<meta name="LineWrap" content="true"><TITLE>SR_Bk1 0014</TITLE><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0015.txt">Next (Page 15)</A><BR> "I'd rather be this than a blind, deaf, and dumb hunk of metal any day."<P><P>Lemon sighed and laughed a little, and Colonia sat up. Buff and Sulfur exchanged glances, at a loss for words.<P><P>"You don't know what it was like, being a sword again," Colonia said, tears welling up in her eyes. "It was the most horrible pain. I couldn't bear it. I hated being a sword! I swore to never go back! And now--and now---you've saved me!"<P><P>With this, Colonia embraced a shocked Lemon.<P><P>"Thank you so much," Colonia said.<P><P>"Uh, no problem! Glad to be of assistance!" Lemon said, sticking her tongue out at Chamomile across the room.<P><P>Colonia eased her embrace and backed away from Lemon.<P><P>"You really saved my life," Colonia said. Then she gave Lemon a little kiss on the lips. "I'll get used to this body."<P><P>Lemon smiled and sat back.<P><P>"Hear that everybody? I saved the day! Me, Lemon! I did it! What would you all do without me?"<P><P>Buff and Sulfur didn't answer, but continued staring at the stunning beauty of this new Colonia, disturbing and dangerously delightful thoughts running through their minds.<P><P>--------------------------<P>CHAPTER 4<P>--------------------------<P><P>Ah, the wavy day today, the day of lust in the breezy hills and woods, the rain before and the bus ride after. Steamy talk and amazing car crashes in the dull evening, the formula for happiness tested in weird ways. Never before such a meandering of the emotions, never again the fragile entity of a simple drizzle. The slam in the face of an air conditioned room, a couch and a television cauterizing the vulnerable opening moves of a flower of earthy innocence.<P><P>She looked down.<P><P>The confusion of the good day, she sighed. Wonderful incision ignition, but stunted. Stunted under the swift heavy thumb of the matter-of-fact. A glimpse into a remarkable existence, but snuffed and abandoned.<P><P>Tavmatey Numblem was the girl here, and she was on the couch and the TV was warming up. She had just returned from a little sojourn into the country, a little excursion with her friends. And there were so many new feelings and so many expectations, that now, back here, she felt robbed, even violated. That the promise of the pungent day was smashed was a sorrowful and stunning complication. <P><P>Solace? Solace in fantasy?<P><P>No. Not this time. It had been too close. All of her dreams and desires revealed chessboardlike on the hilly terrain--this was no passage. This was a sign, an indication. This vision, having fallen apart so enthusiastically, must contain more meaning. <P><P>A bad TV show came into view. Tavmatey pounced upon the set and shut the damn thing off. But not like a cat--rather, like a great clumsy moron. She crouched, holding the TV set for a moment, and regretted her ungainly private motion. <P><P>So the time was at hand to decide. So it would only be a few moments until she passed into the next sequential state, until she put the picnic out of her mind enough to go on to another subject. But in that instant--how could another subject be as urgent and delightful as this?<P><P>So she got up and grabbed a lamp from the table and turned it upside down. This, she declared to herself, was the symbol of the meaning of the picnic. As long as it was inverted, she would have to mull over the significance of the outing.<P><P>So she lounged on the couch in the invert light, and she bathed in the angles of force of her seething intelligence.<P><P>Now Tavmatey was not exaggerating things. No, today was certainly a day of great import. Her past visions of lust and ecstasy, of the spiritual and physical merging with mud and the grass, of the ideals of intellectual freedom and artistic flights of genius. All of these were there at the picnic, and now it was ended, but she needed to continue it.<BR><A HREF="SR_Bk1-0015.txt">Next (Page 15)</A>