Title:   A Moment of Pleasure
Author: jat_sapphire
Contact:  [email protected]
Rating: NC-17
Series:  TNG
Codes: C/O'Dell
Summary:  Brenna O'Dell meets Doctor Crusher, and they hit it off despite some misunderstandings.
Archive: Sure.
Feedback:  Please.

Disclaimer:  Characters belong to Paramount.  T'Lin ran the FFF.  Spoilers for "Up the Long Ladder."

Note:  Brenna O'Dell is a member of the Bringloidi colony, whose planet was made uninhabitable by solar flares.  The Bringloidis were Neo-Transcendentalists and preferred a subsistence farming, low-tech kind of lifestyle.  At the end of the episode "Up the Long Ladder," they find a new home with the Mariposans, a high-tech colony of clones that badly needs new genetic material.  My story takes place about six weeks after the two colonies joined forces.
 
 

A Moment of Pleasure
 

I haven't had so many, since we were dropped into the highly unyielding laps of these Mariposans, to be sure.  Da's happy--he's got his still, and to my great surprise there were indeed two of the Mariposan clone women, and one of our own, who decided to waste their declining years caring for the old soak.  And having his children.  A charming prospect, I don't think, though one of the clones did tell me she had taken him on in hopes of having a daughter like me.  Though I doubt not she was only buttering me up.

And for my sins, I settled on the Prime Minister, Wilson Grainger;  and then, because he's handsome, one of the dark-skinned men, named Colin Clayton, who does some work with their computers that I can't for the life of me understand;  and for a topper, Sean the cheesemaker, who's been giving me the eye since almost before either one of us had learned to speak.

Sean's a good boy, though I can't help but think of him mostly as a brother.  But he'll make good, lovely children, to be sure.  And so will Colin, and sharp as a knife as well, for all these clone people have minds trained nearly to bits.  And perhaps some day I can get Wilson to take his clothes off and we'll see what we can do together.

It's pitiful, that's what it is.  They all, these clone folk, went three hundred years unable to have children in the normal fashion for fear of the inbreeding, for there are actually only the five of them.  Then--rather than simply tie the tubes or use a vinegar sponge or any of the thousand methods women have, between nature and art and their shiny science, for being shut of an unwanted child or never getting it--they stopped having sex instead.  Now, really, it surely must have been a man to have such a mad idea!  In fact, it must have been Wilson himself, in a way of speaking, though I believe the name of the man himself was Walter.  A madman.  Colin can learn, and he told me very sweetly that he'd been touching himself in secret anyway, like a little boy.  So I've hope for his clone brothers too, for they're as like as peas in the pod.  But the Graingers are made of stone, pure stone all the way through.  I've done all but the dance of seven veils for Wilson, and though he talks big of his duty it's not duty that can move that part of a man, be sure.

I spoke of it to Colin, thinking perhaps it was that Wilson didn't like girls, and the other men might know.  It might well be that the original Walter liked boys, but if he did it's a secret to any of his clone children, it seems.  They're all as sexless as oxen, and nearly mad with shame over it now.  A single reluctant man can hide himself in a crowd, and if his wife's not a shrew (which I am not, whatever anyone says), there's no need for anyone to know of it, but since there are a tidy sixty of them, each in a marriage with two other men as well as a woman ... it's no secret.

So now these nosy Federation people are back again, partly for the glimpse at what ailed the cloning process to begin with, and partly to watch over all of us from the two colonies as we work out whose ways are best for a hundred and one daily tasks, and partly to help Wilson and his clone brothers.  Imagine not only being unable but having the case be known across the galaxy and talked of in committee meetings and written of in articles.  Surely it's no wonder Wilson is more reluctant than ever.

But understanding it's no good, and pity's no better though I feel that for sure.  And Sean is such a romantic he handles me like glass, and Colin's just learning what the bits of him can do, much less which bits of me to touch.  So mostly it's been my own hands giving me what pleasure I've had.  A fine thing for a woman with three husbands.  It shortens the temper, and mine's not the longest at the best of times.

I was in no good mood when I met the woman who was leading the Federation team.  Besides my own troubles, the goats had found some Mariposan plant that disagreed with their insides, and the mess they were at making was beyond description.  What's so poisonous goats can't eat it, yet not poisonous enough to kill the goats?  (Which, by this time, we were wishing it would do.)  Sean was in despair over his cheese and we women in despair over the horrid cleaning task, and Da was laughing, the old devil, until I'd half a mind to push his face into it and see if he'd laugh then.  And when must the important people find me but while I was giving him a piece of my mind?

