches near here," Richard adds. "We're not the only ones being single out, it seems. When it appears that the world is about to end, everyone else's beliefs obviously become a target."

The doorbell rings and both men give a start.

"I'll answer it," Richard bravely offers. "You wait right here."

"Be careful," Henry pleads. Then he adds, "I wish we had a gun."

"Guns are not the answer, Henry; they're the problem," Richard grimly assures him. However, he sadly concedes, "I'll be careful."

Quietly, he makes his way to the front door. Holding his breath, he peers out through the peephole. Grateful, he loudly exhales: "Thank goodness. It's James and Geoffrey!"

He reaches for the dead bolt lock, quickly unlatches it, and opens the door, "Come in. Come in, gentlemen."

As their two friends enter carrying several bags of groceries, Richard notices a cut on Geoffrey's cheek, "What happened to you?"

"Some homophobe at 'Queen' Soopers called us faggots after he saw the rainbow flag on our car, so I beat the crap out of him," Geoffrey explains, setting the groceries on the floor.

Giving Richard a hug, James grins and adds, "Actually, the guy got one sucker punch in before Geoffrey decked him. My hero."

Geoffrey just shakes his head and grimly laughs, "I'm not taking guff from anyone these days. I'm sure that guy's not gonna call anyone else a faggot after this."

"I'll get a Band-Aid and some disinfectant to clean that cut," Henry frets as he enters the hallway and looks closely at Geoffrey's wound. "Your attacker was probably rabid."

He then turns to his lover, "Richard, please show our guests into the kitchen."

Pointing the way down a darkened hall, Richard asks, "How is it outside? Henry and I have been too fearful to venture out for the last two days. We don't even watch the news; it's too depressing. And we certainly won't turn on any lights at night."

"Actually," James assures him, "in some ways, it's getting a bit better. The community is starting to organize. I certainly wouldn't recommend that any antigay bigots go anywhere near Charlie's right now. Those Country and Western queens have set up a citizens' patrol around the bar, and they're heavily armed from boot to Stetson. I'm convinced that they will shoot first and ask questions later."

"Violence, violence, violence," Richard laments after offering his friends a seat at the kitchen table and then taking one himself. "I have not been able to comprehend how people can become so crazy, so quickly, especially in Denver."

"It's much worse in Colorado Springs," Geoffrey assures him. "Some friends of ours who live there are temporarily staying with us. They said that when all of the fundamentalist Christians got finished burning down the gay bars and left-wing bookstores and businesses, they soon started attacking one another's churches over denominational differences."

"Yep," James concurs. "When you fundamentally disagree over several passages in the Bible, and the world may be coming to an end, even minor scriptural differences suddenly take on a much greater significance."

Entering the kitchen with the emergency kit, Henry tisks, "If you're convinced that this comet represents God's retribution upon all of humankind, you're bound to go self-righteously mad with guilt and seek your own personal retribution upon everyone else for this threat to the Earth."

"Now don't flinch," Henry then warns Geoffrey, looking intently at the cut on his face while preparing to apply some disinfectant with a cotton ball. "This might sting a little at first, but it will help promote healing."

---

Fight Sequence Rainbow Arc of Fire: Slight of Mind

This is the first time we see the four new super-heroes utilizing their abilities.

Chapter One

To view the interplay of persons behaving badly toward one another when the subjects are oblivious about being observed, about being judged.

To overhear a blunt world, accustomed to stating exactly what it means, while unconcerned that those who are targeted hover well within range.

At the edge of a strained and murky alley near the Village, on a hot summer night in New York, two hunky lovers stand, arms temporarily upraised while confronted by another man pointing a glinting gun.

"Please hand over your wallets, gentlemen," the unexpectedly polite mugger demands of the two, "and nobody will get hurt."

The weapon, unfortunately for this usually accomplished criminal, suddenly flies out of his hand and clangs into a convenient dumpster.

One of the intended victims then confidently remarks, "I don't think we'll be surrendering our wallets to you tonight. Sorry."

The startled gunman, with the odds two against one now that he's disarmed, turns and flees for the safety of numbers walking the sidewalks this evening. Escaping under a scraggly tree at the curb, the man is suddenly lurched from the concrete, however, and quickly lifted upward, collared by a conveniently low hanging branch. Immediately, he finds himself dangling helplessly from the limb, unable to shake loose.

Joseph, having used his power over plants to seize the criminal, then flags down a passing patrol car whose occupants make a quick arrest. The officers obtain the weapon from William who had used his magnetic powers to retrieve the gun from the dumpster.

On the opposite rim of the continent, two women dine with a few female friends at a rooftop restaurant featuring an incredible view of San Diego below. The sun begins to settle down for the evening, as an intense sparkle of city lights is pleasingly evident.

At a nearby table, a man loudly complains to his companion, a woman he hopes to ease into the sack soon after dinner, "I'm sick of faggots destroying the moral fiber of this country."

"Please lower your voice," his exasperated date tells him, furtively glancing about. "You might offend someone."

"Aw," the obnoxious man persists, "I don't give a damn what perverts think!" He gestures with a dismissive wave of a hand that accidentally brushes against a water goblet. Oddly, the glass tips toward him, spilling ice cubes and cold water into his lap and thoroughly soaking him.

"Damn," the angry man utters, standing up so suddenly that he topples a passing waiter's dessert tray against his chest, gooey vanilla ice cream and chocolate fudge sauce oozing down the front of his pricey shirt and tie. At the same moment, a sticky wedge of lemon meringue pie flips off of the falling tray and splats against his face, lodging there for a precious moment before dropping onto an expensive shoe.

His companion vainly tries to suppress the urge to giggle but soon cannot stop laughing, immediately fleeing to the ladies room and abandoning her hopeless date to his own devices.

At the adjacent table of lesbians, the dark-haired woman with flashing black eyes and telekinetic abilities snickers to herself while continuing to enjoy her dinner, as well as converse warmly with her friends.

With a hint of a smile betraying true feelings, her blond lover, who commands light and darkness, as well as heat and cold, looks askance at the culinary disaster unfolding close by and then softly chides, "Joan, you really shouldn't have done that."

