It was well past the witch’s hour when Meadow finally saw the cottage that she was supposed to find. She wasn’t looking for it, mind you. She never was. But she’d seen it in her dreams each of the last four nights, and once in the flames of the hearth when she’d woken at her sister’s bedside. Each time the features of the old home had leapt into a more stark and sinister repose, accentuating the rough grain lines of the timber, and a porch that had long since fallen into disrepair. Meadow saw them now though in their naked simplicity, laid out before her in a way that the visions themselves had never managed to capture. They tasted of the bitter nostalgia of dreaming, and the relentless passage of time. Yet the cottage wasn’t foreboding or ominous. Like most places, and most people, it was just … sad. 

“PFFffffff!!” The nickering of her horse snapped Meadow’s attention away from the simple frame of the home, and back to the evening’s rainy drizzle. The horse stamped once and drove its muzzle into the crook of Meadow’s neck. “You want to be home,” she sighed. “So do I.” Her hand that wasn’t holding the reins raised to scratch absently at the creature’s forelock, turning the sensation of this place over in her mouth. “Creation knows we’ve earned it.” She sat staring at the horse until four heartbeats had passed, and when it gave no reply she led it to the relative protection of a nearby willow and lashed it securely to a low hanging branch. 

And before she could talk herself out of it, Meadow made her way to the door and knocked. 

***

There was no second band that played that night at the club. To be more accurate, there was no opener. Bands like this one didn’t really have openers. They were openers, for bigger and more popular bands, who played bigger and more popular venues. This was just a bar, and a shitty one at that. It smelled of fried food and strong drinks, and it was decorated with reminders of places more grand, and people who had never in fact stepped foot inside. It was every bit as ragged as Bowen himself, a detail that he couldn’t help but notice as he opened the door for the others. 

Yvonne pushed past him and turned back to their friends. “Who else is coming?” she smiled.

But the response was drowned out by sound of music

***

There lies among the lower fens of Lochland
A single path of safety through the mire
And there among the dismal swamps and quicksands
He stumbled, spent, bereft of horse and squire

The words of the song caught Meadow off guard. She paused, her hand still holding the crude brass knocker that had been crafted to to look like a large, poorly carved bird. Meadow craned her neck to see that warm lantern light filtered out from the curtains of the transom. Whoever was inside was awake. 

Bearing naught but cold air in his sore lungs
His heart lifted to spy a distant fire.

And they were singing. 

She sat gayly, barefoot and bare legged
A beautiful contrast to one so ragged.

Meadow stepped back at the announcement of light footsteps, and watched as the door was opened carefully. 

“Come in,” urged the woman. She was shorter than Meadow, with straw colored hair and flush features. Her large eyes seemed friendly enough, and her smile was a warm reminder of better moments. And yet, there was something else. Just beneath. “Let’s get you out of the rain,” the woman beamed. 

Meadow lowered her hood and shook the water from her curls. “Many thanks,” she managed as she unclipped her cloak at the broach and folded it neatly in a practiced motion. “I’m sorry to call at such a late hour. I saw your lights on, and -”

“It’s not late,” the woman smiled. “I assume you’ve come for a remedy.”

“I assume I have,” Meadow lied. Her dreams had not shown her this, taking her no further than the door itself. Dreams were like that – painfully fickle despite their insistence and urgency. “I could of course come back when you’re open,” she offered politely. 

“We’re always open.” 

“We?”

“My assistant and I.’ Her smile never slipped. “He’s just in the next room.”

***

“The lead singer.”

“What about her,” asked Bowen above the noise.

“She’s hot is all.”

“But is she too hot?” asked Yvonne.

“How could anyone be too hot?”

Yvonne  smiled wide, a look of mischief behind her eyes that only Bowen really knew. “I mean, it could happen.” She took a sip from her drink and raised her voice above the noise of the music. “What if you were so hot that you distracted paramedics?”

Bowen just laughed at that, along with their friends. 

“You’re laying on the ground unconscious, your life hanging by a thread, the paramedics cut away your clothes and just … freeze.”

“Hahaha.”

“Just drooling down at you while you’re dying.”

“We need to start chest compressions, but, just look at these titties.”

They all laughed at that too. 

