.."He looked in her hands. She held the small silver bird, its chain stretched taut around her neck. Felek stared at it for a moment, eyes going back ...o her face. He squeezed her bare arm."What do you see, Ruta?" It's ... it's glowing. Glowing! And..." She turned, slowly facing the fishing town. "This way." She stopped where she was. "We have to go this way."Felek followed the invisible line outward. The Eastern road. He nodded."Well, I guess it works. That's good."Ruta blinked, shaking her. She could hear her ownbreathing, loud and rasping in the utter stillness. She could hear herheart beating. It seemed slow. How calm she felt!She had a sense of time passing, how long she wasn?t sure. She seemed to beon the second file now. Or was it the third. Maybe the fifth.Anyway, she?d looked at quite a few. They were all filled with beautifulnumbers that held her mesmerised and unable to look away. She had no desireto look anywhere else anyway. There was no need to think of anything. He walked over and snapped a bracelet on one wrist of each of us. A short chain connected us to one another, and another he used to pull us toward the door. We were towed stumbling down the hallway for a long ways, then pushed into another room. This was some kind of office, and standing there was another man - much better dressed than our escort, although he would not have been invited to pose for a mens magazine. He walked over to us and began to inspect our bodies. And by inspect, I. ”“I didn’t want to get paint on my nice dress,” Christy smiled, “It’s not like he hasn’t seen me like that before.”“Christy, I told you, you could work in the nude and I’d be fine with it,” I smiled.“I know you would,” Christy replied, “And, I may do that when we paint the kitchen, there’s a lot to paint in there.”“And you don’t want paint on your sexy lingerie,” I teased.“No, I don’t! Christy teased, “My lingerie is expensive.”James and I both smiled.Christy, changed the subject,” I told.