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"A Good Place to Rest Your Egg" by William Wither

Bugle boy played his nose ’til dawn. The mourning cry of a summer gone.

Leaf kid rose with a stem in their cap. Outside, the cold air flecked the grass and snaked through the cracks in Leaf’s kitchen window. “That’ll cause another tornado,” they thought to themselves, and grabbed their hurricane broom to sweep the excess out of their house.

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Once the job was done, Leaf kid carefully picked up their collection of egg timers and placed them back on the shelves. They wound them each for a minute, and heard them hum ‘thank-you, thank-you’ in A minor. However, one would not tick, no matter how much Leaf wound it.

“Wound is a wound,” they said, turning the timer over and finding a crack in its base. They shed a single tear which sunk into the earthen floor and sprouted a pea shoot, curly like a Q. They dug a hole in the ground and whispered a message into it, then covered it with leaves.

At home, Rickard stood over the sink with a tooth that was loose, wrapped in gauze with a nylon noose. The tooth pleaded for remorse, but Rickard leaned her head back and popped the incisor from its gum as the floor bubbled up below her. “Oh, a message.” She blubbered as her gums folded back over each other to form a new root. Rickard leaned low to the ground, popping the bubble with a pin, and heard Leaf kid’s message wheeze through the hole. “My egg timer has gone. Meet me at the mountain.”

Milk Mountain was always winter, covered in excess powdered milk that no one knew what to do with until Vesper made the suggestion. Now its north side was an all-season ski resort while the south was left as a scrap junket, the mountain itself made from trash.

“Help me find a good resting place,” said Leaf kid. And both they and Rickard plodded up the mountain in their padded styrofoam boots. The boots went ‘crunch’ when the powdered milk would not, and so the sound of snow filled the air as they climbed.

“I pulled another tooth this morning,” said Rickard, searching under a stale mattress.

“Congratulations,” replied Leaf kid. “How many more until you have enough for a kid?”

“Only two,” Rickard smiled.

Leaf kid looked below the old seats of a ferris wheel, then at an off-kilter shelf. They carefully placed the broken egg timer in different places, then leaned their ear close to hear if the timer hummed.

“Nothing yet,” said Leaf kid.“We’ll find something,” Rickard assured them.

Sometimes the shouts of excitement from the mountain’s north side made their way around the peak and turned into butterflies that landed on the wreckage.

“Oh Leaf, I think I found it,” cried Rickard. Leaf kid solemnly walked over, the egg timer cupped in their hands, and looked as Rickard peeled back a cloth.

“It’s perfect.”

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