Bowen pushed his beer around in its glass and pretended to drink, hoping to nurse the bitter concoction for as long as he needed before taking another sip. He let his eyes wander to the band and their maybe-too-hot lead singer, then to Yvonne who sat in her usual radiant warmth, and at last to their friends who had accompanied them to the pitiful concert. Chase was chuckling at something that Yvonne had said off-handedly, while his wife lounged languid and golden beside him. 

“The other day,” said Chase, leaning in close to accentuate his words. “I was over at Meadow’s house trying to help her with her sprinkler system.” He laughed between sentences – a gesture somehow both vulnerable and masculine when it came from him. “Apparently when Google installed the Fiber line at her house, they accidentally cut her sprinkler pipes.” He laughed again, pulling the whole table into the story with him. “I told her I could help her out, so I grabbed my shovel like a real man, and had her just sit and watch while I dug into the ground. On my second swing of the shovel, I accidentally cut the Google Fiber.” 

Their table was filling up now, as friends of friends gathered in noisily all around them. Beside him, Yvonne gave his hand a squeeze beneath the table.

***

“You want me on the table?” asked Meadow.

“It’s not really a table,” the woman smiled. “More of a medical dais.” Beside the woman, her  assistant fumbled his way through an assortment of small earthenware jars. 

“It looks a lot like a table,” Meadow said coyly. “A dinner table.” 

“I suppose it does,” agreed the woman. “And we did eat dinner on it.” She gave Meadow a wink and then an almost furtive nod. “There is the question of payment,” the woman said, cocking her head slightly to one side. 

“Right,” Meadow agreed. Her hand slipped into her pockets, finding little more than dried roots and a lock of hair that she always kept near her breast, until it at last landed on something smooth and cold. “Would you accept this?” Meadow asked with a smile of her own. “It’s a palaver penny from Mushafai, south of the Tanlan Peninsula. Not technically worth anything here in Garamond lands, but – “

“Why were you in Mushafai?” The words belonged to the assistant, who blurted them out before going silent again at a glance from his mistress. He turned his attention back to the jars.

Meadow arched one dark eyebrow and spoke slowly, her eyes fixating on the woodgrains that she had seen so plainly in her sleep. “I didn’t say that I was in Mushafai,” she said carefully, tasting the alarm of apprehension in her throat, “merely that I had the coin.” Meadow took a step closer to the man, looking over his shoulder to see assorted poultices and powders laid out in their small containers. “The penny itself is rare though, as traveling beyond Garamond borders is often dangerous.”

“And illegal,” beamed the woman. “Your copper will suffice,” she said sweetly. “I myself know the value of well-travelled pence.” She nodded to her assistant who finished his preparations and stalked awkwardly from the room. “Undress to your level of preference and make yourself comfortable on the dinner table.”

“Dais,” corrected Meadow. “Medical dais.”

“Of course,” agreed the woman.

***

“Do you mind if I go dance with Chase” asked Yvonne. 

“Of course!” Bowen said too quickly. 

“Of course you mind?” 

“Yes. No!” Bowen forced a laugh. “Of course I don’t mind.” He let Yvonne pull him into a soft kiss, feeling her lips prod and measure his own, searching for the slightest indications of Bowen’s internal well-being. They were micro-movements that Bowen had long since tried to cover up, pulling himself so far back into his own skin that Yvonne could no longer ‘take his temperature’ with a kiss. Or, that was the idea anyway. 

“I love you,” she beamed.

“I love you, too,” he said, without needing to lie.

The table was filling up now, both with faces that Bowen recognized and others either unknown to him or forgotten. There was always the chance of confusing the two, which had long ago led him to simply assume that he’d already met any stranger to whom he was introduced. It was a policy Bowen considered much safer than accidentally asking for the name of someone he’d already met. And it kept him in control and safe from looking like an asshole in group situations like these. 

“A penny for your thoughts.”

Bowen turned and found himself face to face with Meadow, the outline of her full, dark curls reaching the edges of his vision. “Meadow,” he stammered. “I didn’t know you were, uh – ”

“Coming?” The woman’s curls bounced slightly as she moved her head. “I guess I’m just an unexpected guest.”  

