Environmental Romance Part Ten

WARNING:  Don't even think about reading this installment 

unless you have read the foregoing chapters

numeros uno, dos,  tres,  cuatro,  

cinco, seis, siete, ocho y nueve!

A challenging piece of romantic literature

such as this will leave you hopelessly lost

without the proper framework.

Flora: An Environmental Love Story

By: Laraine F. Eddington

(Best read aloud with expression by candlelight)

Installment numero diez:


What Albert, the seeing-eye goat saw was a man… a real man, nothing like the pathetic squishy mulleted lump lying duct taped and helpless on Flora’s cabin floor. The real man’s manly shape filled the open door way; a shape formed of muscles molded miraculously over a symmetrical framework of bones made strong by years of copious calcium intake and clean living. It was shape held together with sinew as strong as piano wire, a shape encased in skin that bore the flush of outdoor living and good health. The gentle forest breeze blew past this man and the scent it carried into Flora’s delicate chiseled nostrils whispered, “Conrad is here…and he smells just as delicious as ever.”

“Conrad, is it…could it be…” Words failed the gentle Flora, and her fair complexion paled into a hue more akin to organic skim milk than 2%.


“Flora!” He spoke the name with reverence, regret and the timbre of his voice reverberated through the timber of the forest. Never had a name been spoken with such meaning; regret, devotion…longing.


Flora took a tentative step toward him, and then turned away, her slender hand nervously touching her swanlike neck. “Conrad, it has been three years. I thought I’d never see you again.”


“I had to stay away Flora, I couldn’t bear to see what I had done to you”. The words were torn from his throat like a strip of wax under an overgrown eyebrow.

Flora turned back toward him, her feathery black eyelashes sweeping fruitlessly over her beautiful, sightless eyes. “Oh Conrad, When my eyes closed, my heart opened; and I really began to see.”

Wendell came to, finding himself bound and gagged on the Flora’s sustainable bamboo floor and began to wriggle like an earthworm on a hot sidewalk. Albert clicked clacked to his side and lowered his shaggy head, tickling Wendell with his wiry goat whiskers. Wendell sneezed behind the duct tape that covered his mouth and Albert licked his face in an accommodating way.




“What do you mean Flora?” Conrad took her arm and led her out the cabin door and to the porch swing woven of willow wands by the Sightless Brothers of the Forest. “What did you see without eyes that you couldn’t see with eyes??” The swing rocked gently under their firmly formed fannies.

Flora sighed, and her breath tickled Conrad’s neck, making his well shaped adam’s apple bob like it was in a tub of water at a Halloween party. She continued “When I could no longer see the sunset, the eyes of my soul finally opened to the miracle of memory.” Conrad’s eyes smarted and he brushed at them with the back of a lightly furred knuckle. Flora’s honeyed voice continued. “When I could no longer see the mighty Ponderosa pines I finally heard the song the wind makes through the boughs.” A sudden gust through the treetops seemed to accompany her words.

Conrad took her in his arms then, and there was no need for words as Flora’s tiny frame melted into him like she was Jello and he was a Tupperware mold. As Conrad’s gently parted lips met hers a conduit opened between them and thoughts intertwined as freely as the nectar of their saliva.


Albert the seeing-eye goat watched the two lovers rock and kiss and rock and kiss until he grew bored and went back inside to gnaw on Wendell’s savory Walmart sneakers.


Dusk had fallen and it was getting chilly before Conrad finally spoke, “My darling…there is something I want you to see.”


To be continued…possibly only one more time.