Carbon, light

Moonlight sticks to the skin if you stand in it long enough. One evening in Sicily I soaked up a whole bucket of it. For a month I glowed like a bride. Sailors steered by me, moths adored me, and the lighthouse keeper filed a formal complaint.

Witches in the Harz once turned me into a toad for an hour. It was no trouble. I kept my rank, my manners, and my mustache. I hopped to the nearest inn and ordered a glass of wine, and the waiter gave me the best table in the house.

Comets are simply horses with good lungs. I roped one over Sweden and rode it bareback past Saturn. The tail singed my britches. At the far turn I jumped off and landed in a haystack near Malmo, just in time for a rather dull wedding.

My gray mare could read, a fact I kept from the neighbors. She liked poems and hated sums. Once she found a spelling error on a road sign and refused to pass. We stood there for two days until the king himself sent a painter with a brush and a humble note.

Dice betrayed me only once, in a game with a small red gentleman near Lemberg. I lost my hat and won his tail. We traded back at dawn, since it did not suit either of us. He still writes each New Year, and his handwriting.