"Stop."
The voice rang out in the electric silence of the cavern, speaking quietly but with immense authority--enough force and will in that single word that even the Hatred, its prey lying defenseless at its feet, had to listen. He/she whipped his/her spirit-gaze around, just as Elaine and Chariset did below.
Chariset felt her jaw drop in joyous astonishment. "Agnus!"
"Chari-la. Are we too late?" The giant stood tall at the head of an army of souls, brandishing two torn halves of a useless contract like banners.
She must have been grinning like a fool. "No, no I'd say you're just in time."
"Traitor! Renegade!" bellowed the Hatred in a voice no human vocal chords could bear. Lightning crackled and hissed at the tips of his/her clawed fingers. "Get back!"
Now. While the monster's distracted. Chariset locked eyes with her brother--he nodded and leaped off the shore. She caught him, and together they plunged together into the molten stream of magma. As they struggled out the other side, to an anxiously waiting Elaine, Big Whoop snarled and struck warningly at the spirit ranks, slashing with lightning-claws. The blows slid harmlessly aside.
"I think not, Big Whoop," rejoined Agnus, voice even. "This time it be you who needs ta be gettin' back."
"You dare--" The creature sputtered, in sheer blind fury almost unable to put words together. "You dare presume to attack me? I am Big Whoop! I am the spirit of this island! I am all the power and luck of the Threepwood family combined in one person. You dare confront me?!"
"We are the Traepwood family," declared Agnus. "And we h've paid for centuries for pow'r we never claimed. Not until naw, monster."
Eyes hard, every spirit assembled, surrounded the island and the spirit-monster. They hemmed him into a tight circle, nothing of mercy in their expressions or their postures. This was Judgement Day.
Polly gave a frightened sqwack and vanished.
"Chari!" Murray must have appeared somewhere in the back of the room--he ran up from behind them and caught up her hands. Guybrush stood unsteadily, clearly on his last legs--Elaine interposed herself between him and the lava, eyes flashing with a fierce love at once both charming and frightening.
The four made a tiny huddle at the edge of a battle of far greater powers. Chariset had never wanted to cower so much in her life.
Stalemated, the Hatred and the Threepwoods, represented by Agnus, locked glares. Big Whoop tried to sing, but the Circle blocked his song-energy. The Circle then tried to smash him into the ground, but he drew energy from some unexpected source and blasted them back. As he did, Chariset thought she heard a woman's scream.
"Nice try. But naw we end it, monster," trumpeted a voice she only later recognized as Agnus.'
The circle of spirits suddenly blazed with a nameless energy, too bright for human eyes to stand. Elaine and Murray cried out and covered their eyes--only Chariset, who had no retina to be dazzled, could clearly see that the unbearable energy of the Island itself coursed through them--that full measure of energy which Big Whoop had stolen for centuries--the power of the island multiplied several hundredfold. It was so brightly incandescent that it hovered on the edge of visibility, wavering into ultraviolet and higher in peaks.
Magic has a price, she remembered, grimly. Now we get what we paid for...
What they had bought was more unbearable than the lava, more ancient than the bedrock, more enduring than the oldest family name. And it was all about to be brought to bear on Big Whoop.
And his daughter.
Odia..
Agnus held both broken pieces of the contract high--through them, the energy seemed to be channeled and focused. He raised them over his head, a solo duet in the great and terrible Song of the Threepwoods, in which all members were the chorus. Their audience, bowing low already under the pressure of this new Song, would never survive its finale.
Dear God, we're worse than LeChuck, Chariset thought, even as another part of her rejoiced.
Big Whoop's Hatred gathered together what was undoubtedly his last effort and burst forth in an blaze of green fire. Scouring gusts of wind blasted the three humans some distance away, dropping them in an untidy pile on the cavern floor. Murray's hand was torn from hers, leaving her alone to witness the end of the long and bitter battle.
The unknown woman screamed again, but this time Chariset could see into the midst of the Song-storm. Of course..
Big Whoop had one last source of power left to him--the very last of the family line. Odia.
She, too, owned a share of the Island's strength--and her 'Daddy' would use her up if it would keep him alive just a few more seconds. Never mind that he was already tearing her into pieces, never mind that it would eventually kill her--at the very end, as always, his only concern was himself.
And Agnus, mere instants from unleashing the power of the Island upon them both, would kill his many-times great grandaughter along with their worst enemy.
Chariset was cast into the cruelest moral struggle of her life.
