Titanium Friendship
On the 4th of August, in the year of 2000, I happened to be hanging out at Skydive San Marcus. Even though I had pretty much retired from skydiving the previous year I was regularly welcomed back by everyone at the drop zone. Oftentimes, I would lend a hand to the staff and owners. During this particular afternoon, the wife of one of the skydivers bounded breathlessly up to me and asked if I could assist in transporting an injured skydiver to the hospital. I followed her back to the car park and there, in the back cargo area of an SUV was one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. She had red hair and sparkling eyes, an hour-glass figure, and despite obviously being in considerable pain, her personality just blazed out at me. I clambered into the back of the SUV with her and braced my legs against the ice pack covering her right knee. And thus I met the amazing KD. As the three of us girls chatted, I happened to ask “Anybody hear that Skydiver-X has a new girlfriend? have you met her?” To which, KD spluttered laughter and said “Well, yes, that would be ME.” Over the next 3 hours, a few miles of bumpy roads, much screaming interspersed with much laughter, and the hilarious disruption of the ER, we bonded. She’s been one of my best friends ever since … and a continuing light of my life. It turned out that KD had managed to shatter her shin-bone and she had to have surgery to screw a titanium plate to the bone in order to repair the extensive damage. Three years later, around Thanksgiving 2002, she had surgery again to remove the hardware and while she was drugged up to the eyeballs, I pilfered two of the titanium screws. I took the screws to an incredibly gifted friend and coworker who handcrafts jewelry, and she made two fabulous matching necklaces with the screws as centerpieces. I gave one to KD for Xmess that year along with the following fantasy short story…
Long ago and far away, before the beginning of Time himself, a beautiful moon-goddess named Titania and her ethereal sylphs frolicked and danced amongst the stars. One day, while visiting her sister, the goddess Earthia, Titania happened across a melancholy golden-haired sylph named Zhuliana. “What ails you, my beautiful child?”, Titania asked softly … “I’m lonely”, replied the sylph, “I feel as though a part of me is missing and is calling for me, but I know not from whence. I do not lack for the attention of the Passions”, she continued, “but, this is another form of love, and it calls for me”. Titania pondered for a moment before smiling softly and beckoning forth a cloud messenger to summon her lover, the sun god, Blazeurius, who appeared instantly at his lover’s side in a dazzle of fire and brilliance. “It is time, my love”, began Titania, “to bring forth a soultwin for Zhuliana. One with hair of flames and eyes to reflect the moon’s sparkle. She must be beautiful to behold … fiery, passioniate, and loyal. She must be strong and yet playful … a little mischievous. And she must be borne of both heaven and earth.”
Blazeurius smiled and took Titania into an embrace of white-hot intensity … and thus a new sylph was created. She was named Kellika, for she was of flame hair and emerald eyes, of the ebbing and flowing tides of the moon, the passion and intensity of the sun, and the fleshly curves of the earth.
And the gods and goddesses smiled upon the two beautiful and flirtatious sylphs, showering them with gifts of sensuality, of creativity, of passion, and of laughter. The wind god, Zephyrus and his lover, the goddess Skye, took them to frolic among the clouds, playfully tossing them around in the air currents and slowly lowering them gently to the awaiting arms of the goddess Earthia.
One day, in a terrible moment of distraction, Kellika fell from Skye’s embrace, hurtling to the earth below, and landing in a shattering of bones. When Titania saw what had happened to her beautiful sun-moon child, tears of silver lightning sprang from her crystal-clear eyes. As her liquid anguish tore through the sky, the droplets turned to piercing titanium arrows that penetrated the broken flesh and bone of her creation and began to magically mesh together to knit and heal the breaks. From that day forth, Blazeurius decreed, the sylphs would become earthbound and live among Earthia’s offspring while visiting at times with the chastened Zephyrus and Skye.
And so Kellika and Zhuliana continue their earthly dance … but now and again, when you look to the sky, you will see their reflections, the daughters of the sun and moon, dancing together…. as occasional flashes of lightning appear in the sky like jagged spears of titanium …
© DanjerusKurves.com ~ December 2002
inspired by and dedicated to KD,
without whom my life would lack a certain Passion