"I know, Marina," the dark-haired woman responds with a mischievous wink. "I really hate to see good food go to waste."

In a high-rise condominium overlooking Cheesman Park in the midst of the Capitol Hill region of the Mile High City of Denver, Colorado, two other powerful gay men conclude a meal at their dining room table.

The younger man asks his lover, whose eyes are closed, hinting at telepathic preoccupation, "So, Greg, how are our four pagan friends doing on their respective vacations?"

"Fine," the older man smiles as he opens his eyes, severing his long distance eavesdropping of both coastlines. "They seem to be enjoying themselves immensely."

"Are they trying out their new supernatural abilities?" Paul asks with a curious grin, since he has been able to control air, earth, fire, and water for more than a year, after accompanying his lover and his four friends, members of the Rainbow Arc of Fire, a gay pagan band, into the mountains on an Autumn Equinox retreat.

"Yes," Greg confirms, bemused. "It's certainly comforting to know that we can now count upon a quartet of accomplices in our on-going battle against hardened criminals and stupid homophobes."

---

Fight Sequence Rainbow Arc of Fire: Worlds Beneath Us

This was an fun book to write. I was able to call upon much of what I had read, and taught, about ancient mythologies and classical deities.

Chapter Nineteen

Utilizing the deer's senses, Greg realizes that Joan, or rather Artemis, is moving off in the opposite direction to search for him. He quietly pivots around the base of the tree, his hiding place, to sneak up behind her unawares. He takes a step but does not see the unwary twig beneath his foot. The snap is much louder than he could have imagined, setting off a furious chirping of nesting birds in a nearby tree before he can silence them.

Artemis, recognizing the nearness of her defamer, swiftly turns and approaches him on the run. She reaches for her belt, as Greg rapidly retreats, trying to escape and buy time for an alternative strategy. She unfurls a lasso with her left hand and sends it flying toward the fleeing man.

As if guided by the very gods themselves, the rope snakes its way through the air, the wide loop gently settling over Greg's head, wafting down around his trunk and to his ankles, where the noose becomes suddenly taut, tripping him and snapping his body hard against the ground. Greg momentarily loses consciousness as his head strikes the unforgiving surface.

Several moments later, Greg begins to open his eyes, move his head, and gaze about, the immediate scene in front of him still a blur. He also painfully discovers that not only does his forehead hurt, as a decided lump begins to swell, but also his body is now firmly and uncomfortably tied to a tree. Even with his extraordinary strength, he quickly finds that he cannot free himself.

"You were foolish to think that you could escape my wrath," Artemis coolly informs him as she reaches back into her quiver for another deadly arrow.

"Wait, Joan!" Greg pleads. "Don't do it!"

"Why do you call me 'Joan'?" Artemis responds, deeply annoyed. "Not only do you despoil my sacred temple, but now you do not even recognize me for who I am! Does your blasphemy know no bounds?"

Trying a different tack, Greg counters, "I am not from this region. I was unaware of your rituals and ways. Give me another chance to perform the appropriate offerings."

"Ignorance of our sacred laws is no excuse," she sternly warns him. "The price for your blasphemy is certain death."

Looking about in a panic, Greg feels himself precariously out of options as the Huntress levels her arrow across the bow and begins to draw the taut string firmly, to let the missile fly forth and do her fatal bidding.

Immediately, Greg's eyes catch a subtle motion across the vaulted, sky-blue ceiling above. If only he has time enough.

She fires her efficient weapon with a firm admonition, "May the supreme forces that I command guide my arrow true!"

All that Greg can see is a sharp point, homing like some guided missile and heading directly at his chest.

Two yards from the target, however, sharp claws swiftly catch the glistening shaft, and a satisfied hawk swoops away. Soaring upward with its wings all aflap, it imagines itself in surprising possession of a tender rodent, snatched out of the very air itself.

Before Artemis can reach for another arrow and fire again, Greg telepathically orders the deer grazing a few paces off to charge her mistress.

Startled that one of her own gentle creatures would attack, the goddess is caught off guard, losing her balance and pitching forward suddenly.

Greg then has the deer nudge the flared base of the silver helmet, quickly easing it off of the goddess's head before she can comprehend his simple trick.

Artemis then sits upright, her dark locks falling all around her shoulders with an oblivious sweep. Confused, she rubs her temples as if roundly awakening from a difficult sleep.

"Where am I?" Joan wonders aloud, noting the shiny helmet on the grass beside her but ignorant of its purpose.

Still tied to the tree, Greg finally allows himself a welcome sigh of relief.

---

Fight Sequence Rainbow Arc of Fire: Souls Within Stone

I wrote this one as if it were a contemporary Western, and what does anyone expect in a Western but a bar room brawl? Well, given the heroes and their abilities, the didn't actually have to fight in the bar room and wreck the place:

Chapter Thirty-seven

Several of the patrons rush to the windows, holding curtains aside, intensely curious as to what will happen next. None is willing, however, to become directly involved, especially not with stopping an impending fight. The waitress stands at the front door, hands on her hips, looking out at the parking lot and shaking her head at the stupidity of all men.

"Paul," Greg advises his lover outside, "you stay out of this. I'll handle the three of them myself."

"Whatever you say, Greg," Paul grins, stepping back, knowing that Greg might have been a bit over matched if there were six of them. Three, he knows, should be a breeze.

"Oh, aren't you the tough one?" the first man ridicules, wondering why these two faggots act so confident since he and his buddies never fight fair. "We'll take you on one at a time, then."

"That's acceptable to me," Greg smiles, pretending not to notice that one of the guys has slipped up behind him, intending to pin his arms while the other two take their best shots.

"Gotcha," the one breathes heavily on Greg's neck, smelling strongly of garlic.
"This is gonna be easier than I thought," the first one says, telegraphing his punch by a mile.

Greg tilts his head and the meaty fist sails past his ear, smashing hard against the nose of the guy behind Greg, making a loud, cracking noise.

"Damn it, Bobby," the guy behind Greg yells, releasing his hold and grabbing his face, collapsing to the ground in a bloody heap. "You broke my goddamn nose, you idiot!"

