Page 19 - Mateo and the Gift of Presence audio flip book Ch 1-2

What Happened Next

spaghetti topped with a blob of delicious butter, blinked out.
The circle of stars that was shaped like a pizza, faded away. And
in the east…well, what was in the east requires several para-
graphs to describe.
Not even hungry Mateo could imagine what was rising
above the trees in the east looked anything like food. At first, he

thought he was having double vision and he closed his eyes for a
moment to clear them. But when he reopened them, the appari-
tion was still there: two full moons peeking through the tangled
branches of the trees. The first was very large, at least twice the
size of Earth’s moon, and much brighter. The second was about
the size of Earth’s moon, but dimmer, and pale orange.
Perhaps you’ve had the profoundly uneasy feeling that
Mateo now experienced as he sat, awestruck, watching the
moons make their grand entrance. His overwhelming urge was

to hide—like a panicked mouse in the shade of a hawk’s wing—
and he threw his arms around the nearest branch and burrowed
his head into the leaves. But the brightness of the moons-light
(for moons-light it was) penetrated through his tightly puckered
eyelids and even Mateo, with his well-developed skill for disap-
pearing inside his imagination, could not escape.
Quick as lightning, he slid down the tree and began

running as fast as he could, away from the moons, his moons-
shadow leaping out in front of him as he ran.
The moons-light was so bright that he had no trouble
seeing where he was going, and he was so athletic and quick
that it took him almost no time to find a safer spot. Leaping
over tree roots and downed branches, running for his life, eyes

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