I've the reputation of a shrew, I do know it.  Usually there's not a bit of truth to it, but I lived up to it finely, that day.  My hands were on my hips and my voice raised, and I'm certain my face was red for the color always betrays me.  And I was dressed in next to rags and spattered with the goats' dirt, and if I had a shred of patience I had mislaid it.  So there would be Wilson in one of his white suits, looking like a disapproving angel and surrounded by well-dressed people with unfamiliar faces.

There only are 230 faces in this colony.  I know them all.  It made me angrier still to be surprised by strangers.

"How can you bring these people to the goat yard, Wilson Grainger?  How can you, you . . . you man!"  I was fed up to the top of my skull with the lot of them.  If the head of the Federation group hadn't been a woman herself I probably never would have had the patience to speak to her.

But she was a woman.  Of my own height, and if that bright red head hadn't been bred in Ireland neither was my darker one.  We might have been sisters--of the normal sort, not clones--or cousins at the very least.  Her eyes were lighter than mine too, blue and not brown, and her skin white as the goat-cheese in the pot--while mine, even when I'm not angry, is more weathered.  But we were nearly the same height and the way her neck curved taught me for the first time what makes people say pretty things about my own.  When she held out her hand, I put mine into it, and they matched perfectly.  She was older than I, the little crow's feet beside her eyes showing in the sun.

She was so beautiful I could scarcely take in a breath.

Doctor Beverly Crusher.  Head of Starfleet Medical, and I could tell by the expressions on her team's faces that she ought not to have been here at all.  Of course, I agreed she ought not to be here, in a muddy pen surrounded by sick goats, but I couldn't help the stray little thrill of gladness that she was here on the planet, and that even while I agreed with Wilson that the Federation had meddled in our lives enough lately.

I was so busy filling my eyes with her and Wilson so busy talking that it was Da who said, "Shall we not retire to some more ... salubrious location?"

That was Wilson's office, which was never the choice I'd have made, not with so many people and none of them able to sit down.  But if it made Wilson feel any better to look up at us across his desk it wasn't I who would deter him.  I've never had trouble myself being heard in a crowd.

Nor, it seemed, had Doctor Crusher, who didn't even raise her voice and they all quieted, even Da.  One at a time the Federation folk told us what they wanted to do, all couched in the terms of necessity, and it was all so tidy and scientific that it was clear they couldn't imagine anyone daft enough to disagree.

It made me mad with irritation.

Doctor Crusher said at last that she wanted to personally examine Wilson and myself, and I truly lost my temper.  "Perhaps," I said, "you'd like to check me teeth?  Perhaps you'll be wanting me to strip off entirely, for the whole lot of you to poke and finger?  Here, let's begin, then," I pulled at the tie of my skirt, with some confused idea of sheltering Wilson as well as of embarrassing these arrogant doctors, slipped it down and stepped out of it, and heard Da choke behind me.  I wasn't sure if it was anger or shock or laughter but didn't care just then.

I was still in my petticoat, you understand, and it's not the most revealing of garments.  It hangs low on my hips and ends halfway up my shins, so it's not the only thing I'd be wearing out on the street, or in Wilson's office at any normal time, but it's a good thick cloth and hangs straight down, not like that long underwear of theirs that shows the curve of every muscle and almost the edges of a woman's--well, never mind that.  But there were a few new inches of me showing, especially my navel and the skin below it, and Doctor Crusher's eyes were on my skin like fingers.  I was furious and excited and happy and apprehensive, a whole stew of feelings, but I hardly noticed them myself when she looked up and her eyes were dark.

"I use this," she said, holding out an object the bulk of a spindle, but shorter.  Her voice was tight, as if the breath for it was lacking.  "It doesn't touch you.  You don't need to undress."

And--just then!--I did need to undress.  With her.  Not here.  I was so mad for it that for an instant I couldn't so much as swallow, felt the ends of my breasts tightening under the wool of my sweater, which they don't often do without it's someone actually fondling them.  I could think of nothing but her mouth on me, her fingers, her hair brushing my skin, and how must she taste?  I was dizzy with it.  What on all the worlds was it about these maddening Federation folk that they sent me straight on heat the moment I really looked at them?