"The bastard moved," Bobby shouts, angry with himself for missing and taking out his buddy.

The third guy, not wanting to waste a chance, swings at Greg's midsection; but Greg deftly moves, causing the guy to fall to the ground.

"Shit!" he shouts in a muffled voice, now face down in the gravel and dirt.

Bobby, the ringleader, is furious that his two partners have been so quickly neutralized. He comes at Greg and swings again. Greg ducks easily, then stabs an uppercut at the guy's jaw, breaking it and sending him flying backward, instantly groggy. Unlike fight scenes in the movies, however, Bobby's pain is excruciating. Flat on his back and holding his jaw, he does not get up, fortunate that he did not lose any teeth. Woozy, he still recognizes that it was a blow the like of which he has never taken before in any previous brawl.

The guy face down on the ground has quickly gotten up, however, and reaches into the open window of their pickup, grabbing an ax handle. Greg knows what the guy is up to but steps toward the truck anyway, keeping his back to the man and acting as if he has not noticed the other's obvious move for a weapon.

Looking through his attacker's eyes as the man swings, Greg ducks, and the ax handle smacks into the windshield of their truck, cracking the glass.

"Hold still, you asshole," the guy yells in frustration, losing all control, a serious blunder in a fight with a telepathic adversary.

He wildly swings the ax handle again, as Greg has slipped to the front of the truck. This time the blow misses wide and smashes a headlight. "Damn it!"

He continues to follow Greg, entirely enraged, raising the ax handle high and bringing it down, as Greg jukes away, crushing the side mirror instead. "Shit!"
As the guy angrily stares at the damage he has caused to their own truck, Greg calmly asks him, "Had enough?"

"No!" the man shouts, pissed and pointing the ax handle at the shattered side mirror. "Look what you made me do!"

"I did nothing," Greg announces, knowing that the guy won't take responsibility for his own stupidity and now tired of wasting time with him. Greg rears back and punches the guy in the left eye, knocking him backward into the side of the pickup.

The guy drops the ax handle and reaches for the side of his face, groaning and sinking to the running board, not knowing how lucky he was that Greg took something off the punch.

Standing over the one named Scotty and shaking his head, Greg then tells him, "I think you've had enough now, and that eye's probably going to swell shut real soon unless we get some ice on it."

He reaches down to help Scotty up, knowing that the fight has left all three of these would-be combatants. He also picks up the ax handle from the ground.

"Thanks," Scotty mumbles, staggering to his feet and finally accepting that he has been badly beaten.

"It isn't like in the movies, fella," Greg explains, as he helps the bruised man toward the restaurant, tossing the ax handle several yards away into the brush.

Paul has already taken the other two inside for some ice for their broken nose and broken jaw, respectively, assuring them that his lover packs quite a wallop, and rubbing it in just a little by adding, "I tried to warn you not to pick a fight with him."

---

Fight Sequence Rainbow Arc of Fire: Autumn Saga

I had fun writing Autumn Saga, even if the book had a mixed reception. The Kindle edition has a few changes and even a significant chapter deletion meant to mitigate some of the more "preachy" aspects that a couple of readers found annoying. This is the first chapter where Paul and Greg act together to deal with a palpable, physical threat:

Chapter Thirty

That evening, Paul and Greg are getting dressed to go to the Park to catch a possible gay basher.

"OK," Paul immediately asks, staring into the closet, "what should we wear?"

"Why are you asking me?" Greg laughs, a bit indignantly. "Do you think I used to cruise the Park at night and am therefore knowledgeable about the various fashion statements made by lonely and sex-starved men?"

"That's not what I meant," Paul smiles, nudging his lover. "You're over-reacting. I just figured that since you've lived by the Park for more than three years, you've occasionally seen guys coming and going late at night."

"I'm not in the habit of noticing who's wearing what when they enter or exit the Park, Paul," Greg flatly states. "Most of the men I see are either walking dogs or are jogging. Nobody seems to be dressed peculiarly, if that's what you mean. And they may simply be walking their dogs or jogging rather than looking for sex."

"That's all I wanted to know," Paul explains, giving his partner a hug. "I wasn't implying anything about your behavior or theirs. I was just hoping for the two of us to look inconspicuous."

"I know," Greg admits, squeezing Paul's hand. "It's just that this whole topic of sex in the Park bothers me. On the one hand, I understand some of the motivations of guys who are lonely and looking for relief, even in public places late at night. But I'm also sensitive to the opinion that public sex is just plain sleazy. That if you do pick up someone, you ought to take him home and not do it in a public park or bathroom, even if it is late at night, it’s dark, and no one is likely to catch you in the act."

"I understand," Paul soothes. "I'm sure that the first car that was parked in some lover's lane somewhere was occupied by a straight couple, making babies in the back seat. Gays are certainly not the only ones who engage in sex outside of a darkened bedroom with the shades drawn."

"True," Greg agrees. "Anyway, I'm sure Levis and T-shirts will probably be acceptable attire for strolling through the Park late at night."

"And a light jacket," Paul adds, reaching into the closet. "It's been much cooler lately."

A little while later, the two are walking across the width of Cheesman Park, trying to act like potential victims instead of two hunks who could beat any possible attacker to a pulp.

"Are you picking up anything?" Paul asks Greg regarding his telepathy.

"Not a thing!" Greg explains. "Well, a couple of people we know are about, but I don't sense any predatory mental activity. By the way, what time is it?"

Consulting his glowing watch, Paul announces, "It's just after midnight. The 'witching hour!'"

"That may be," Greg smiles, "but there aren't even any witches out right now."

"Why don't we take that path over by those trees behind the Pavilion?" Paul suggests. "It's always rather darker over there."

As they continue to walk, Greg observes, "You can just see our new condo through the trees."

"You're right," Paul nods. "The Park looks so beautiful in this full moon. I think.…"

The sentence is left incomplete as a massive, furry shape smashes through the low brush by the Botanic Gardens and leaps at Paul, pulling him down with a terrible snarling and vicious tearing sound.

