I miss Her, to be quite frank. I yearn for Her gentle and persuasive power that would often flow through me, sometimes a soft and thick glow of clover...honey, and other times a river of fire that burned me at all hours. I miss the nights I could not sleep for the words that made me tremble, that weakened me for all their strength. Her most tender whispers that stirred me from dreams, filled me with ideas, lifted me and gave me a presence among poets. Honestly, the best part of me is in that. I hugged Rhonda and we petted our horse’s neck while we waited for the vet. She didn’t appear to be in pain. She just didn’t have the strength to get up.Once I was with Rhonda, Larry left to get a tarp and direct the vet out to the pasture. It was about half an hour later that the vet gave Gypsy an examination and shook his head.“She’s a good old girl and she’s had a good life,” he said. “But I’m afraid her time has come.”“She outlasted Jingo,” I said. He’d been the first of the horses to go a. ”“I’m not trying to –” But she was already gone, stalking up the slope and disappearing into another line of trees. Untroubled by the treatment it had received, the facto dutifully lumbered after her.Zuri was lying on her back under the fig tree when I returned, her eyes closed, a takamakura propped under her neck. On the foreshore Ananya was playing with Kirra, racing back and forth on the white sand between the breakwater and a large crepe myrtle tree.While it was possible to sever someone’s. That night Arista was taken to Dimitri’s chamber and rushed about to get into the tub and encouraged to wear something agreeable to his taste. She did not fight with the handmaids this night. They looked at each other in alarm. She normally would be apt to tear the gown they chose to pieces and then be told to go jump over a cliff. A middle aged servant spoke ‘You are in a rather compliant mood tonight,’ ‘I should get used to my stay here. After all, I was captured and enslaved so who am I to.