It was Wilson finally saying "Brenna, really, put your clothes back on," and then as such an obvious afterthought, "my dear," that brought me enough of the way out of it to remember the crowd of people in the room.  I put on my skirt again, feeling a good deal less foolish than I might have if I hadn't been so distracted.  Wilson spoke to the group and sent the most of them about their business, and they seemed glad to go.  Da went too, but Doctor Crusher stayed.

She came closer.  I could see the pale-fawn freckles on her nose, her hands;  the fine hairs between her brows and the sweep of her lashes.  I took a breath and caught the scent of her in the air, rich and sweet though faint.  A little perfume but mostly just the woman of her.  She lifted her little object and it made a low humming sound;  she looked at it and then at me.

"You realize you're already pregnant," she said, her voice soft and a bit apologetic.

I had wondered, then put it from my mind:  my courses are irregular even when my life is smooth as pouring milk, and it had not been that lately.

"Pregnant," said Wilson, sounding stunned.

"I--" turning to him-- "I surely never meant you to be finding out like this, Wilson."

"Colin's?" he asked.

This, while barely possible, was not true, and I knew it before Doctor Crusher said so.  "It's ... almost seven weeks old."  And when she met my eyes I knew, though I didn't understand how she could be knowing, that she did know just whose child it was.  But she was letting me say it.

"The father is Will Riker," I said.  I'd only had him the once, and isn't that always the way?  The one time in my life it would matter and here I am.  With child.

But Wilson, after a moment of open-mouthed shock, began to laugh, took breath and laughed even louder, until he was whooping and I wondered if it was some sort of hysteria.  "You--" he gasped when he could speak.  "You're carrying ... Riker's genetic material?  Riker's!"

Then, at last, I had a glimmer of how the matter was seeming to him.  It was Will Riker above the other lot of them who absolutely, downright refused to give 'genetic material' for the Mariposan cloning, and when Wilson tried to take it anyway, it was Will again to beam down and destroy the clones growing in their silver cradles.  Because he couldn't bear not to be unique, the only one of him ever to be in the galaxy, and to be saying so right to Wilson's face was a blow to the very respect the Enterprise people pretended to have for the Mariposans' own way of life.  I'd known that but I'd not thought how Wilson would connect it to my pregnancy, had just thought of old tales of jealousy and marriage vows.

Also, of course, and I saw when the thought came back to him, if I were pregnant, there was no immediate need for him, Wilson, to perform.  It had been relief I'd heard in his voice when he'd assumed it was Colin had taken the burden from him.

And I was irrationally angry because he was not, because not having to do what he honestly could not do was a relief to him.  It's an odd maze a woman's mind is, I must admit to it.

And an odder connection I'd made with this stranger, this other woman who was now looking at me as if she'd read my mind.  Smiling a little.

She turned to Wilson then and examined him with her little instrument.  He was relaxed now and spoke easily with her.  I wondered to hear him tell her about the state of his penis in the morning when he woke and such details.  I'd not thought to ask him, but then I could do nothing with the information anyway.  It dawned on me far too slowly that he was well used to speaking with doctors with such little instruments in their hands, with their grave eyes and many machines.  Just as I was not, and the prospect had made me angry and afraid.

When they were finished, Wilson had a meeting to go to and asked me to escort the doctor to her temporary quarters, and I knew I owed her the civility.  So we left the building together.

I won't deny I had another motive than politeness.

As we walked I went over the available spaces in my mind.  The most of her party would be needing to go to the science laboratories, day by day, and nearby was one of the buildings the Mariposans had thrown together for us Bringloidis when we first arrived.  That was undoubtedly where Wilson would expect the Federation people to stay--all of them--but it was low on privacy and I was intent on finding just that thing.

"Need you stay with your ..." I didn't know what she called them.  "People?"

She took a longer step and I tripped a little trying not to brush against her, for I knew we'd half the street to walk down yet.  "No," she said, "not if it's," and she glanced sideways at me from under those lashes, "inconvenient."

I smiled.  "A bit, it is."

"Anywhere will do," she murmured and I felt it everywhere.

I shook my head, looking to the side, trying to get my wayward thoughts together.  Swallowed.  "Let me think."