"Paul!" Greg shouts, trying to make mental contact with the creature, assuming that some rabid dog is on a rampage. It is only then, as he reads no thoughts at all, that he sees now that the creature appears to be more in the shape of a large, furry man than a dog since, whatever it is, it is garbed in torn clothing, seemingly burst from within.

Greg grabs at the creature's wide shoulders to pull him off of Paul while Paul struggles to get out from under the manbeast.

From out of nowhere, a sudden blast of wind catches the creature unexpectedly and hurls him aside, rolling him across the path and into the bushes. A terrible thrashing begins and then seems to disappear, first along the fence, then over the wide gate, and finally into the grounds of the Botanic Gardens itself.

Concerned, Greg reaches down to help up his lover, "Paul, are you all right?"

"Yeah," Paul nods, springing up off the ground and checking himself for wounds.

"I don't see any cuts or any bleeding," Greg exclaims, surprised and relieved. "What the hell was that anyway?"

"I don't know," Paul responds. "It scared the hell out of me because it moved so fast. And I couldn't believe the strength of that thing. If I hadn't conjured up that wind, I'm not sure the two of us could have gotten him off me. By all rights, I ought to be severely torn up, but I feel only a couple of bruises where I hit the ground. I need to sit down for a minute."

"Here's a concrete bench," Greg offers as he helps Paul to it, even though the younger man seems only unnerved rather than injured.

Catching his breath, Paul asks, "Did you try to read that creature's thoughts?"

"I did," Greg confesses, "and I got absolutely nothing. It wasn't even like when Colonel Traxall shut down his mind to me when he knew that I was trying to read his thoughts last summer."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," Greg slowly explains, warily shaking his head and looking through the fence into the moon-bathed grounds of the Gardens, "I got no thought processes at all; as if that creature, whatever it is, has no mind to read!"

---

Fight Sequence Rainbow Arc of Fire: A Mile-High Saga

With any super-hero series, I suspect the reader looks for, and even expects, a decent fight sequence here and there. As the series progressed, those sequences became more elaborate as more heroes joined the team, their powers more elaborate than just Greg's abilities in the first volume, especially since he has only just gained his superior talents:

Chapter Thirty-one

He bolts through his apartment door; the cats follow to the sill and stop, wondering what’s the matter.

He races down the stairs and out the side door, exiting under the carport. He immediately spies a young man with a can of spray paint, applying a graphic design to a garage door across the alley.

“Hey,” Greg yells out, “I don’t think the owner would want you to do that.”

The young man wheels about, dropping the spray can and pulling a gun from his baggy jeans. Before Greg can react, he fires.

“Shit!” Greg exclaims as he recoils sideways in time for the bullet to barely graze his arm instead of hitting his chest. His new, increased quickness saved him. Still, blood flows from the wound.

Mentally, he orders the kid to drop the gun. Instead, the jerk fires again, Greg ducking in time so that the bullet hits a brick building behind him.

Thinking fast, Greg sends a mental image of himself escaping down the alley. The kid fires at the fleeing figure.

In a moment, Greg is at the kid’s side and decks him with one angry fist to the chin.

The kid collapses backward onto the blacktop, the gun falling from his hand.

Greg kicks it aside with his foot and then drops to the ground, the powerful new adrenaline in his system still racing fast.

He eyes the kid keenly, wondering why his command to drop the gun had no effect. Even now, he feels the intense hatred and evil that pervaded the kid’s mind.

“The intensity must have blocked my thoughts,” he realizes.

Mentally, he seeks out a nearby police car. He locates one on the other side of Cheesman Park. Subtly, he directs the officer to the alley.

As the cruiser turns the corner, Greg stands up and waves. The kid is still out.

---

Poetic Passages Rainbow Arc of Fire: Olive Branch

Again, this final volume in the series has not been reviewed by anyone, and it has potentially only been read by two or three. My family had gathered in White Cloud, KS, for the second time in less than a year for a funeral. We'd been to California in March for my cousin's funeral that same year. This is the opening chapter of Olive Branch:

Chapter One

In early morning, while all of the others are soundly sleeping, Greg quietly eases himself up off the couch where he has spent the better part of a fitful night. This sturdy sofa has never been the most comfortable place to sleep. Either he is a couple of inches too long or the sofa is a couple of inches too short. However, he refuses to find fault with these meager accommodations, especially at a time like this. His mother’s family has been forced once again by misfortune to come together, and now is certainly not the time to complain about trivial matters.

Carefully, he steps over his partner, Paul, still asleep on the carpeted floor. The floor was the only other option to the narrow couch, what with all four double beds in his aunt and uncle’s cozy house already claimed before they arrived. The two of them could easily have slept in the crew quarters of the ship, along with their four closest friends; but remaining here with his relatives seemed more appropriate and comforting for everyone directly involved.

He can tell by the gray glow from the picture window, just across the narrow living room from the sofa, that another glorious dawn is upon them. He slightly cringes, though, when he notices that several spiders have spun their intricate and highly successful traps outside, between the upper frame of the wide window and the low eave of the roof.

Greg ruefully reflects upon how there never appears to be a shortage of meals for hungry predators in this rural part of the nation, where nature seems forever in a state of mass profusion, especially during the full bloom of May. While he may have the remarkable ability to glean the most compelling motivations in all living creatures with his wondrous telepathic powers, to peer into their very psyches fully unhindered, he still finds these raw instincts a bit disconcerting when they involve matters of survival or death.

Instead, he quickly focuses his thoughts upon the front sidewalk and lawn, trying to ignore the helpless victims dangling just above his averted gaze. The lush green grass quickly segues from lying flat for a few feet to plunging steeply downward, toward a thick row of stately trees far below, which anchor the wide base of this scenic property.

“It must have been difficult for Uncle Hap to mow that steep hillside year after year,” Greg sighs to himself.

He also spies the North-South, two-lane Highway 7 that lies immediately beyond the tall trees below, at the very base of the hill; but no passing cars can yet be glimpsed through the thick foliage at this early hour.

A narrow width of graded land, forming a rough stretch to a rudimentary concrete boat landing, divides the paved roadway from the wide, swiftly flowing, Big Muddy River that effectively separates White Cloud, Kansas, from Missouri, in the extreme northeast corner of the Jayhawk state.

