She had a smaller crown made that was on her head, gold but not jeweled. Being a widow, she always wore darker colors to show others that she too had ...uffered loss as they did.A year went by while her reign continued to prosper as many of the smaller kingdoms surrounding Billingsly cast a covetous eye upon the land seeing its assets grow. The soil for raising crops were the best around. Billingsly stock in cattle, sheep, swine and horses increased.Their coffers swelled with revenues. She had. . I showed mine. She moved up and sniffed my breath and breathed on me. I sniffed hers ... EWW! Rotten fish! She bent her head."Bump heads, David," Grace said.My sister has moments when I doubted her sanity ... this was one of them."Do it."With a shrug, I bumped heads with a full grown mother Bobcat. There was a visible and audible spark. I sat back ... she sat back.Hello, David.Of course I wasn't buying that ... voices in my head ... especially from a cat. I'm just recycled not crazy.And why. I'm also a mother of three, not the ideal for retaining youth and vitality. Thankfully, I've got them into their teens and beyond and they've really been little trouble. I know, knock on wood.In some ways, being over forty isn't so bad, childrearing is within the sight of them going off to college and such. Then, just hubby and me, well, that's something to look forward to.Being on the dark side of forty has brought me one aspect to my life that I wasn't expecting though now I've heard it from. Beginning with her hands – planing and hoping for excape and revenge – Tarjana tried very slightly to flex her wrists – but they were bound. As were her feet. Next she tried to move her arms – but there was very little movement in them and also some numbness. Her legs were the same.For a moment Tarjana was puzzled until, slowly, her mind supplied the explanation – she was stretched out on a frame of some kind.A killing frame.Finally, reluctantly, having learned all she could, having listened to.