Isn't the death of Big Whoop worth that one sacrifice? she tried to rationalize. Guybrush and Elaine were busy picking themselves out of the rocks--would they even notice if Odia died while she could still prevent it? Wouldn't they understand?
Agnus slowly lowered the pieces of the contract, closing his hands, about to bring the two halves together....
Even as she launched herself into the center of the Circle, Chariset felt the answer in her very soul. No. They would never understand.
"Agnus, stop!" she screamed at him, throwing both arms wide as though she could shelter the monster behind her wings. He looked up, startled, and tried to pull the blow..
It was too late. The cards came together, flaring into brilliance even she was unable to bear. The gathering bolt once released, had nowhere to go but forward--into the target and into her..
Horace Deadeyes knelt motionless on that same beach he had walked so many months ago, a dejected castaway fighting the call of Big Whoop. Map in his hand, he memorized the symbols for Dinky Island, studying the words, speaking them carefully with no image in his mind to be sure of his pronunciation. He was only going to get one chance at this.
Polly appeared, shrieking wildly. He raised his head. "Is it time?"
"Bwaaaaack!"
"Okay." He stood up and walked to the water's edge, facing a large blank expanse of sand. "Here goes..."
Comec mec tois la undo falto sho re al ro uwh omi se.. The syllables were liquid--they flowed effortlessly, leaving his mind free to envision a dark cavern filled with people, crowded with people, enemies, friends, some knowns, mostly unknowns, people whom he envisioned.
Crew. You are all a crew. Out of the depths of the mountain, I summon you, chanted the spell. Come here.
"..alla ne far e suret," Horace finished.
The nonsensical words rang out into a strange silence--the expectant silence which sweeps over the audience just as the lights come down and the curtain is raised... A hum, a thrill of magic resonated in the air...and a fluttering, butterfly tremble. Something was happening.
Horace himself swayed on his feet, feeling strangely light-headed. The map fell from fingers gone suddenly numb, hit the sand, and crumbled brittlely into dust. Whatever power invoked this spell, it was drawn from him, weakening him like a wound, reducing his legs to jelly. His knees buckled, yet still the drain continued.
Face down in the sand now, the tidal pull stronger than ever. He fought instinctively for consciousness, struggling to keep from blacking out entirely, but he was losing. He'd gone too far this time. The spell would turn on him and consume him.
Then something snapped in reality--one side of this tug-of-war had given, and not his.
The backlash of power
catapulted him backwards into the soft, wet sand of the beach (at low tide,
thankfully), where he lay motionless, almost completely drained, among
his handiwork. He'd done all he knew how to do. Had it been
enough?
Lemonhead found him--and them--some ten minutes later, still out cold. "Priestess, Holly, come look at this!"
Holly stumbled onto the scene and gasped. "Where'd all these crystals come from?"
"A better question--why aren't they open?" put in the wizard.
The Voodoo Lady placed her hands gently on the lid of one ice coffin. "Big Whoop has not yet been defeated. The resurrection spell cannot take hold."
The sun blazed down on the still, cold faces of the Threepwood family. "Come on, then" said the Necromancer. "We need to get them under cover until the spirits return. They won't thank us if they wake up sunburned."
They bent themselves to the task, even the Necromancer in his elaborate robes, long sleeves trailing in the sand. It was hot and dusty work, to say nothing of slightly unnerving, moving this crowd of all-but-dead bodies. Holly stared into each face as she shoved the coffin through the sand, hoping and fearing to see her friend Chari in one, but presumably the woman was still in the group of blocks which had not yet been moved.
Without warning, two coffins still on the sands shattered with the sound of a glass boulder bursting. Holly and Lemonhead jumped, shielding their faces from the flying shards. The ice, mixed with tiny pieces of a grey...something and scattered across the beach, was already melting.
The priestess looked across the half-sorted field of undeath with great sorrow in her eyes. "What happened?" asked Holly in a near-whisper.
"It is just as I foretold," she replied mournfully. "These coffins do not break, unless the inhabitant.." she paused.
"Dies?"
She turned her large brown eyes on the red-haired girl. "I'm afraid so, Holly."
"So....who died?" asked Lemonhead.
"Catherine, no!"
Two blurs of motion at the corners of her eyes--a man and a woman lunged into the fatal, blinding fury of the bolt. They each seized half the contract, pulling with teeth-gritting effort-
-and vanished in identical flashes of light as the divided wave of energy broke over them. They had--they must have--known that trying to stop the beam would only turn the power of the island on themselves.