***

Meadow lay beneath a thin blanket, her bare skin tingling in the contrast of the roughspun wool and the smooth surface of the medical dinner table beneath her. She rested her chin on the wrists that lay folded in front of her face, and counted down slowly beneath her breath. “Four,” she told herself quietly. Meadow let her eyes wander the room, taking in the meager confines of the home, complete with hand-built furniture and an inglenook mantel that appeared to have outlived its surroundings on more than one occasion. “Three.” Nevertheless, she could not deny that there was a peculiar queerness to the place. The walls were adorned with maps of places either foreign or forgotten, and in some cases fantastical. “Two.” She felt her heart fall at last into rhythm with the rest of her. Her muscles relaxed, and a warm rush of simple, powerful exhilaration spread within as the world connected itself to her, and around her. “One.” Then she saw the skull of a bird that lay nearly hidden in plain sight, staring back at her from where it perched atop a chifferobe. Her muscles tightened once more, and she pushed up onto her elbows to get a better look. 

“Hope you’re ready for us,” the woman’s voice announced. Two sets of footsteps proclaimed the approach of her hosts, returning now that Meadow was set beneath her blanket. “If you’re cold, we can add another log to the fire.”

“I’m not cold,” Meadow said, her eyes never leaving the empty sockets of the bird’s skull. Her skin tingled, passing the alarm along her tongue and on to the rest of her while she forced herself to lay still. Her eyes however, darted restlessly back and forth, taking in the details they had neglected on their first pass – a set of surgical knives, a dried stalk of henbane, and a coil of leather restraints folded neatly on a low shelf. 

“We’ll start with your legs.” The woman’s voice lowered slightly as she pressed her palms against the back of Meadow’s thighs. “Your muscles are tense,” she said sweetly. “You must have been walking for some time.” 

“I have been.”

“But you’re home now.”

Meadow’s eyes travelled almost unwillingly back to surgical blades that lay stacked, gleaming and polished, suddenly acutely aware of the gravity of her situation. “You know me, then?” she asked carefully.

“You’re the witch from up the -” 

“Would you join me please?” the woman’s voice interrupted her assistant. Meadow could not see the man’s face, but she felt his calloused hands as they grasped cautiously to the calf of her other leg and began working their way down. “I don’t believe I’ve ever actually made your acquaintance,” the woman hummed to Meadow. “But I know you by reputation.”

“And what reputation is that?” 

The woman didn’t respond, nor her assistant – not with their words, anyway. Their grip tightened in unison, as fingers kneaded firm and solid into the sinews of Meadow’s flesh. She felt a rush of stabbing discomfort, reached out to it as she had a thousand times before, and she floated along the wave until it twisted and turned and became something else. 

“Ohhhhhhhh…” Meadow’s sigh betrayed a note of indulgent redress. 

“You are strong.” The woman’s voice had quieted somewhat, and beneath her breath she now sang as she worked. She moved towards the crook of Meadow’s knee, sending a twinge of something exquisite in all directions. “I have heard that you took the orphan of Fenrow in for a while, following the tragedy of the stable fires.” 

This time it was Meadow who failed to respond. She was being questioned, and she knew better than to trust the intentions of strangers. 

The woman kept one hand on the muscle of Meadow’s thigh, and placed the other beneath the roughspun blanket, pushing into the bare space between Meadow’s shoulders and pinning her firmly to the surface of the table. Beside her, the assistant tightened his grip and slid his hands in opposite directions along the length of her leg, until he held her firmly within his grasp. Then the woman leaned down slowly until her mouth was buried in the curls that hid Meadow’s ears. 

“Why were you in Mushafi?” she asked in a whisper, and Meadow felt her blood go hot.

***

“Too hot?” Meadow laughed, looking at the band’s picturesque lead singer.  “I’d say she’s more, the right level of hot.”

Bowen picked up his beer and set it down again, and found himself laughing as well. “Well, that’s what Yvonne said. Being an attractive woman will always be a valuable commodity,” he mused. “And it doesn’t seem to come with inflation.”

“That’s true,” agreed Meadow, her face resting comfortably in the air mere inches from Bowen’s own. “It’s amazing what men will pay for – drinks, cover charges, concert tickets …”

“Afterall, what it could cost. Ninety dollars?”

Meadow didn’t laugh. She was still smiling though, and managed to bring her mouth even closer to Bowen’s own. “You never called,” she said matter of factly. 

Bowen bit his lip. “I never did.”

“I thought,” she said carefully, “that the three of us had a good time together.”

“I thought so as well,” he said evasively. “Yvonne too.” Bowen’s eyes broke free of Meadow’s trance and surveyed the dancefloor, until they found his lover dancing gayly in the arms of his friend. “We just, uh … we got busy is all.”