She actually, physically backed off a bit, and I was disappointed even while I laughed a little in relief.  I hadn’t had a feeling that was single and uncomplicated since I laid eyes on the woman.  I wondered when I would again.  If ever.  If ever I had.

"The--" and the idea came to me-- "Cloning Director's suite."

"What's that?"

"Well, of course the cloning was a big part of what they did here, before," I said, moving again.  "But I gather--though they've told me little, or any of us Bringloidis, thinking us too stupid, I suppose--"

"Surely not," she murmured.

"About machines.  Anyway.  I gather that the clones need close watching, and especially in late years, when the errors were multiplying.  They've an outright horror of deformity."

"That's only to be expected," she said, still gently.

"Perhaps.  But, you know, it's the natural way of things to happen, sometimes."

"I'm," she paused, then went on, "not that philosophical about it myself."

"Philosophical?"  I thought of the last time it had happened to us, still in the caves before the Enterprise came.  A girl with a cleft palate clear into her lungs … the wet sound she made trying to breathe … how like it was to her mother's breath as she wept in my arms.  "No," was all I could say.  And me usually good with words.

She touched my shoulder then, her hand tentative, and then the back of her fingers brushed at the edge of my jaw, left trails of sensation like the bright line a moving torch makes against the night.  There and not there.

"The director slept in the labs.  Lived there.  To check on the clones.  It's only a mercy he didn't come out into the middle of Will and Doctor Pulaski and all phasering the new clones that time.  Nature's god alone knows what would have happened."  I stared ahead as I walked.

"Yes, that was lucky."

My body was still tingling at the nearness of her, the scent, the sound of her voice, and here my mind was thinking far too much about what a poor idea this was.  I walked and fought with myself.  And thought of my dirty clothes and the sweat dried in my hair, and the way I'd shouted and ….  But we'd come to the lab building already.  "This is it."  A poor thing to say, a foolish thing, and what was she after thinking?

"The lab?  Building?"

Thanks be:  she'd gone as idiotic as I had.  I felt reassured at once.  "Indeed.  Come in."  I even took her hand, and the moist warmth of it was pleasant and real and made me stop my fretting.  It would be all right.  For this time, however short it was to be.

As we stepped through the door, the artificial lights came on in that way that always startled me a little. She let out a breath of laughter when she felt me jerk in surprise.  I thought of telling her about the fire I'd tried to light in the hold of the Enterprise, and what the fire-control had looked like to my rustic eyes, but this wasn't the time and perhaps there'd never be the leisure.

So instead I tugged at her hand a little sharply, and we went across the laboratory, up the small stair, through the observation room, and into the suite.

There was little to it, just a sitting area in which we did not stop and a bathroom to one side, and then the bedroom.  A bit like a ship's cabin.  Brightly lit.  Nothing in it natural but ourselves, as we grew more so, as she undid the tie of my skirt again and I felt around her neck for the opening of her garment.  Cloth dropped down my legs and then her hands were on my waist, the slope of my hip, rubbing to and fro, around and back, as if she'd thought of nothing else to do.  Her lips were against my neck, and I raised my chin to let her kiss me there, but she raised her own to say "Lights fifty percent," so that the dimness of twilight on a soft spring hill came down on us instantly.

Her own hips, when I pulled them to me, were narrow as Colin's, as sweet an economy to me as my ampleness was to her, from the little humming noises she was making.  I felt up the ribs, her tender sides wincing with ticklishness so I made her squirm the more, and in the little dance of that got my hands between us, on her breasts.  They were warm, warmer than ever a man seems there, and she leaned into my touch with a little sigh that made me happy.  I squeezed and circled, after feeling the little knobs grow harder--leaned over my working hands and kissed her parted lips.

"So ... full ... oh pout for me," she whispered, and I did and she kissed back, sucking me and nibbling as if I were the ripe fruit that, in truth, my mouth has been compared to.  Hers too were supple, good, too fine and shapely not to taste and tug on myself.

I was warming up, and wanted my sweater off, and the petticoat.  Beside that, I needed like food to see her whole for once, not eyes and then hands and then mouth as I'd done so far.  I hooked my fingers hard into the fabric over her shoulder, stretched it up and shook it back and forth.  "Is this attached?" I asked her fiercely.  And the mouth now redder and wetter than I'd seen it before, smiled, and she stepped back to undo the thing.