A long, dark ridgeline, well to the east, beyond countless acres of rich farmland in the neighboring state--mostly planted in soybeans and corn this time of year--easily delineates where glaciers, several thousand years ago, carved this five-mile-wide swath between the several low hills on this side--where the modest, single-story house surveys the panoramic view--and those black bluffs.

Because the meandering Missouri River enriches the soil, gives life to this land with bountiful harvests, year in and year out, settlers arrived in sufficient numbers throughout much of the 1800’s, to eventually found a modest town on July 4th, 1857, four years before the outbreak of the Civil War.

Most migrants continued west, however, in seemingly endless streams of rugged wagon trains, first through here and then through St. Joseph, Missouri, where the pony express began its brief but fabled service in 1860-61. In the 19th century, enough of these early visitors stayed and built homes--a few elegant, though many more barely adequate. But those who did remain fruitfully multiplied, regardless of their economic status; and the town reached its apex with a population of 1,100 souls in 1910-11.

For a time, the rich bounty was sufficient lure to keep them and their descendants tilling the land. Unfortunately, these humble farm folk may not have always been satisfied with the results of so much hard labor, what with crop prices forever fluctuating, mostly downward, especially throughout the 20th century.

Named for a chief of the local Iowa tribe, White Cloud is a small town that Greg’s mother, Anita, knew as a little girl. Born here on July 4th, 1921, she, her two younger sisters, Norma Jean and Doris, and younger brother, Robert, were raised amidst the straitened circumstances of the early-to-mid 1920’s, after farm prices had fallen after the end of The Great War. Moreover, prices fell further still from the acute strictures of the Great Depression in the 1930’s, precipitated by the stock market crash of 1929.

Eventually, yet another significant war came along and took most of the able-bodied men away to military training camps in Texas, California, Florida, and elsewhere. After nearly four years of violent, incessant conflict, no straightforward form of inducement could continue to keep enough of them down on the farm.

They had all experienced the seductive attraction of so many faraway places, where a man didn’t have to work the stubborn land to make a decent living. So many more of them wanted to live in the expanding cities and developing suburbs of what had become the world’s most prosperous and powerful nation. As an even more profitable alternative, they could labor in contemporary factories or fancy office buildings rather than on these outdated farms, where modern conveniences were still few and hardships frequent. Most of the veterans soon had post-war families to provide for, and the latest post-war dreams to realize. Small backwater towns such as White Cloud could no longer entice enough of them to stay. The population swiftly declined after WW II, and today there are only 250 residents remaining.

As anyone now can readily see, the majority never did come back, at least not permanently. Periodically, some do return, but mostly to pay brief visits to friends and relatives. Typically, the few days spent back here are merely to participate in the inevitable class reunions, weddings, or funerals, for those who had been left behind or for those whose bodies were brought back for burial.

---

Poetic Passages Rainbow Arc of Fire: Shattered Dawn

This ninth volume, only available as a Kindle Edition from amazon.com, has probably only been read by three or four people. This and the tenth volume are two of the most exciting volumes in the series, but neither has been reviewed by anyone anywhere. This is the first page of the novel:

Chapter One

The time is 2:00 A.M.

Low, heavily laden clouds creep in overnight to entirely cover The Mile-High City, wrapped in deepest slumber at this impossibly early hour. A light snow of wide, wet flakes is even now falling, further lulling an already submissive cityscape.

BOOM!

A sudden, deafening, unanticipated blast occurs high overhead. This startling sound is quite unexpected because the season is not yet verging into spring.

A continuous rumbling immediately begins, even before the initial crack of thunderous noise concludes, having disturbed the sleep of many like some cosmic herald, announcing the end of their world.

Far to the northwest, this gathering resonance initiates a lengthy passage, gradually tumbling over and over itself, well above deserted streets and darkened buildings. It does not stop stumbling across the now-wary landscape until it passes far away, over the distant horizon and the southern suburbs, and is at last spent.

In a small, first floor bedroom, in a much larger house carved into three condos on Capitol Hill, the pulsing center of this thriving metropolis, a calico cat lifts its head with a start.

Her two human owners also sit up in bed in consternation, almost raising themselves in unison at this rude interruption.

“Wha…?” Greg mumbles, his eyes attempting to focus in the darkened room. He then involuntarily yawns while glancing down at Miranda’s mottled head and sharply pointed ears, for she has been dozing between their tangled legs for warmth. However, she seems quite poised at this moment to leap from atop the comfortable bed and find a convenient refuge where she can hide from these ominous sounds.

---

Poetic Passages Rainbow Arc of Fire: A House Divided

While Who Has Dominion? receives the most divided opinions, A House Divided is generally felt to be the best and most entertaining volume in the series, up to this point. It was certainly, for me, the most entertaining to write:

Chapter Seventy-four

After his disappointing meeting with Dino, Greg slowly makes his way toward Little Round Top. But he first makes a slight detour to pass by the National Cemetery itself, which contains the old stone tabs that we living inevitably keep on our honored dead. The many circular rows of small, white, stone markers dully glow in the moonlight like aged and discolored dragon's teeth that have long ago lost their bite.

He cannot help but recall how the brave soldiers buried here fought so tenaciously, to force this great nation to remain united, even at the sharp point of a bayonet. Despite significant cultural differences existing in the North and South, these gallant warriors refused to allow a great nation to permanently divide, like cancerous tissue, never to heal.

Fortunately, Union victories here at Gettysburg and then at Vicksburg, Mississippi, one day later, were the beginning of the end for the slave-holding South and the forces of disunion, though it would take almost two more years of war to achieve final victory, Greg recalls.

At Vicksburg, Grant emerged as the general most likely to defeat Lee; and at Gettysburg, Lee displayed a fallibility that he had never shown before. Perhaps it was overconfidence in the abilities of his troops. Or perhaps it was something else more lasting and significant.

