The story so far: On Christmas Eve, Uhura the giraffe and Malaika the elephant have been turned into humans. They have befriended an older woman, Jean.

Jean had driven Uhura and Malaika all over town. They wandered through the shops in Manitou Springs. They had lunch in Old Colorado City. They reveled in the natural beauty of Garden of the Gods, where Uhura was amused by the formation known as Kissing Camels; it was supposed to resemble two camels sitting face to face, but she just didn’t see it.

All along, Uhura and Malaika studied the people. They saw joy in the faces of children, but the faces of most of the adults were somber as they raced through their day — work, errands, last-minute shopping. The holiday season, it seemed, wasn’t so merry.

Now Jean was driving up the winding road through Palmer Park; snow from a recent storm had been plowed and made an icy wall along the road, but the road itself was clear and dry.

“This is my favorite place in the whole city,” Jean said. “It’s like escaping into the mountains without leaving town.”

At the overlook, they got out of the car, walked to the edge and stared at the city sparkling before them. The afternoon was slipping away, and clouds were smothering the top of the mountains with a forbidding gray blanket.

Uhura looked to Cheyenne Mountain, tried to spot where the zoo was.

Jean dug her hands deep into her coat pockets and shivered.

“I love this city, but I worry about it,” Jean said. “Just like our country. We’re struggling so much in this economy. I wonder about the man who tried to take my purse this morning. Was he just, you know, a regular thug? Or simply a man pushed to the edge?”

She sighed.

“I don’t know. It’s like there’s a darkness inside. You see it on TV, on the Internet. Society just seems so fractured. So divided. And people seem so … so angry.”

“And you?” Malaika asked. “Are you angry?”

“No, just sad.”

Jean took her eyes off the city landscape, turned to face Malaika and Uhura.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m making our little adventure here kind of a downer.”

She tightened her lips, cocked her head, as if listening to a thought that had just popped into her head.

“I have an idea,” she said. “Something that might be a little more uplifting.”

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