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16 An Emotional Time

Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2011 5:42 am
by Stephen Whiteside
16 An Emotional Time

© Stephen Whiteside 29.12.2011

Strictly speaking, although they didn’t know it, Hocus and Pocus were not human. They were close to human, but not quite. Again, they didn’t know it, but they had been born on another planet. By some extraordinary coincidence, this planet went by the same name as the brand of a hot drink that had been very popular on Earth a thousand years earlier - Nescafe. The planet of Nescafe. And Hocus and Pocus were native Nescafians. As were their parents, now watching them from far above.

It was an emotional time for them. The first time they had laid eyes on their dear sons in thirty four years. It was such an old story. They had fallen in love as teenagers. Tina had fallen pregnant by mistake. Rufus was in no position to support his new sons and, reluctantly, they had given them up for adoption. How they had finished up with human adoptive parents on planet Earth was a bureaucratic stuff-up of monumental proportions.

Rufus and Tina had prospered since that time. Had three more children, and looked after them well. Then, with the children reaching their own independence, the quest to find Hocus and Pocus had become an obsession. Five years it had taken. Now here they were. Finally laying eyes on them once more. Strictly, of course, that was not true. Their scanner was laying its eyes on them, and they were viewing the images that it produced. But it was almost the same thing. It certainly felt as though it was almost the same thing.

But were they to lose them once more the moment they had found them? Malevolent forces were circling. They knew that. Had been watching Pocus for a long time, closing the net around him. Now, at the last moment, Hocus had jumped into the net, too. What an unexpected bonus!

Were they to be whisked away to yet another alien civilisation under their very noses? Or would they die of exposure down there beside the river before any party could reach them?