FORAGING DOWN RIVER from their makeshift camp, Delilah gathered black wild brambleberries from a tangled thicket near the water’s edge, piling the delicate fruit into a crude bark cone. Her head snapping up, alert, when she heard muted voices. Men’s guttural voices, arguing. There was a harsh barked laugh followed by a shrill shriek of a woman, which was quickly cut off by other indistinct muffled sounds. A horse whinnied across the river, to her left.
Someone else was making camp for the night. Two men, possibly more, and certainly one woman.
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STRAINING TO KEEP her left foot pressed down on one sapling, while holding a second beneath her left armpit, Delilah smiled at her predicament. Her right hand clutched another bowed branch, threatening to slip her grasp, while Sera commanded her to move her right knee. She was about to be ripped, limb from limb, in a nasty accident, if Sera didn’t secure these branches before she lost control of them.
“Sera…Little One,” she didn’t quite implore.
“Just another second…”
“I might not have another second.”
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ALL HER LIFE Delilah had been taught to expect the unexpected; it didn’t mean she was always prepared for it when it came from unusual places, as it did now. Her eyes opened wide, as if in need of sucking in every last available drop of fading sunlight. She was caught staring as something more than a little beguiling, the painted moth caught by the dancing flame.
A blush-pink bottom carefully picked its way through the thicket to her right, but it was the swath of back that held her attention. Or, more to the point, what she saw gracing the soft curves of Sera’s back. A face turned toward her, smiled then frowned.
“What?” Sera stood quite still clutching the treasures she’d begun to collect, close to her chest.
It was Delilah’s turn to let out a soft-throated laugh of surprise. She ran a hand through her hair. A lone leaf fluttered, unseen, back toward the forest floor.
“Your back…” A hand came up, a finger pointed.
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