Continued from Day one: Discovery.
NaNoDrawMo – Day two: The Shell.
The appearance of the object was such that it was almost undeniably an egg. The shape, the texture, the way it sat upright on its bulging bottom in amongst some well-placed blades of grass made it quite obvious.
Wait. Well placed? What placed this egg here? Whatever it was it must have been something pretty big. Ted Arnold spent the next few minutes guessing the size of the egg from a few feet away. It was about as tall as him, he figured. Perhaps a bit more. Although he hadn’t yet tried, he guessed that he couldn’t wrap his arms around it. That meant it was at least 7 ft. around. Wow, 7 ft. around!
Just then an odd odor sprang into his nose. Had the wind shifted? Did he just pick up the scent now after standing near this object for so long? He looked around to make sure there was nothing in close by that could be producing this odor. It wasn’t a bad smell, he thought. It smelled like someone had just taken a long hot shower. Not quite like soap but a lot like hot water, if hot water even had a scent. The barn, which was only about 15 yards away, had a very distinct smell. Wet hay. Because of a few holes in the roof and it being late fall the barn always smelled this way. The scent Ted was smelling at this moment was most definitely not the barn. In any case he didn’t see anything that could be producing this scent besides the egg.
He took a few steps towards the egg. Standing this close he could see the texture much more clearly now. The surface was anything but smooth. Bumps, divots, pin-hole sized craters covered the egg from top to bottom. Just like a chicken’s egg, he thought.
Growing up on a farm meant that Ted had tons of chores as a child. One of those chores, which he still does to this day, was to clean out the chicken coop and collect the eggs every single morning. Looking at the egg’s texture now it immediately reminded him of how a chicken egg felt in his hands. From a few feet away though, chicken eggs seem relatively smooth with hardly any texture at all. If you look closely at a chicken egg the texture becomes obvious.
This reminded Ted of the moon. The moon, shining brilliantly in the night sky, looked flat as a quarter. Sure there were shades of grey that he now knew were enormous craters, valleys, and shadows produced by large mountains that covered the surface. He thought back to the first time he saw man step foot onto the moon. He was about 12 years old when his father was watching a program on TV chronicling man’s achievements in Space.
Space. Could this egg be from outer Space?
Stepping even closer to the egg Ted outstretched his hand, which at this point was fairly cold due to the wind, and held it an inch from the shell about halfway down the egg. He knew from reading up on eggs that typically the yolk of the egg is suspended in the middle with a pocket of air on the bottom and the “egg white†on the top. He wasn’t sure what made him think of that but at this point everything he knew about eggs was flashing through his mind. He placed his hand on the egg pretty firmly as a way to also gauge the weight of it when immediately he noticed something he didn’t expect…
The egg was incredibly warm.
Continued on Day three: Life.
"NaNoDrawMo is a personal challenge to push would-be artists beyond the bounds of comfortable "when I have time" practice for one month and see what happens." All of my drawings are being done using the incredible Acorn by Flying Meat.