I took the steps that separated me from the bed and loosed the ties and buttons that kept my clothes together while she unfastened whatever technicality was keeping her covered.  Then she skinned the whole suit of it right down her sides, her legs, stepped out of it.  To do the last she'd half turned, leaning on the bed, and I could see the curve of spine and buttock, neck and hair falling forward, that makes an artist long for pencil or brush.  Her breasts hung;  her arm reached down;  the pale blades of her legs cut through the gloom.  I pulled my sweater over my head and she looked up, half in laughter.  Stretched out her hand.  "Come here."

"My beauty," I said and went to her.  We kissed again, this time nothing between us, nipples and bellies and thighs matching and rubbing so gently, so softly together.  We went as slowly as if in a dream, a fantasy we might close our eyes and think of as we fingered our own tenderest places.  All her skin was--well--like my skin, as if the pleasure I gave and took were the same pleasure in the same body.  She reached up and pulled pins from my hair, carded her fingers through the length of it, moving it forward over my shoulders and combing it back again.  Her own, shorter and finer, sifted in my own hands like a breeze playing there, only it was warmer than any breeze but breath.

The music of her sang in my bones, shook me.  "Lie down, my beauty, lie down, darling girl," I said, hardly hearing the words myself.  "Lie down for me, let me see you."

"Don't," she said when first she felt the air between us, so I leaned in, slid after her onto the bed and down until we lay flat, close, nose to nose and all the rest touching too.  Her hands were on my back now, the long fingers light and the nails just barely rasping their thin edges against me.  Her beautiful curves in my hands, and I stroked the soft spot at the crease of her leg, up the slope of her buttock to the dimples there, circling, and she moaning and pushing into my touch.  A simple enough matter, then, to shoulder her onto her back and lean over her, tracing every edge and plane I'd a mind to learn. The top of her forehead with its smooth flat skin and the spring of her hair.  The tendon stretching in her neck.  The crossbow of her collarbone.  The edge where crinkled skin gave way to firm smooth breast.  The fine arch of her ribs, where her belly sucked in and quivered and pulsed as I teased down across it.  Her navel.  She'd liked mine and I returned the compliment, dipping one finger after another in the little cup of it.

But to do that I'd lifted my body from hers and she took quick advantage, flipping us in some fast warrior way that took me by surprise.  Tense as the room rolled around me, I relaxed again when she flowed downward, her whole body moving into every bit and recess of me.  One of her long legs was between mine, and the other snug against me as well, the wet furled skin and crisp hair nestling, rubbing, moving slowly and then less slowly.  Her breasts drew blurred and sharper lines across mine and her arms braced around me.  The sweat beaded on her throat and face, made a sheen like glass over her shoulders as she pulled up and rocked.  I reached for a breast with one hand and down to push my fingers under her, pinch and worry her with my knuckles, and she rode my hand more fiercely than my hip.

We did that for a while, I reveling in the heat and scent of her ... I thought for certain she'd come, but after a time she sat up and looked the length of me, stroked after her looking, knelt between my legs and played me like a harp.  "Yes, yes, yes," I kept repeating, unable to give her direction and--lovely--not needing to, as she found the places I'd need of her hands and gave exactly what was needed. A little pinch here, a rolling motion there, palm and knuckle and mouth and breast touched me, and I hardly able to keep straight where.  I closed my eyes and the feelings swept me, seemingly, out of the bed entirely to some place I'd no notion of.  Dark and warm and soft, with only the lightning bolts of my pleasure to light it.

When she licked me, where few have found my little bud, I groaned so loud that it made her chuckle a little, nuzzle the wet hair and suckle the more.  My eyes were open now but the ceiling was never what I saw.  I always grow hard and hot there, urgent for touch, but not much larger, and it's none too easy to find the right place even for me.  But the doctor, my Beverly, with the sweetest mouth in the galaxy, she had not the least trouble, finding and loving and torturing it until I saw stars whether my lids were open or shut, until my voice raised and went on and I don't think I said any words, until my whole body had become the place where her lips met my flesh, and I moved like an earthquake on the bed, shocks and aftershocks and bright flares and flashes of heat, over and over.  It's nothing like that, at all, that's ever happened to me before.

I wanted her, wanted to please her and ravish her, but I was never so enervated and I could hardly lift my hand to her face.  She tugged up on my thighs and said "Hold me," and that I could almost do.  Raised and wrapped my legs round her while she pressed into me and rocked until she really did come this time, in little sharp jerks that made me giggle and feel guilty at once.

