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Leadem, Christopher

"The Mantooth"

'
'I can't stop you, but..... Oh, Kalus. I'm so afraid
you'll hurt yourself. And after all we've been through.'
He saw the wisdom of this, and her deep concern. 'What if eat just
one, and you are here with me?'
The endless conflict between safety and wild freedom once more presented
itself. Both felt it clearly. She hesitated, then said.
'If we do it, we do it together.'
'All right.'
Kalus put a bud in his mouth. Sylviana did the same.

***

'This is amazing.'
Roughly an hour had passed, and these words so broke the stillness that
it seemed as if Kalus had then and there invented speech. And indeed,
so far as concerned the virgin sea on which they now sailed, eternal and
boundless, these were the first words, and he and the woman-child, the
true Adam and Eve.
For some time now he had remained as a near statue, only his eyes and
forehead working, studying in alternate wonder his hand, the circle of
stones, then the altar and mirror behind it. Sylviana watched him,
feeling the same awe of the experience, and perhaps to a greater degree,
the accompanying danger. She answered simply.
'Yes.'
Her voice, like a pebble in a pool, touched the glassy waters of his
spirit, sending out ripples of thought and feeling which seemed as
endless as the pool itself.


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