Sunny did her stretching ritual to a four-four beat. Arms reached out to the four directions - back, shoulders up and down, then left and backwards. Eyeballs down. And right. And left. And up. Finally, after a wiggle of the ears, wide opening of the mouth, and stretching both legs as far as they could go in the cramped driver's seat of her green VW Bug, she barked a loud HA! and then a Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh, yes. That felt better. 

She glanced in the rear view mirror. Yep. All thirty-some years were showing. Her unusual earrings, yellow pencils flying forward on golden wings, swayed by her round, almost childlike, face. Looking down her Roman nose at herself, admiring those outlandish greenish-turquoise eyes, she lit up a Marlboro, taking in the smoke with sharp intensity, and faced the road ahead.

Sunset was just beginning to show rosy colors in the enormous expanse of Montana sky; the landscape had begun darkening to show off the contrast. Tumbleweed danced in the breeze, as if celebrating the cooling of the air. And there! Over there! A coyote, perched on the side of the road as if he owned it. Wow! Cool! She slowed almost to a stop as she observed him there.

Sunny thought about her all-time favorite coyote story, the one where Coyote fell in love with a star. Crazy guy! Imagine falling in love with a star. That old coot would sing to his lady love every night, from the highest point of the tallest mountain, but she would seem to ignore him, never responding, although at times she would pass so close to his mountain top that he might reach out and touch her. One night he kept quiet; the Star danced closer and closer. He begged in his sweetest tones for a dance, and she reached out and, taking his paws in her hand, swooped him up into the night sky. He was lifted into space and found himself dancing with his lover and her sisters in the velvet blackness for hours and hours. Ahhh, he was dizzy with happiness. Finally, Coyote tired and knew he had to go back to his home on the earth, so he begged to be returned. With what seemed almost like a shrug, the Star simply let go of her short-term lover. He fell and fell and fell and fell toward his earthy home with a flash of light. Coyote was terrified! Soon - Bang! He smashed into the earth with such force he knocked a hole in it! His blood became water and he made a lake, which became Crater Lake, in Klamath country in Oregon. Now when the Coyotes come out at night to talk with the stars, they often scold that cold-hearted star for killing their poor Coyote father.

Sunny smiled as she thought about the love of two such disparate entities. She peered into the rearview mirror and watched her Coyote disappear around the curve.