Sunin and Morin pulled petals off the roses in their left hands and
scattered handfuls of them at Cynthia's feet. They cracked loudly the
first time she stepped on them, then more quietly as she walked back
over the shards to admire the front gate. "Sunin blows flowers in the
forge downstairs," said Norin. "Most of the other glass pieces you see
on the walls are also his."

"Very nice," said Cynthia.

They walked farther inside to a sitting room, where Cynthia idly seg-
mented an orange, squeezing each piece into her mouth and casting the
blood-red lumps of pulp onto a grid scored faintly on the floor by a
bookshelf. "We thought it better not to choose a finishing material
until we knew who would be living her," Sunin said. Cynthia faced the
grid and closed her eyes. She saw her orange pulp surrounded by a fire
burning lapis-lazuli blue. Tapping her foot quelled the flames enough to
see the grid outlined and labelled in bronze, filled in with hundreds of
wedding rings. She opened her eyes and, despite Sunin's expectant look,
merely nodded. Cynthia noticed that Norin was trying, awkwardly, not to
breathe through her nose.

Ducking under the oversize mantle, stepping over a pile of firewood, the
three of them moved on to the portion of the house not intended for
visitors. Hours later, Cynthia drew a mean-looking implement from its
shelf outside the viewing room. "What's this?" she asked. Sunin and
Norin looked at each other. "We have no idea. One of the contractors
left it here. Every so often it falls off the shelf on its own." Cynthia
kept it, chopping the air in front of her as she walked.

Inside the viewing room, Cynthia saw a reflecting pool with three images
of herself looking back at her from inside. She dipped a finger in. "It
feels like just water. How do you do that?" "We add sugar," Sunin res-
ponded, his eyes on the tip of the implement as it danced. "It cannot
cause the effects you see, but it facilitates them."

                                *

"If I didn't know better," said Cynthia, "these bones would make me
think the building had been here a hundred years."

                                *

At long last, Norin asked, "will you be our Countess?" "Yes," said
Cynthia. "There are only a few changes I'll need to make."

She retired to the master bedroom, where she shrugged off her rucksack
and hacked it open. Inside were a small glass bottle, which she palmed,
and a bag of putrefying meat. She pitched the bag out a window and per-
fumed herself as the air cleared. Within a week, her coyotes would be
there.

written for Natalka 9/10/01