He brought his full attention back to the woman who stood before him, who leaned in now until all of Bowen’s vision was stained with her curls. He could do this all night, finding clever lies to excuse himself from the burden of his own insecurities. People were given different gifts, it was said, and the gods had given him the ability to be as slippery as a freshwater eel. Yet he couldn’t help but see the contrast in his own cowardice and the bold brazen stare of this unexpected guest. 

“This life,” he blurted, before he could tell himself not to. “It’s hard, Meadow.” He shook his head. “I don’t mean this life, I mean … this life. Trying to navigate it – friends, lovers, partners, everything else.”

Meadow only nodded, her curls bouncing as she did so.

“I was the one who pushed us into it,” Bowen sighed. “But Yvonne’s better at it than I am.” He felt the shame that lay in the truth of his next words. “It would be hard not to be better at it than me.” He snorted a laugh in his embarrassment, and marvelled at the awkwardness of existing mere centimeters from the face of someone other than Yvonne. “I wanted this. I was excited for it. And while Yvonne did the work and prepared herself, and read books and went to therapy, I just … didn’t.”

All about them, the words of the song went unnoticed. 

***

She smiled then, a pale unearthly countenance
“I indeed have sustenance to give thee
For ale and water have I in abundance
And other drinks more potent and more sundry”

The woman sang softly from the space just behind Meadow’s ear. With the aid of her assistant, she still held Meadow firmly in place on the dinner dais. Meadow lay still, reaching outward from herself, beyond her own naked skin to find the threats that she now seemed to taste everywhere in abundance. 

“But for my price I demand an audience
You must hear my song and sit beside me.
And if thou canst hear it and keep from weeping
I’ll make a gift of these for thy safekeeping.”

The woman’s hands tightened, still awaiting a response. One moved upward from her thigh, sliding down cooly to the crook of Meadow’s undercarriage and grasping the smooth flesh that sat taught and expectant. Her assistant did likewise. Meadow felt her breath catch in her throat, and buried her head into her elbows, ready to defend herself from whatever came next. Yet in the darkness of her own thoughts, there swam again the image of the old cottage, awaiting her on the rainy walk homeward. And Meadow knew there was nothing sinister about it. 

“I was in Mushafai, to tend to my sister.” Meadow said the words before she’d made up her mind to actually do so. “She is sick, and I woke two moons hence with the knowledge of her decline.”  She tried pushing herself up onto her elbows, the considerable force of her back rising in defiance of her captors. “If you are hexenbrand, and hunting witches on behalf of the Priori – ”

“We are nothing of the sort,” the woman sang, “and certainly no friends of the Priori. I myself trained in Creanbuhl and Yakya in defiance of Garamond law.” She placed her hand once more on the top of Meadow’s back, but instead of pushing she simply extended a finger and drew the sharp, pointed fingernail slowly downwards along Meadow’s spine. A quick sigh escaped the witch’s lips before the woman’s hand slid to a space just above Meadow’s buttocks. 

Meadow felt herself relax slightly, in spite of her quickened pulse. “And the bird skull?”

“You tell me,” the woman chuckled. “It’s born of your craft.” She extended her finger once more and methodically traced her nail back up and down along the spine, pushing just hard enough to draw Meadow’s attention to its keen edge. Then her hands met her assistant’s as they wove in and out of one another along the skin of Meadow’s ass and arch. “It was given to me as a gift.”

The man cleared his throat before addressing Meadow awkwardly. “Are you a healer?” he stammered.

“Not entirely,” said Meadow. “Many of my kind take to it though.”

“Are there many of your kind?”

“Not entirely,” she admitted. 

The movement of all four hands along her middle places was beginning to rock the boat of her sensations. The woman’s hands were small, and precise, with soft fingers that found their way into her deep places. The man’s were wide and calloused, and clumsy despite their strength. 

“I’ve always admired the courage of the moon-touched,” hummed the woman, “to hide so openly in plain sight.” 

“Courage?” Meadow sighed the word as all four hands tightened to send a stab of excruciating pleasure into her furthest reaches.

“Yes.” The woman had found her way back into the space behind Meadow’s ear. “Courage.”

***

“Courage?” Meadow nearly laughed as she repeated the word back to Bowen. “How do you mean?”

Bowen was saying more than he ought to, and certainly more than he intended. “You just do. You have it. Walking in here tonight, confronting me, cutting through all the bulshit that everyone uses to hide in plain sight.”

“Everyone?” she arched an eyebrow.