"My poor girl," I murmured as she lay down along me, bodies matched everywhere again.  "My falling star, Beverly my darling, was that all right?"

And she laughed then.  "All right?  Yes, sweet, it was all right," and kissed me with a slow grace that would have melted my bones all over again if I'd not been half dead still with the release she'd given me.

Her forehead leaned to mine.  After a time, I said, "I thought your eyes were blue," and kissed her upper lip.  Her lower one.  Her nose, just at the tip.

"They are."

"No, they are not."  She closed them and I kissed one lid and then the other.  Then they opened.  "Right now they're like lake water under a leaning tree, and before in Wilson's office they were dark and bright as water under the moon."

"How," she smiled, "can you have kissed the Blarney stone when you've never even been to Earth?"

"I've never--" kissing her-- "kissed any stone at all," again, "at all.  Not even Wilson."

Her lips curving, smiling against mine.  "Never kissed him or he isn't a stone?"

I pulled her head onto my shoulder, sighing, the rest of the world coming back to me with the thoughts of my poor reluctant man.  Who might never know anything like the glory I'd just felt.  The pity of it.

And after a bit I said, "Nearly.  Nearly a stone."   She brushed her head a little back and forth on my shoulder, and then I said, "Oh, Beverly, I've nothing but sadness for him."

"What I don't understand," she said, thoughtfully, after a time, "is why they didn't think of artificial insemination.  Rather than all this group marriage, changing both your cultures, imposing on you .... it's not like Jean-Luc.  Captain Picard."

"Well, maybe it was that he knew I'd never, none of us women would ever, want to carry children like so much freight, not even have as much as Colin can give me of the father.  Beverly, what is it in your mind?  Why in the name of anything would I want that?"  So odd to go in the space of a breath, a word, to strangers again, now while her skin lay tacky against mine and her breath played down my breast.

"It's just--" she almost stammered, and I forgave her at once-- "just that, to suddenly be dropped into polygamy like this, it's a major social, well, revolution."

"You thought we Bringloidis were monogamous before?"

She got up onto her elbow, wasn't even leaning over me, and her eyes were narrow.  "Let me get this straight.  You are saying that you are not a monogamous society."

"Not noticeably.  Did you think we were still Oldstyle Catholics?"  She still looked puzzled, so I tapped her on the nose with my index finger to focus her mind.  "In all those computer files, there wasn't a thing to be had about Neo-Transcendentalists?  Your research, Doctor, leaves a good deal to be desired."

"My research?"  She let her mouth gradually curve, widen, part in a smile that beat hot as sun on my skin.  "I prefer to research in the field."

"I'll take you out to one, then, after this," I said, and she laughed, making a silly noise against my skin where her mouth had already come to rest.

And I'd been full of things to say about Bringloidis and the natural arrangement of property and marriage, about the way the Mariposans were the ones truly twisted and tested here, about the way they were still after misunderstanding us and we had let them do so, rather than rub all their five times sixty noses in the truth of it.  But the sweet milk of her mouth was all my distraction, and the smooth cream of her skin, and the butter of her arousal, salt and slick to me;  I thought she'd better hear the song of her own voice climbing than my little speeches.  Time enough for her field research.

Time enough for my loneliness when she was gone, for Colin's and Wilson's hard road to be walking, for the whole crew and newsnet of the Federation to learn what they'd forgotten of us, and the Mariposans to find out who it was they had married.

It's Da who always repeats that old saying about the moment of pain you pay for each moment of pleasure.  I'd rather live them as they happen and not be expecting the one to match the other.  Take this now and love the taking, and bear the others as they come.  That's maybe a woman thing, or maybe that I've never been one for the whiskey and not had to think of a reason to live the next morning.  But either way, I knew that was something Beverly had no need to research either:  she knew it.  We knew it together.

When she had come again, and better this time to judge by her shaking after, we lay twined together in the Cloning Director's bed and talked of babies, for she's a mother as well.  Then we washed together in the suite bathroom and I put back on the filthy clothes I'd worn, having no other by me, and went back to the goats while she looked for her people and to find out what they were after starting without her.  We'd made our plans to meet and love again but knew they might not happen.

Or they might.
 
 

**end**

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