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Leadem, Christopher

"The Mantooth"

His last words as emotion and sensation
overpowered him were strange, yet he spoke them with all his soul.
'I need you. Sylviana!'
And her name flowed like water through the piercing of his heart.










Chapter 15

A light snow fell from the silent soft grayness of the sky. Sylviana
stood on the parapet with the fur wrapped around her, immersed in a
feeling of peace and attachment to her world such as she had seldom
experienced. She watched Kalus on the ledge below, unaware of her eyes,
studying the high entrance to the Mantis' cave and pacing
uncertainly. At first, as it often did, her mind questioned his mood.
How could he not still feel the warmth and purposeful beauty of their
love-making, the gentle gifts that Nature was bestowing on them even
now?
But as she continued to watch him, a feeling of contented understanding
had so overwhelmed her doubts as to make them appear small and mean, a
source of reproach and beneath further consideration.
For here, she then expounded, was a creature untainted by civilization
or corrupt society, his roots in the earth, his feet sometimes painfully
touching the ground beneath him, free (indeed unable to do otherwise) to
react naturally and honestly, like a graceful and intelligent animal, to
the world and circumstances around him.


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