Deprived of the critical support and wise council of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson after his untimely death at Chancellorsville two months before, Lee never again would have enough able lieutenants for the critical battles ahead. In addition, those tenacious Southern troops who would die at Gettysburg and in other battles to come became increasingly difficult to replenish when attrition inexorably replaced esprit and gallantry as decisive factors in the war.

The North, as Lincoln and Grant understood so well, held most of the numerical advantages in a relentless conflict. The ablest commanders did not always lead northern armies, especially in the first years of the war; but the math favored them and would methodically cripple the rebellion in one savage battle after another. Each brutal encounter, whether a draw or even a tactical defeat for the North, actually became a strategic setback for the South as more of its men were gravely wounded, captured, or killed.

Greg also cannot forget the immortal words that Lincoln spoke here four months after the battle, when the National Cemetery was to be dedicated and the President had been asked to attend. Perhaps the shortest speech ever made at such a momentous time in the history of a divided nation, Lincoln captured the passionate spirit that drove Northern citizens and soldiers alike: "...this nation...shall have a new birth of freedom...."

Year after year, Union troops persevered even as final victory seemed no closer. At times it must have appeared as if no one could lead them to that glorious victory, not here at Gettysburg, or anywhere else. Perhaps they even wondered if the capacity for victory lay within them, if they would ever manifest sufficient fortitude to win on all fronts.

Before Greg turns away from the National Cemetery toward Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top, he realizes as never before that contemporary generations precariously stand upon the shoulders of past giants. Significantly, however, these advantageous heights allow the present age to visualize a future that those in the receding past could never have imagined, a nation where all men and women might enjoy that "new birth of freedom…."

As he resumes his inevitable hike, he knows that he also cannot turn back, cannot deviate from the path ahead no matter how much simpler it would be to surrender to Dino and the others, to let them keep their powers without really earning them, to allow them to win without being held accountable for the great responsibility placed in their hands, even if that opportunity was given by a goddess who sows nothing but deceit and dissent.

To him, this conflict has become a matter of principle. One cannot treat others the way Michael and his accomplices have treated Greg and his friends, no matter how much they may believe that they have been wronged in the past, or especially because of what they expect to gain by their foul treachery in the short run.

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Poetic Passages Rainbow Arc of Fire: Who Has Dominion?

This is the one book in the series that engenders the most divergent opinions. Some like the first half and not the second. Some like the second half and not the first. The following chapter comes from well into the second half:

Chapter Seventy-eight

Scaling the last of the prismatic steps, the Olympian deities finally arrive at their stark new homeland in the stratosphere.

The razor-thin dome of atmosphere hovering above this bleak domain of Asgard provides a striking contrast to the palpable blue skies they observed at so many earlier levels. However, with each higher step, the pastel layers of heaven evaporated one by one. By the time the remaining eleven gods and goddesses reach the cutting edge of this lofty precipice, almost no soothing color remains.

The billowy white cumulus clouds especially, and even the thin wisps of cirrus ice crystals strung higher up, have since dropped off so that only glimmering stars and twinkling planets pierce the invasive gloom of a world languishing up here in perpetual twilight. Those prickly and bright beams of the nearby universe create an enormous fabric of sparkling patterns and spirals that unfold above the dark landscape of Asgard. The tiny lights of universal nightfall then trail out along the neighboring arm of our galaxy like a shawl.

In addition to the remote stars, local sheets of shimmering color, the shifting northern lights that hang lucent up near the pole, undulate and quiver just beneath this frosty region of Asgard. It is as if a cosmic breeze were blowing these crystalline curtains about on a frigid winter's evening because someone has carelessly left a window open to the cold.

Signal fires illuminate several surface routes laid out before them as if this were a country perpetually at war and in need of a permanent and rapid means of communication.

The main road at their feet, and a grand hall in the distance, seem to reflect the starry skies overhead with the mirroring quality of a precious metal like silver or a fashionable material such as shiny chrome.

"It could be worse, I suppose," Hestia finally determines, glancing about crestfallen because so little strong light brightens this elevated landscape.

"No wonder much of what Odin was purported to have done here in Asgard was sit and brood," Hades suggests.

"Only your shadowy Underworld is a more cheerless place than this," Athena teases. Then she soberly reconsiders her flippant observation after sampling the thin air, "The stench of impending death also permeates this place."

"I, more than any of you, know exactly what fresh death smells like, Athena," Ares confesses. "It bothers me not in the least, and it should not bother any of you. Let us reconnoiter that great hall ahead of us. Perhaps we shall find it well stocked of weapons with which to defend ourselves."

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Poetic Passages Rainbow Arc of Fire: Harmony of Spheres

This is another of those early, portentous chapters that I often used in my novels:

Chapter Two

Far above the Earth, in an otherwise blackened void, and at the surging center of our densely populated planetary system, a solar furnace continues to pulse and radiate. Spilling nuclear fire and expelling stellar light across billions of miles and years, the constant sun engenders an enduring negligence in those of us unaccustomed to glancing up from our momentary shadowing of the land.

No longer does the fiery orb command worldwide obeisance as it used to in the ancient days of natural caves, or simple thatched huts, or even elaborate stone temples. Only a few faint whispers can still be heard giving benediction to the sun for our precious lives and this precarious existence.

Yet before the very planets themselves took notable shape--potential platforms for all manner of cosmic possibilities--Sol burned true.

The searing sun burns still. All the while it compromises its own bright future for the glowing premise of our present age.

Even now, breathing heavenly life from deep within its billowing diaphragm, particles of enlightenment are sent pulsating outward in a continuous stream. Set upon portentous voyages of discovery, these benevolent beams of energy may eventually illuminate the very essence of the universe. Along the warped curves of space, and before the envelope of nothingness is breached, all of the infinite recesses of astral complexity should then be brought to light.

At that precise moment, just before the last galaxies indignantly sputter and collapse, and as the most significant questions about our own existence find answers, the God of all creation may potentially be exposed, or possibly revealed.

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Poetic Passages in Rainbow Arc of Fire: Slight of Mind

The following is a pivotal, early chapter in the book regarding what happens to Greg and, therefore, to the other, newly empowered, Rainbow Arc of Fire superheroes, but most especially to his relationship with Paul. Slight of Mind is one of the most autobiographical novels in the series for it parallels almost exactly events in my own life.

