In the kitchen Ringa's eyes were aquamarine; in the canals they were green. In the kitchen her eyes were large and tender like a new insect's wing they held reflections of everything.
        Cleo smiled.
        Victoria departed, having made her point.
        Ringa worked, making her point. Living it. Forgetting it. For what was there tumbled all about her. Her hands moved like strangers and worked desperately to escape time they could not constrain.
        Cleo smiled. She no longer needed the gift of Victoria.
        The stones of the floor darkened to umber in accretions folds of multiple life thick as flood silt. The sun left the corner proof that time did move irregardless of whether 1 believed that it did or feared it.
        Cleo smiled. She let her smile flow outward from her more smooth and warm than could endure a ripple.
        She knew what Ringa did. Ringa fashioned a bailiwick, a prayer wheel, an oriflamme,
all of marzipan all in a small square Venetian kitchen.