Carrie held the book upon her lap, that broad blue billowing expanse like the free span of ocean waters horizon to horizon and the book upon it there securely, accommodating, like a salty veteran of the watery ways and roads yet did it rest buoyant, and move in contentment, and flow, and raise its creamy sail as Carrie turned a page fearlessly and garnered more than she gave in berthing the blocky leather held gatherings in her pink cupped hand a pink shell upon the blue.
        Carrie turned a page, and a smile took her lips molding them into a secret, a pleasure, and only briefly held and only to increase their pleasure delay heightening curiosity like little children they inched and twitched forward here, to the side there, fingers plucked, shoulders flicked.
        "Oh do get on," Rose snapped.
        Elaine beamed encouragement to Carrie who did not need it knowing Rose and Elaine. Knowing Esme(e) she did not dare to meet that gaze. She set a pink finger to the milky leaf blank to me and spoke in voice different, yet expected, yet known intimately, those tones and rhythms of the storytellers. "The Vulcain Cricket is said to live a 1000 years," quoth Carrie.
        She paused. She looked up from the page.
        Tellers of tales like vaudeville acts and courses of commedia dell'arte, intricate novels and sagas sung by night's choruses did not begin with the best. They heightened, they drew out, they savored like lovers more than banqueters and no 1 could ever pretend that
tellers of tales did that for money or got nothing from it, nothing more than pennies or pouches of gold coins.
        How cruel were they? I wondered. I hesitated on the edges of the women of the rug. Mistaken. I must be perhaps weary perplexity drew unfamiliar lines about them ropes round me defining me binding me to them to their tale to this tale forthcoming 'twas not cruel but a heightening of the gift given for love for what more of love can there be than that 1 might offer bright scarves to the wind delighting all who could see.
        All who could see.
        Receiving their hushed stillness which was a kind of reverence for the tome and the sun that fell across it and the blue and her voice Carrie began.
        But I saw her eyes as she lowered them and they were cornflower blue brilliant orbs of vibrant hue filled not with light, precisely, nor with visions, exactly, but they captured each uniquely yet so closely sharing and zygotic the rich enthralling illuminations of flowers, flowers, of all colors crowding close her intense blue kaleidoscopic embrasures iris, daisy, rose, camellia, violet, dahlia, hollyhock, larkspur, poppy, periwinkle, foxglove, foxglove and gardenia crowding, rustling, breathing, sharing Carrie's blue embued eyes, Carrie's blue perfused bouquet eyes.
        Carrie began.