“Well, me at least,” Bowen admitted. “You have a certain defiance to you that just refuses to sit quietly.”

“Oh I can be a good girl,” she teased.

“Ha.” Bowen said the word instead of actually laughing. “It’s very sexy, you know.”

Meadow smiled once more and brought her hand to rest on Bowen’s shoulder, just above the base of his neck. “We don’t have to push anything. I just liked being with the two of you.” Now it was her turn to find Yvonne on the dance floor. “And I mean, just look at her.”

“Yeah,” Bowen huffed. “She’s something else.”

“You both are.”

“Right,” he nodded. 

Meadow’s hair really was everywhere, obstructing the edges of his vision as she lived in the fractions of inches between them. Bowen smiled honestly, raising his off-hand to rest comfortably on the small of her back.

***

“Would you like to roll to your back?” The woman’s words were spoken sweetly enough, but again Meadow heard the tones of devilry that accompanied them. She did as she was bade, and felt the sensation of the air along her bare skin as the blanket was lifted from her. “You have a body that begs to be touched.”

Laid out as she was, naked and vulnerable before all creation, Meadow couldn’t help but reach out once more to the space that lay just beyond her own skin. This place was dangerous, but not to her. It held the mystery of a shrouded soul, and the precarious reality of being seen. And something else. 

“Fear,” Meadow said quietly, recognizing the acrid taste of the emotion.

“What’s that?” the woman sang. “Did you say something?”

“I said ‘I fear,’” Meadow lied, “that I’m unaccustomed to the particulars of your remedy.” She turned the taste over in her mouth, finding the familiar notes of urgency, and anxiety, and loss.  “Where did you learn it?”

“There was no one place,” the woman hummed, “nor single teacher.” Meadow looked up at her while she worked, feeling once again the small hands that now dug into the sinews of her stomach and hips. The woman wore her smile like a mask, one that looked out at the world unflinchingly. Yet it was not from her that the flavor of dread had found its way to Meadow’s lips. 

“Shall I join you?” asked the assistant nervously.

At a nod from his mistress, the man reached out carefully to place a hand on the bare skin of Meadow’s chest, just below her neck. 

“And you,” asked Meadow, eyeing the man with curiosity, “where did you train?”

“Here,” he said in a hoarse voice, as his other hand rubbed its way carefully through her curls, to the thicket of her scalp. 

“Here,” Meadow repeated, taking the measure of the man. “Here.” She was staring at him now the same way she had the exterior of the cottage, seeing grain lines that spoke more of decay than of distrust. “Here,” she repeated once more, and reached up to the hand that rested below her neck. She raised it gently to her lips, and extended her tongue to take in the man’s fingertips. Here indeed, was fear. 

“Truthfully,” the woman said, in a voice no longer tinged with song, “it has been my hope for some time that one such as yourself might make her way to our door.” As Meadow listened, she kept the man’s fingers along the flat of her tongue, and closed her lips around them to suckle softly.  “My assistant, you see, is in need of assistance.”

“I – “ the man stammered.

“He is untrained,” the woman smiled. 

“And afraid,” said Meadow, opening her lips long enough to add, “though he need not be.” She slid the man’s fingers from her mouth, moving them slowly along her chin and neck, until they rested at the north base of breast, just prior to the climb. 

“Fear is an intricate riddle,” the woman beamed. Her own hands lifted from Meadow to scoop something from one of the earthenware jars, then returned with a liquid that slid warmth along the skin of Meadow’s navel. “What are you afraid of, witch?”

“I…,” smiled Meadow, dodging the woman’s inquiry with a deft and practiced motion, “…am afraid your remedy may not in fact be for me.” She moved the man’s thumbs and fingers together, until he cupped the border of her breast with an attentive firmness. Below, she felt the woman’s hands slip slowly down to the folds of her opening. 

“Perhaps,” smiled the woman. Her small fingers explored the skin slowly before pausing to give a decisive push.

“Ohhhhhhh,” a sigh escaped Meadow once again. 

“The remedy itself is not for any one soul involved.” The fingers took up their hunt once more in earnest, moving carefully as they searched for something Meadow herself had never found. “What are our words?” she asked her assistant.

“Creation is a demand for unity.” The man’s hand held Meadow’s breast firmly now, while his other tightened to squeeze along her scalp. Almost against her will, Meadow felt her hips begin to rock in unison with the woman’s movements. 

