>>>>>>Rosie and I cut up four pineapples for my staff and hers at the library then we drove to the diner for breakfast. No more omelets for me, break...ast these days was either oatmeal or cream of wheat, either melon or grapefruit and a single cup of coffee. We kissed briefly then she drove away in her wedding present and I followed en route to my office.I anticipated that the day would be chaotic, but that would prove to be a gross understatement. People were after me from the second I. There I was, at work early in the cold and the frost, and the automatic timer hadn't worked yet again and my office was like a refrigerator. Being a dispatcher for a small transport company in a small country town in the middle of nowhere had lost a lot of it's appeal over the months and I was giving my continued employment in this field considerable, and critical, thought.As usual, it being a Monday, a number of my drivers had reported in that they weren't fit to work and, the fact that I was. Liz was tired, but smiling, when she jumped in next to me in the afternoon. She might have been tired, but it didn't stop her from telling me everything she had agreed to, with her teachers. If she managed to do everything, she would miss only a few lab study items, and she would be able to make those up next year. Back at my place she was once again on the verge of tears when she saw the laptop I had bought for her, but she agreed that it would really help a lot with her studies.During the. I couldn't even see the dimple in the tile. I stroked the rise, tracing it. Was it an artifact of its manufacture, or the rune. It had a shape, purpose, angular lines.A rune.I drew my wooden dagger and scratched at the tile. Paint flacked off, a thick lacquer glaze. Set into the tile was an iron rune, dull gray. It was Dwarven craftsmanship at its finest. I doubt any human could have ever detected the subtle difference.But I did.I worked the dagger's blade between iron and tile. I pried at it.