The rumors about Samantha Mae had been, to put it politely, unkind, with the muttering and gossip spreading out like wildfire in a town that had barely seen the first stirrings of color television, and hadn't yet actually heard Elvis but shared a unanimous, tsk-tsk disapproval. The machinist's son was considered a likely candidate for the reason behind Samantha Mae's unsteady gait and flushed cheeks, and the more disapproving townsfolk shared whispers about falling in with the wrong sort with nary a glance at the church. Most, however, simply regarded her sketches of fantastical sights and occasional whimsies about saucers as simply to be expected from Earl's daughter, way out past the water tanks on the edge of town.

Samantha Mae had, after all, been known to stare out at the stars ever since she was a little girl, sneaking out into the darkness and fixing her gaze on the heavens, one that had started well before the fuss on the Brazel's ranch a while ago. It couldn't be helped, was the general consensus, and she would be unlikely to find a decent boy to settle down with as a result, but life ticked by as usual, Samantha Mae more or less excluded.

This was, to her private amusement, not all that bad, the regular arrival of the gleaming craft at half past midnight on Tuesdays being quite worth the strange looks on main street. She had thought it strange at first, the gleaming thing that had looked like a capsule from one direction and something like a dish from another, and the beam of light had made her skin tingle the first time, but her smuggled copies of Weird Tales had turned out to be a little off the mark.

Yes, the gray-skinned, bald sort with the big black eyes had stared at her, and yes, there had been all manner of probing with both rubbery instruments and an oddly man-like appendage, but that had been quite some weeks later, after the polite introductions, and the trip round the canyon, and the early mornings sitting on the bench in the saucer staring at the stars together. After a very charming dinner where she didn't quite have the heart to tell him that chicken was not supposed to taste like Coca-Cola, and after they had shared a kiss.

All things considered, they had both learned a lot, from warm, liquidy sensations that the romance novels never talked about, to holding hands even if the fingers didn't match up., to the other sort of probing the townsfolk would be aghast at even if it were with one of the town boys.

Perhaps there was a future out there after all, she found herself thinking, staring up at the stars at five minutes to half past midnight, hearing the long, low moo of the cows fade in the growing thrum...

More of a sketch piece than a fully-fleshed out tale, but I quite like the idea of an oddly wholesome and decidedly adult relationship between a country girl at the dawn of the atomic age, and a mischievous but polite gray fellow with nimble fingers and a tendency to point out that not aliens are, er, little, thank you very much.

As always, please feel free to drop me a line on this or anything else! I even welcome limericks.

- Werewizard