“It is not fair.”“You use that argument a lot,” her brother said softly. “It is a child’s lament. You’ll be well cared for and want for ...othing. Certainly, that is worth a little... unpleasantness.”“Easy for you to say,” she growled back. “You don’t have to lay with him.”“No,” he chuckled. “No, I don’t. As you said, though, he is old. Surely, he will not last much longer – no more than a few hundred years, at the most. On his passing, you will retire and still be cared for. He also has more. As you have read, I have been able to ride almost daily for the last four years and before that was trained over a summer spent working in the Camargue, on top of that I had spent four years training Spirit, working with him, building a bond that allowed the two of us to communicate with ease, at least to a point. None of that mattered the day I first set out to live my dream.But I’m getting ahead of myself.From the minute he was born I have handled Spirit, stroking, patting, rubbing,. At least life as I knew it.I give Chris a call. "Are you getting psyched up for Friday?" I asked."Hell, no," Chris replied. "This is going to be so embarrassing." "Yeah, I know," I replied. "But, hey, people are going to love it.Besides, we have Dave and Mark with us. No one is going to screw withthem. Therefore, no one is going to screw with us. They'll just thinkit's a riot, that's all." You think?" said Chris."Yeah, I know," I replied. "Hey, I hope you don't mind, but I took theliberty of. She has had a fitful sleep. Her dreams are back and they are filled by David’s presence in them. They are mere dreams but to her, they feel like nightmares. It is days like this that she wishes for days when she had none.In walks a black clad symbiont. He looks just like all the other males. He’s large, muscular and ugly. Where Beth has curly black latex-like hair, these guys are bald. The baldness and mouth full of razor sharp white teeth makes look very frightening. And Janice can sympathize.