-1'Becoming'
-----------------------------------
The sounds of the world around him were muted and virtually nonexistent as he lay there in the stillness. Everything had stopped moving. The shining iridescent lights that had been his company for so long had flickered wildly before disappearing altogether, leaving him in the darkness to find his own way.
His fingers traced along the inner shell without direction. He was not afraid of the dark, he had existed in it before and it had always been a friend to him.
It was the silence that was strange.
A constant rumbling, the roaring of the wind, his father's voice… something had always accompanied him wherever he went. But now…nothing.
A small uneasy cry escaped from his lips and bounced playfully off the walls before echoing back to him. His anxiety melted away as a smile spread over his face. A laugh bubbled up in his chest and floated into the air. He clapped his hands gleefully, enjoying the reverberating merriment of his own voice.
Suddenly, from a place beyond where he could see, another voice reached his ears.
"Careful, Jonathan!" It said.
He climbed onto his knees and pressed his ear to the wall. This voice was different from his father's. This one was higher and spoke more quickly. He leaned forward, pressing his ear more firmly against the surface of the craft, hoping to it would speak again.
All at once, the wall gave way and there was a loud hissing sound as the small pod opened, its divided sections blooming like the petals of a celestial flower. Bright shafts of yellow light streamed in through every crack and crevasse until the darkness surrendered to the overwhelming force of bright blinding sunshine.
Chubby fingers flew up and covered squinting eyes as the world around him expanded beyond anything his young mind had imagined. He peeked through his fingers, folding them away one by one until only his tiny fists remained fastened against his face. He blinked once, twice and the sights around him came into focus. The muted world he had known erupted into a glorious palette of color. Rising towers of green and gold swayed to and fro against an easel of blue and white.
His skin tingled everywhere the light touched and with that tingle came energy, strength. His whole body seemed to vibrate with light and power. He giggled with delight and thrust away the blankets that surrounded him. The desire to see more of this strange new place drew him to his feet. He rose awkwardly to his all but unused feet and wobbled precariously forward. He fell almost immediately, his bare knees landing with a thud in the soft brown powder that seemed to be everywhere he looked. He gathered his hand into a fist and lifted it to his eye level.
His eyes were somewhat less curious than his mouth as he gingerly touched it to his tongue.
"Blech!" he exclaimed, throwing the dust back where it had come from, spitting loudly. He clapped his small hands together, shaking the remainder of the substance from his fingers.
"Did you hear that?" the voice came again, this time closer.
He giggled again at the sound and crawled eagerly up the dusty brown embankment, his tiny fists pounded against the dirt and this time he took special care not to let the stuff near his mouth.
A tiny head covered in ebony curls popped up impishly from the ground. Two wide blue eyes took in everything there was to see. More brown stuff… more green waving things… and finally…
"What in the Sam Hill?" A towering figure loomed over him. The voice was rumbly and rough, so much like his father's!
He shot to his feet, his velocity lending him stability as he lurched toward the two figures staring dumbfounded down at him. As he lost speed, so went his balance and he wobbled a moment before toppling once again onto the ground.
"It's…a baby." The woman exclaimed her expression a mixture of amazement and joy.
"Martha Kent, now don't you go getting any ideas…" The man warned.
"Why Jonathan, you know as well I as do we can't leave him here!" Martha stepped forward and crouched down, reaching past him into the small pod and drawing forth a disheveled ball of blankets.
The voices were unfamiliar and yet the words they used were the same as those provided by his father. During his long journey, his father's voice had spoken mysteries, spinning stories of places and things he'd never seen. His astute young mind had expanded as a sponge under water.
His lips lifted to showcase a tooth or two in various stages of growth in a smile that received a reply from the woman who was stooped in front of him. He lifted his arms into the air, instinct overriding experience. The same was reflected in Martha as she wrapped the primary colored blankets around his torso and cradled him against her petite frame.
He leaned toward her, breathing in her scent. It was unfamiliar and comforting all at once, a warmth that was perhaps more powerful than that of the sunlight, wrapped around him, soon to be replaced by two gentle, soft arms.
Jonathan sighed. "Well, better change that tire if we're gonna get home and see about contactin' that boy's proper kin." He grumbled as he turned to make his way out of the crater and up the hill behind them.
Martha's gripped tightened slightly as she brushed her cheek against his face. "He hasn't got any - not for sure. Not around here anyways. You saw that contraption he came in, same as me!"
But Jonathan was already out of earshot, and had disappeared behind the tall grass.
