stanley continued

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current music: "army" ben folds (live)
mood: empty

here is the completed first page

Stanley was an average penguin; a horribly, hideously average penguin. A glossy tuxedo covered his bowling-pin shaped body, shimmering in the reflection of the sun on the ocean. His flippers had scars on the inside, but they weren’t from the sharp rocks of the Davis Strait.

Closing his eyes, Stanley could see the black and white masses of penguins on the Greenland coast. He remembered being a part of that mass, everyone
exactly the same as he. But when he opened his eyes, an eclectic ocean of humans scurrying about appeared before him.

In front of him was a statue bigger than any other he had seen. The bottom read, "give me your tired, your poor, your hungry, your huddled masses..."

To Stanley, this was home.

Sulking as he waddled mournfully, he climbed up the stairs to the top of the Statue. “One foot in front of the other,” Stanley thought. He breathe a great sigh, lowering his shoulders even lower than before. He placed his flipper on the railing as he waddled to the top.

There was still some ice left for him to sleep on when he reached the top of the great statue. He lied down beneath the giant flame above him, which, come nightfall, would illuminate the entire statue.

Stanley silently wept as he looked at his surroundings. He felt eerie, out of place. But as the thought of home returned to him, he remembered what it was like to be just like anyone else, what it was to be small, empty insignificant, and helpless.

  ¶ 1/21/2004 07:20:00 PM