It warmed me and filled me with longing for what I knew not. It pierced. It took my breath away.
        Had I forgotten?
        The women did not appear to have.
        Esme(e) reached out her arm and her fingertips brushed the leaf of the book.
        It was blank, the leaf, all the book was blank or so it was to me but the women did not treat it so.
        Carrie held it upon her lap and gently turned its pages while the others, clustered and striving not to look it Cleo leaning back on her elbows with her ankles crossed, Rose perched on a small flat rock, Elaine amidst her tumbled full skirts arranged so nicely in abandon
perfectly to set her form and face there centered on the rug they had tossed across the earth on which to sit and so much more, yes I knew that, I had seen it at once, so much more.
        Now they wanted a tale and only 1 such as Carrie could tell from their book of tales.
They held this volume to them; it rode within its own slot in the leather case.
        Esme(e) wanted a tale. She sat on a stack of fat bound books
with leaves of grass nodding toward her knees and others tapping her thighs.
        Esme(e) wanted a tale. She had asked for it.
        Carrie blushed. Recovering herself instantly, for wasn't it a common thing, and wasn't it a thing that happened frequently among them? someone wanted a tale told for pleasure, for soothing, for transporting and transforming, for peace, for pricking, for sharing, for companionship, Carrie would be the 1st to agree to that and the last to attempt to place a further purpose to Esme(e)'s gesture or to try to label and position it in any category known.