Chapter Five

Soon, Greg's attention is diverted by the trio of enticing crystals arrayed in the window nearby, and by the many clear stones arranged on the sill. He contemplates the vagaries of fate and folly and reaches over to give the three dangling spheres a twirl.

Staring deeply through their sparkling contours, he speculates about the several courses that a single life can take, the alternate turns that one might make in the great maze that life sometimes becomes for unwary human beings.

Delighted by a reflective brightness that suddenly dazzles him, he turns to watch the refracted multitude of rainbow arcs become a flying profusion across the surfaces of every form and figure in this antiseptic room. This casual effort adds so many rainbow colors as a purifying agent to the current pain.

The paths taken by the many spectra emanating from the crystal orbs cross one another here and there, some seeming to meld briefly in passing; but then all quickly race onward once again.

As if in the momentary granting of a wish, or the temporary touch of an elusive dream, to Greg all sadness now seems in abeyance, every possible loss briefly held in check. But he knows that this visual effect will not last for long. While life may be altered temporarily, even extended by the willful intrusions of the living, it cannot absolutely be changed for the dying or for the dead. Though one's thoughts, no matter how pervasive, are hopefully inclined toward permanent resuscitation, eventually all such efforts will fail. The world transitions, as it should, and another soul moves beyond.

Yet with every casual speculation, each stray desire unchecked, what might we survivors curiously discover? And what might we thoughtlessly discard, should we, or some other, have a mind to slight the current pattern of our lives, a course that may once have appeared permanently penned onto paper or seemingly etched in stone?

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Poetic Passages in Rainbow Arc of Fire: Worlds Beneath Us

Worlds Beneath Us begins with the impending demise of my cat Schnozz. I have had to put three of my cats to sleep in my nearly 20 years living in Denver. Each death was heartbreaking and even painful. For Schnozz and Miranda, it was cancer. For Sneezer, it was old age. He was 21-years-old. The following is the first chapter which, like a Greek Chorus, is intended to set the mood for the book.

Chapter One

Spring. In the midst of life bursting anew or renewing itself, when mares and colts, cows and calves, feast on the freshest of fields, nature welcomes alteration, adjustments with which all existence must contend. No matter how contrary, even mating birds attempt to fly strictly in tandem, no matter how perilous, in an aerial formation of soaring courtship.

This year in Colorado the seasons appear to have traded places, with winter alternately warmer than these many days now trailing the equinox, when the sun should hold a more effective sway. Yet the glowing orb groans along in labored passage, with all manner of warmer currents checked at a crossroads. Continuing snow and then rain showers chill the sinews and bones and branches that might have grown longer limbs by now, flowing forth well before this. The sloshing of distant oceans and the turbulence of far air streams consequently bury the high country again and again, yielding to fears that an inevitable runoff will produce flooding elsewhere, if not everywhere, downstream. Over-abundant blessings must inevitably lead to a curse, humanity sincerely believes.

Yet against these seemingly insurmountable odds, the living fabric seasonally furrows, row upon row, only barred now and then from branching prematurely. Opposing this burdened explosion of our communal being, death retains a privileged right to intervene, imposing a new balance for all mortal species.

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Poetic Passages in Rainbow Arc of Fire: Souls Within Stone

Souls Within Stone was my ode to nature and the natural world.

Chapter Forty-eight

Later, Paul takes over the driving. Greg settles into the passenger's seat and looks out of the window, daydreaming about the decade of the 1980's, the years immediately after his forced resignation from the Air Force, when he taught U.S. History courses to community college students at Fort Carson, the large mechanized army base south of the city of Colorado Springs. Soon, he dozes off, describing for the students of his current dreams what some aspects of life on the Western plains must have been like to those who lived in this region more than 100 years ago:

"You know, one morning could feel pretty much like another, looking back, as the cowboys herded their cattle from Texas through Colorado, northward to Cheyenne, here on the western edge of the second greatest prairie system that humans have attempted to traverse, then exploit, and finally settle.

"For a few thousand years before the coming of the cowboy, those who were descended from those who arrived here first both lived and died on these plains. Eventually, the native peoples succeeded in accommodating themselves to the expansive grasslands, up to a point. The layers upon layers of culture that they and their tribes leavened into the topsoil are more profound, if far less intrusive, than the ruts of wagon wheels that European settlers later ground into the rich dirt on their way West in the mid and late 1800's.

"Two centuries before the wagon trains and the cattle drives, explorers ventured out from Spain and from the new Spanish colonies to the south. In the century after that, trappers and traders, primarily from France, culled the western rivers and streams for beaver. And in the 100 years after those hardy Frenchmen nearly wore the furry mammals to extinction, the cowboys pushed their four-hoofed beasts reluctantly out of Texas, to eventual slaughter and mass consumption in the Midwest and the East. These massive cattle drives were made possible by the killing of the buffalo, a competitor to the cattle for the precious grasses of the prairie from Colorado to the Missouri River in the northeast and on to the Mississippi in the east.

"Humans must eat and clothe themselves, no matter how far afield their food is gleaned or the cloth for their coats is cut. Yet the soil anywhere you look on the Earth is more eternal and unyielding than any men or women whom we send forth into each new frontier, for every generation must eventually rest heavy beneath the fading sunset, its daily labors done.

"Even now, sagging prairie barns, once raised and hammered together in starched gingham communities of effort, eventually collapse from neglect. Villages and towns the world over, constructed as seemingly solid as stone, are soon enough settled; however, they eventually decay from their venerable centers outward whenever the world moves on.

"If you cannot conceive of our own extinction, you need only look to the ancient Greek and Roman cities of exquisite granite and marble that once dotted the periphery of the Mediterranean Sea. Centuries before our acquisitive archaeologists began nosing around their Classical remains, these abandoned localities welcomed the migrations of sand and weeds instead of people. A harbor may have silted up, the trade routes may have altered, and the people had moved on.

"You already know that each generation's preoccupation is the next generation's disregard since so much requires attentive rebuilding or reinvention, cyclically testing the renewable energies of humankind that certainly reach limits from time to time. We need to remind each new wave of our offspring of these profound limitations to human habitation all over the world.

