Moonlight Landscape(Charles E.J. Moulton) Moonlight Landscape

A Short Story by Charles E.J. Moulton

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It was a warm taste. Caramel and honey. Cinnamon and chili and a bit of pepper mixed with ginger. Trickling down my throat into my belly and settling down there, transporting into my miraculous veins.

The taste of whiskey to me was like an open fireplace. Crackling wood ignited by heat, making it glow in red, yellow and orange tones. The flames inside the fire dancing, looking like Russian ballerinas at the Bolshoi Theater. As elegant as Solveig in Peer Gynt. A fairy of light.

The whiskey and the fireplace felt as smooth as the white bearskin rug upon which we lay, Fiorentina and I. A warm and soft rug that supported us as we kissed, our lips gently touching and creating wonders. Sweet strawberry flavor on a tender face, one black lock falling onto her face as we kissed. That and the light full moon shining in through the open balcony door across the rose garden onto our naked bodies. She was a work of art, my mistress, my lover, my Italian flame. The only woman I had ever met who loved sharing a Cuban cigar and a double barrel Jack Daniels. Between kisses, we puffed and drank, neither one of us minding the taste of the other one's tobacco or alcohol. It was a symphony of light, caramel, suave vanilla, strawberry flavored lip gloss and salty skin, embellished by moonlight over the Italian alps.

She had chosen the jazz. A trio from Los Angeles called The Watch-Over-Me's, named after our favorite jazz tune by Gershwin, "Someone to Watch Over Me". They played in elegant augmented and diminished suspension. Minor sixth chords designed to cause you to dream.

I kissed the sapphire on her elegant finger, the one I had just slipped beyond her dark red nails in light of a celebration of future matrimony. Our own hut, built by my people. And as I sunk into her soul to the music of America, I glanced at the replica of a Georges de la Tour painting above the fireplace, her favorite painter, that I had bought at Sotheby's last Wednesday and brought with me to Italy this weekend.

We would be married in Florence. How fitting for a Fiorentina to marry her lover in the city of Leonardo.

We had decided to make a child. So, there we were as God made us, willing to blend together to create a miracle.

"Captain?"

The voice of my first mate shocked me initially, especially since the entire scenario of the novel I had written for myself disintegrated, leaving me back on the holodeck in my own boring uniform.

"Yes?" I mumbled, drearily. "What is it, Number One?"

"Sorry to bother you, Captain Picard, but we are approaching the star system quicker than we thought, initially. The Klingon Empire would feel insulted if we came late to the peace treaty. They sent an emissary to escort us early to the banquet."

I sighed, not knowing what I would be expecting from all this. Captain Kirk had never had to face this, had he?

"I am on my way, Number One."

Standing up, I quickly turned on my Holonovel again, kissing my Fiorentina a so long as she lay on her bearskin rug.

"I shall be back shortly," I smiled, realizing that this lady I had invented actually had become more real to me than any Klingon Empire ever would or could be.

As I walked out of the Holodeck that morning, I yearned to get this silly treaty banquet with the Klingons overwith so that I could go and marry my Italian mistress in Firenze and become the king of my own moonlight landscape.

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