“Are you a healer?” Meadow asked in a tone that was breathy and alluring. But the woman’s only answer came in the form of a firm compression along the middle of her clit.  “Ohhhhhhhhhhh.” When the woman released the pressure, Meadow slunk into the portions of her skin that tingled with pain, where the man’s hands alternatingly tore at her scalp or squeezed at her breasts.  Each bit of pain she balanced with pleasure. And each bit of pleasure… “OHHHHHHHHH!!” she cried sharply as two of the woman’s fingers found something hidden and unexpected. 

“It’s as much for me as it is for him,” the woman beamed. “Take your hands from her,” the woman ordered her assistant, “and attend to yourself.” Her own hand pumped slowly now at the firm little ridge that lived above Meadow’s opening, never missing a beat to its rhythm as she sang to herself.

“That song,” Meadow whispered between breaths. “I heard you singing it from without. What is it?”

“It is mine,” the woman sang. 

Her words were honey mixed with ancient longing
Her song was sadness tempered with the dawn

The man kept one hand in Meadow’s dark curls, and with the other undid the strings of his trousers before taking his own cock in his grasp.

“I found it in my travels.” 

Her melody was sweet matronly fawning
Her chorus a seductress’s axiom

Fire spread along Meadow in every direction, stoked and fueled by the fear of the man that now stroked himself above Meadow’s breasts.

Her cadence sharp spoke oft of not belonging
Her rhythm more of poetry than song.

“It is a call to forget oneself.”

And all of this he heard but knew not of it
But in his roots he felt the Moon above him.

And at the firm insistence of the woman’s fingers, Meadow felt herself slide mercifully, violently over the edge. 

And in that place the Moon walks hither often
Her song a painful, joyful, stark reminder

“Fuck!!!” she cried, her mind and body pulled now into the inevitable vortex of what was to come. “OHHHHH FUUUUCKKK!!!”  She squeezed her eyes shut, but still saw the form of the man who pumped at himself as he stared down at her, his grain lines and patterns now replete with something more than fear. “FUCK FUCK FUCK,” the witch cried, rolling along the duality of the man’s firm but cautious grip and the woman’s tender but decisive prodding. 

“It is a song of letting go.”

And Meadow did, crying sharply into the night as her voice rang from the stones of the hearth and along the length of the rafters above. She tasted her own lurid desperation, and the greedy and self-serving satiety of assisting another. Her hips rocked as billows of ecstasy escaped her. She tasted the satisfaction of her craft, knowing that yet again she had stepped boldly into the pages of someone else’s story. 

That thirst does not but bind one to the coffin
But fearlessness is born of something higher.

“Ohhhhhh no.” Beside her, the man was letting go as well, though one hand still gripped tightly to Meadow’s breast. “Ohhhhhhh I’m -” 

“Coming?” asked the woman.  “For our unexpected guest?”

But the man’s words were cut off as he sent a wash of himself onto Meadow’s chest, warm and wet and dewy along the skin of her breasts. 

Weep not for the frightened and the timid
But weep instead for lives that go un-lived.

“Yes,” the woman urged, keeping her rhythm in place as she played the notes of Meadow’s euphoric song. “Let go.”

***

“Don’t let go,” smiled Yvonne. She pulled herself tight into Bowen’s grip and pressed her hips against his midsection. “I’ve been wanting to dance with you all night,” she beamed. 

“Yeah,” Bowen laughed. “Me too.” He wanted to say something coy, or clever, to deflect the awkward and unrivaled intensity of her affection. For once though, he simply leaned into it. “You’re beyond me, you know.”

Yvonne’s smile never slipped as she hummed along with the music.  “I’m not sure that’s true.”

“Yes you are,” he smiled back. “Next to you, I’m a scared child.”  His eyes lifted to where Meadow moved on the dance floor, talking with Chase and his wife. “But I don’t want to be.”

Yvonne brought one finger up to Bowen’s chin as they danced, turning his gaze to stare deeply into the depths of her eyes. “You are no child,” she assured him. “You are mine.”  She kissed him there without shame or guile. as the words of a forgotten song surrounded them. And she held herself against him until at last he relented and spoke again. 

“I am yours,” he assured her, not needing to lie. “And I’ve been thinking.” He bit at his own lip. “What if we have Meadow over again.”

“Oh,” Yvonne smiled. “I’d like that.” Then she cocked her head to one side mischievously. “Maybe for a massage?”