"Someday, although we rarely admit this, even to ourselves, we shall, no doubt, lose our lease upon this sacred property, perhaps to another species that crawls up from the crevasses of the earth that we can no longer reach and patch over. If not from our own soil or solar system, competitors could arise quite possibly from the intriguing stars beyond, when a new method that we cannot cope with could seize our veritable souls and scatter what bones of us remain behind, dry as the intricate framework of the buffalo that we once slaughtered and left here to die, to make a place for the cattle that the cowboys pushed onward into Wyoming.

"This is the only life that they knew, those cowboys who rode this range, the only existence that they could conceive of carrying out upon this stubborn topography. Why would they have imagined the future to be significantly different? Why should the wooden wagons that they drove have been entirely replaced by iron trains that railed settlers faster into the frontier and then beyond, from up-to-date St. Louis and even newer Kansas City? Nothing could likely have been any more amazing than the cities they already saw existing in the East, and yet all of that pales when compared to what we have recently accomplished all across the North American continent.

"Historians no longer speculate that the closing of the frontier had a profound effect upon the American psyche. A cowboy in the 1800's would probably have found it hard to believe that human beings could ever fill up this great prairie as he reigned his horse to urge a stray dogie back into a moving herd, bound for the sunset just over the horizon.

"Yet every forward momentum of humanity is really a retreat from one locale to another, as we continue to segue, even in Colorado, from buffalo chips to cow chips, and then to computer chips, fueling the creation of a newer range that no one could have imagined a century ago, as cyberspace, in its turn, supplants this vast and tangible landscape."

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Poetic Passages in Rainbow Arc of Fire: Autumn Saga

Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has always been a favorite Halloween tale of mine for decades. When I wrote Autumn Saga, I knew that I had to work that tale into my own Halloween story in some way. The following chapter was the first of several paying homage to the scary "monsters" of literature and classic film. I tried in each chapter to see each character's psychological motivation or a less obvious Raison d'etre.

Chapter Forty-three

Something must be amiss, for this is not what the gathered multitude had in mind for Halloween.

Each individual in the audience suddenly finds himself abandoned by a country church, sitting astride a blackened horse amid a country graveyard, the Pavilion having completely vanished. Friends and family members and neighbors sitting beside them on the lawn a few moments ago have instantly disappeared. Home and hearth are now mysteriously supplanted in the mist of their unsettled memories, as if our modern age has not yet taken place.

The serrated moon in the night sky ominously hangs above like a luminous coat that has been left in an otherwise empty closet. Every person present realizes that he or she has unwittingly assimilated a new identity. A seductive voice from deep inside their curious minds now addresses this altered consciousness:

The tombs of these dead round about you are sealed against your admittance. Your kind is refused entrance merely because you fought as a mercenary—on the wrong side—in the late Colonial war. A stray cannonball severed your fate, and here you stand, with no settled grave to call your own.

These vague forms that you sense nearby cannot actually be seen by you. You cannot hear nor taste of the world any longer, cannot conventionally reason, other than with what restless motives guide your pulsing heart or your dangling limbs, all which physically remain of you. Sitting challenged in the saddle, you have suddenly materialized without benefit of a head.

The infernal forces that rule your troubled soul must be buried deep within your genetic makeup, your personal programming, if you will. This tormented psyche provides your sole motivation to be out each bewitching night, on a dark quest. Relentless dawn and the covered bridge are your only parameters.

You still have feelings, however. Starkly aware of your own shortcomings, you are startled to learn that you will be granted no final rest until you take from another that which you so severely lack.

Any other head will do. Without a discriminating residue in your anatomy, you are the proverbial condemned man, out to decapitate another for your own benefit.

Soon, along the wayward path by a crumbling stone wall, you sense a nervous trespasser on a dappled nag, clopping closely by. Alert, you stalk him quietly, slipping between full tombs and the old stone tabs that the living inevitably keep on their cherished dead.

In some farmer's autumn field nearby, a small plot of barely cultivated ground, a wary scarecrow flaps a dire warning. A novel breeze pushes the tattered pant legs up to his very knees of straw, yet all of these frantic gestures go unheeded. Without a rugged stake stuck up his pliant back, this spectral figure might give his own ragged garments leave to flee up the corn rows and be out of this fatal vicinity. But like you, he cannot escape this virtual reality.

Unlike this passing traveler, unwary but pursued now, you slowly shadow his slower motion around the various shafts of moonlight, until his precious ears pick up the persistent echoes of your horse's step, more insistent than those of his own rough mount. He has been forewarned of your mission, however. Town gossips on a howling evening have told familiar stories, dreadful tales of terrifying nights like this.

Thus alerted, he picks up the pace of his retreat; but his way is soon lost in these deep woods.

You lift the blade of his demise high in your sordid hand and then thunder hard after. He flails to get away, but you are soon at his side. Slashing at air again and again, your impatient thrusts miss repeatedly. His precious skull ducks too desperately and foils your every attempt at its swift condemnation.

The immediate road ahead breaks right and left. This night the pursued chooses right and the covered bridge looms fast ahead, certain sanctuary on the other side. Before you can recover and cut him off, his fleeing sounds reverberate off of the wooden slats and beams, and the emerging victor pulls up to gloat down the sure tunnel of his escape.

In frustration, you hurl the carved and flaming orb, with an aim truer than either one of you expected from a flying pumpkin. But was your furious aim true enough?

No one alive quite knows for certain.

The deceased author, Mr. Irving, left broken, pulpy shards on the morning ground, a few hoof prints, and a bowed, borrowed nag grazing some distance away, riderless. Yet unconfirmed rumors abound of your prey's escape, Mr. Crane having wisely relocated to a safer village.

The conclusion does flirt, though, with your victory. So you are left with at least a slim possibility that you may finally find eternal peace, however discontented you might eventually be. Eternally lodged in a confining coffin, you see, your body would suddenly become a slave once again to the fickle rule of a head. No longer subject to its own demands, your corpse would now be forced to contend with someone else's.

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