Martha took a step after him, but paused a moment to look over the child that reclined so trustingly in her arms. His eyes were as blue as the sky from which he'd fallen. He blinked up at her a moment before extending his small hand to lay flat against the skin of her cheek. His fingers rose and fell gently as he patted her face affectionately.
It was in this moment that Martha Kent lost her heart. Every fiber in her being told her this boy was as alone as he was special, she knew that. And furthermore, she was also convinced that God had sent him to her for a reason. She didn't need to know what it was to be grateful.
A lump formed in Martha's throat and she laid a kiss on the child's forehead. She lifted her eyes to the clouds, and wondered at the impossibility of it all. A child falling from the sky straight into her arms… Heaven seemed to have gone to great trouble to get him here and one thing was for certain, she wasn't going to let him go.
Martha nodded definitively, squared her shoulders and made her way up the hill after her husband.
She reached to crest to find Jonathan on his knees beside truck, inspecting the deflated rear tire. The ancient pick up tottered precariously on the equally as ancient manual jack. Jonathan grunted as he threw his weight behind the tire iron in effort to remove the last of the stubborn lug nuts.
The child in her arms wiggles a bit and she gingerly sets him down on a patch of soft grass. "Stay put now, hear?" She tweaks his nose gently before turning her attention to her husband. "You take things easy now, Jonathan. You mind what Doc Frye said about that heart of' yours..." Martha tiptoed around the side of the truck.
Jonathan nodded distractedly as he struggled with the spare tire beneath the truck. He pulled with all his might and finally the worn, misshapen tire popped free, leaving the jack shimmying after it. A stone, tucked beneath the jack begins to sink into the lose gravel, the jack unable to bear the angle, slips away, the full weight of the pick up following closely behind.
Horrified, Martha opens her mouth to scream but fear drags the air from her lungs. Jonathan's wide eyes meet hers just as the truck makes its final and crushing descent…
But the expected carnage does not arrive. The truck stops in midair and with its suspension, time seems to stop. For a moment there is complete silence as Jonathan reflexively runs his hands over his body, surprised to find it still intact. He scrambles backwards, out of harms way, his eyes large and unblinking, agog at this impossible turn of events.
Martha gapes in amazement and as one their eyes find the source of this miracle...
Beneath the bumper of the truck stands her new son, dwarfed in size by the hulking mass of steel. He tilts his head slightly and grins up at his adoptive parents who gaze back at him poleaxed in disbelief.
Thirty minutes pass to find the truck repaired and the new family traversing over a small backwoods bridge that will carry them over the final stretch to their small farm. A thick gray tarp flaps in the wind, the small craft beneath it, hidden from curious eyes.
The truck rolls up to a weathered barn and Jonathan cuts the engine, his hands still shaking from the morning's events.
"All these years, happy as we've been, how I prayed and prayed the Good Lord would see fit to give us a child…" Martha whispers, breaking the silence.
Jonathan's head swiveled hastily in her direction his expression incredulous.
"No one must ever know…" she said firmly.
"Martha there is something strange about that boy…we may be taking on more than we can handle." Jonathan ran his oil-covered hands through his already disheveled hair. "What will we tell people?"
"We'll say he's child to my cousin in North Dakota, and just now orphaned." She said quickly. "Jonathan, he's just a baby..." Her eyes fell to the chubby face tilted up at her. "Poor thing…"
Jonathan threw his hands up into the air.
Martha hugged the child protectively against her chest. She hid her smile behind his dark curls. She well knew the look of her husband's concession.
Two wide pairs of eyes on blue, one hazel gazed pitifully at Jonathan Kent. He sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "What shall we call him then…"
"Look at that handsome face," she ran her hand gently through the midnight locks that adorned the head of the now slumbeing child. "We'll call him Clark."
"As in Gable?" Jonathan's lips twitched heavenward. "This whole debacle is like a story out of the pictures anyway. Why not name him after a star..."
Jonathan smile wryly and made his way into the house.
Martha's face glowed with joy as she gazed down at this unexpected miracle that had become her son.
Her eyes lifted to the sky. The morning had not yet triumphed over the night, as the rumor of the stars still peeked from behind the curtain of fading evening. Her eyes scanned across the vast expanse, wondering if the place from whence her child had come could somehow be seen by the naked eye and even now winked at her from the depths of unknown space.
She nodded in thanks to the heavens for that which been given, moved with humility and wonder that one such as she would be the guardian over so precious a gift.
Martha Kent climbed the last of the steps and welcomed for the first time a son, not only into her home, but into her heart.