Never worried ‘bout it, myself, though, an’ my Grandma was a Blackfoot. Fishin’s too good up there to care about a few spooks.” The pipe belch...d out another voluminous cloud. “Well, that be all for ya today?” Dave Morrison hadn’t planned his life to include owning a hunting lodge. His plan was an MBA, a high-paying job as a stockbroker with a partnership sometime before he turned forty, and a life of ease beginning at fifty-five. This spring had forced some changes to his plan. The markets. ?Do you remember what tomorrow is??Her brow creased in thought, a look of confusion on her face. Small wonder. I doubt she even knew what month it was. ?It's our daughter's eighteenth birthday.?Julie stiffened, looking at up at me with wide eyes, and I thought for a moment that she was about to break the rules and speak. But she recovered herself, and just kept staring intensely at me. The two girls hadn't seen each other since the divorce, and I'd deliberately told my pet nothing about. “Incubus, come out wherever you are.” Raener froze. What did she just say? The human girl stood up and her gaze searched the edge of the forest. Her eyes met Raener’s and with a hand gesture, commanded for him to come out. Raener didn’t know what to say. No lesson ever taught him what to do if the human woman gained the initiative. Perhaps if he was in full form, then he could have thought things through more thoroughly, but so starved was he that he followed the command of her voice. Her. Bitter, not at all like its sweet-smelling appearance.By the time I catch up to Bird, she is sitting on a gentle knoll by a small pond. The grass is wispy and wild looking. A few straggling sunflowers sprout here and there, volunteers carried by the wind to set root where they landed. A perfect watercolor backdrop.I don’t have my light meter, but it’s just before sunset, the golden hour. I make a few adjustments to the shutter speed and aperture and snap several pics. Bird slides back onto her.