Clark had spent the whole day looking for information on Leslie Luckabee in Australia and hadn’t had a chance to eat.
Not that he needed to eat of course, but he did like to and was accustomed to it. It had been at least twelve hours since his last meal and he felt like he at least needed a snack before he flew home across the Pacific Ocean.
It was five p.m. local time, and as he flew low along the coastline, Clark’s nose was hit with the savoury aroma of cooked beef and pastry. He spotted a small beachside kiosk and, without thinking, landed in front of it, offering the young employee a small wave and polite hello.
The young man rushed to serve him, and after a very brief look at the menu on the wall of the kiosk, Clark ordered himself the beef pie.
The starstruck young man prepared his order and insisted the pie was "on the house."
Still, Clark offered him a twenty-dollar US bill from his cape pocket, but the young man shook his head and insisted, "It's all good, mate!"
The sun was just starting to lower as Clark took a seat at a picnic table facing the ocean. He watched the handful of surfers in the water catching their last waves of the day.
His stomach growled, and Clark's attention turned to his late afternoon snack. He couldn’t really call it dinner. It wasn’t even breakfast time in Metropolis. Lois was likely still asleep or just getting out of bed.
The thought of his wife made him desperate to get home. But first he needed to eat. The pie smelled too good to wait any longer. He pulled the pie from the paper bag, setting it on top of the crinkly paper, and examined the small plastic container of ketchup it came with.
"Tomato sauce," he read. "Squeeze Me."
He squeezed and shot the 'tomato sauce' straight into his left eye.
He looked around self-consciously. No one had seen. There was only one other occupied picnic table, where a woman sat with two little kids, sharing a paper tray of fish and chips.
Clark dabbed at his eye with his cape. He flipped the little plastic sauce container over and managed to get the rest of the sauce onto the pie.
His mouth watered, and he picked up the pie, ready to take a bite.
"Excuse me, Mister?"
Clark tilted his head to the left to see a small child standing beside him. One of the little kids from the other picnic table. She must have been only three or four years old. With messy blonde hair and a dirty face, she grinned up at him with wide, hopeful eyes.
Clark set the pie down.
"Hi there," he said in his most kid-friendly Superman voice.
The little girl blushed and turned to look at the woman Clark assumed was her mother, seated at the other table. The mother gave the girl an encouraging smile and a thumbs-up.
The little girl huffed out a breath and turned back to Clark. She tilted her head and squinted up at him, the setting sun hitting her square in the face.
"Are you really Superman?" She pointed to the S on his chest.
"Um, yes I am."
"What are you doing?"
"Just having some dinner, like you."
The girl frowned. "You don’t live here."
Clark smiled. "I'm just visiting."
"Why?"
He couldn't tell her he'd spent the whole day investigating the son of a sociopath who was hellbent on taking over Metropolis and probably destroying his and Lois's lives in the process.
"I like to make friends all over the world," he said instead.
The girl's eyes sparkled with excitement. "Can I be your friend?"
"Of course!"
"And my brother? And Mummy?" She gestured to her mother, who was now scooping a screaming, red-faced toddler out of a stroller as seagulls surrounded their table, eager to sample some of their fish and chips dinner.
"Sure."
She let out a small squeak and ran back to her mother. The seagulls scattered, and Clark smiled and gave the little girl's mom a quick wave.
He carefully squeezed out some more tomato sauce onto the pie and brought it to his mouth once again.
"Excuse me?!"
His little friend was running back to his table.
Clark set his pie down again.
"Hi again."
She held a kiwi fruit in her hand. "This is for you. Because we're friends."
Clark caught the mother's eye. She shrugged with a smile, and Clark smiled back.
"Thank you," Clark said to the girl, accepting the fruit.
She giggled and skipped back to her table.
Clark set the kiwi fruit on the table and picked up his pie again.
The end.
I was looking at the script for Voice from the Past the other day and noticed in one of the versions Superman brings Lois a kiwi back from Australia, which seemed a bit random much like this story..
FDK can go below.
