The Sign

He stood at the window, surveying his back yard, which stretched over a gently sloped meadow all the way to the forest. The day was nearing dusk, and he wanted to take another look before the black, moonless night would take over. As he scanned across the flowerbeds he saw a face looking at him, much like the shroud of Jesus that had just been declared a fake, on account of a DNA mismatch of some sort; but this one was a smiley face formed by marks on a flat stone. He went outside bare-feet, to see if the apparition was the result of a practical joke — relatives with young girls had visited him just a few weeks before. Stepping closer, he recognized three spots of lichen, arranged serendipitously but firmly attached to the stone, as eyes and a nose, with an improbable twig running across just at the right place to form the mouth. This was a sign, certainly, but of what? Whoever it was who’d greeted him in this way had been successful catching his attention, but what was the next step? Days before, the specter of an alien civilization harnessing light from its own sun had hit the Internet. There were more things in heaven and earth, Horatio!

As the light faded, and the family of deer emerged at its usual spot, his eyes went back to the stone but now, what happened? The mouth was no more, because the twig, it was gone.