Saturday, January 16, 2016

The Frog Who Jumped to the Stars

At first it pissed Franz off – those little scattered cuts, those twinkles pocking up the night sky.  It was hard to think about.  It totally ruined the nice black vista. 

Toby didn’t agree. He fantasized that the twinkles were collections of, of...something.  He couldn’t think of a word for it. He started putting them into groups, and calling the groups constellations, and pointing them out to anyone who wasn’t croaking too loudly to hear.   “There, that one – just to the right over Centre Stump - I call that the Lily Pad Constellation, and, ooh, ooh, omygod, look at that one over there!  It looks just like a dragonfly, a nice beefy dragonfly.” He stuck his tongue out but it came up empty.

Franz didn’t know whether to be sickened or impressed.  He was a little of both.  He dove deep, scraped himself through the mud, and emerged with a respectable burp. 

What were those damn, maddening, eye-tweaking dots up there? 

Toby was now pointing out another constellation he called “Fish Face” and how there was a hook trailing behind it.  Croaks of “fish” and “face” and “hook” were reverently bounced off the rubber lips of the onlookers.  Tongues flicked upward enthusiastically, and Morgo poked himself in the eye for the fourth time since supper. They went on naming, and pointing, and flicking, until Franz wished they’d just shut the croak up.

Toby sure had a grip on their attention, but Franz figured there was probably a way to steal back the fickle admiration of the boys.  He hopped a little farther away from the Stump so he could get a better bead on the twinkles.  He sorted methodically through his repertoire.  He could swim.  Nah.  He could croak.  Overrated.  And over used.  He could eat.  Hard to see how that would help.  Hard to see how it would hurt, either, but he had to stay focused.  He could jump.  Jump!  What if...what if he could just jump right up there to those twinkles and show everybody that they were just stupid holes in the overhead black? 

He moved back farther, farther away from The Stump than he’d ever been.  The Stump was dwarfed by the endless black that was totally twinked out, like flies on a fox poop.  But the farther back he went the more twinkles he could see.   He paused and worked his eyelids to redistribute the mucous in his eyes.  He needed to make sure it was all real. 

It was.

Franz hunkered down and spring loaded his thighs.  Then he went into a super lower-than-low crouch and let go with a perfect jump. It was even more gargantuan than he had planned!  He sailed past his blathering comrades, two of which now had their waggling tongues tangled in a pink knot.  He sailed past Centre Stump, past the shoreline’s Eastern Mass O’ Moss, and kept on going until he smacked head first into the side of a tree.   More of the twinkles poured right into his eyes as made contact with the trunk. 

Cries of “Holy thit!” came from below as the twinkle-struck frogs strained to get their tongue unhitched.  “Did you sthee that!?”  “Franz is right up there with the sthars!”

Stars?  Franz tried to sort out the ones in his head from the ones above.  They were...stars?  Hadn’t he read about them only last week in the newspaper?  Stars were just were suns that looked falsely itty-bitty.  He tried to remember the reason for that but it eluded him.

Franz jumped again, the stars in his eyes competing with the stars in the sky.  His trajectory went up and up and then it started to thin out a little at the apex.  The arc continued but now it went down in a blistering plunge.  Franz accelerated faster and faster as the lake rose up to meet the sky in a grand gesture of cooperation. There were as many stars in the lake as there were in the sky, and Franz knew he was quite likely the only star-gazing-flying frog in the neighbourhood, maybe even in the world.  He flew on and on until he heard the giant “kerrrrspllatttt”.  The pain came later.

He stayed underwater for a very long time.  When he broke the surface the boys were arguing over who had eaten the most fire flies and whether or not fire flies yielded visible farts.  Toby was categorizing fly clusters and naming them. Morgo was licking his swollen eye. 

The twinkles were gone and a light rain was falling.  Piper looked over and said, “Hey Franz!  Where ya been?  Did ya reach the stars?”  He coughed up a half lit fly. 

Franz turned around and cuffed Morgo in the other eye with his tongue.  It felt good to be part of the crowd once again.  And he was pretty sure of one thing.  Frogs reaching for the stars had better be prepared for a hunk of pain.  A really big hunk of pain.
 




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