Not a spark or even a puff of smoke remained to dramatize their passage. Her mother and father were simply..gone.
Chariset and Agnus stared at each other in shock. I was wrong. Whatever else they were, they were still my parents, always. They probably just wanted me to be safe..
"Well done," sneered the Hatred from behind her--the monster she had just sacrificed both her parents to save. Lightning claws were already charging up to strike. "So nice of you to step in. The more especially as your family doesn't have another attack like that left in them."
She prepared an angry reply, but it died unspoken. He was right. The Circle was breaking up around them, their power exhausted. Where would they go now? Back to the crystal room to resume their confinement? Had she just ruined their last, best chance at freedom?
"Odia," she said desperately, trying to speak to the girl trapped inside her own soul, the monster's stolen home. "Odia, you have to listen to me. This man...this thing..is not your father. He never has been! Look at what he's doing to you! He's using you! He's never really loved you."
"Enough!" bellowed a voice of angry denial--and she knew that both Big Whoop and his daughter had spoken. "Not another word!"
With the abrupt anger of a cat's lashing tail, they struck her aside, knocking her completely across the room. She impacted with a wall and slid down to the floor, exactly as her physical form would have. Big Whoop was already aiming a bolt of fire at her heart from the center of the room.
So this is it. I'm going to die because of a little girl's temper tantrum, she thought dizzily, then wished she'd found something a little more dignified for her last message to the world...
"Odia, stop!" yelled an new voice. Guybrush. "Don't kill her."
"Whyever not?" smirked the monster. "She deserves it."
"That's your father's fight, not yours--and you know it, Odia. Your fight is with me. I'm the one you really want to kill."
"Guybrush, what are you doing?" Chariset demanded, leaping forward. Two arcs of lightning pinned her to the nearest wall.
"The traitor has a point, Aunty," saccharined Odia. "You stay out of this."
"Right." Guybrush gave Elaine a last hug and stood apart from the group. Residual energy from the Island spirit hovered around him, like a thin, sad echo of a halo. He looked both noble and pathetic. "You know I never wanted this fight, Odia, but here it is. Much as I wanted to be Daddy to you, I can see that that's never going to happen. But even so...your mother and I love you more than you will ever know."
Elaine was looking at him piercingly, some part of her sensing what he was about to do. Murray placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Guybrush went on, face calm but eyes strangely bright. Perhaps when the early martyrs had stood before the lions, they had looked that way. "I'm not going to be the one to hold you back. So.....if killing me will bring some peace to your soul, go ahead and do it."
He folded his hands and waited, expression serene. Chariset, looking at him. wanted to cry. It's so unfair....so incredibly incredibly damned unfair..
"Offer accepted," snarled the monster. A second time he made ready for the final blow, prepared to strike this upstart down where he stood. Guybrush simply watched, fearless.
The creature struck with all the fury at his command--
--and stopped short.
The wanted power would not come. Odia would not allow it.
"What are you doing?" hissed the creature furiously. "How could you betray me?"
A second, entirely different voice answered, coldly. "Big Whoop, I dismiss you."
The true nature of Big Whoop's 'love,' in stark relief against Guybrush's, was revealed for what it was. Which is to say, nothing at all. "Ungrateful wench! You owe everything to me!" A string of less polite epitaphs followed. "I curse the day I stole you!"
"So do I, 'Daddy.'" With a hiss of anger, Odia attacked the man she had called father.
The lightning chains broke from Chariset's arms, and she darted to the other side of the cavern. Elaine and Guybrush held on to one another, Murray hovering uncertainly beside. The molten/spirit mass that was Big Whoop's Hatred was roiling and muddy, flashes of light and crackling thunder booming out as the two spirits within fought. A high wind ricocheted off the cavern walls, blasting them from unexpected directions.
"Can't we do anything?" yelled Murray.
Even Agnus, the only Threepwood left in the cave, looked nervous. "I don' think so, lad. They've got ta fight it out their own wei."
"She'll be killed!" Guybrush's lucid calm was long gone--he was pale from a mixture of reaction, anxiety, and exhaustion.
Chariset's glance darted about--settling at last on the bottle of root beer, miraculously untouched. Could they..?
Elaine followed her gaze. "Chari, no. I've seen what'll happen. It'll just kill you both!"
"And what good is to get this far and lose her now?" Murray added, voice strained and tense as he fought to make himself heard over the wind.
"But we've got to do something," Guybrush repeated.
The cloud of spirit roared with outrage. It was impossible to tell who might be winning.
"But what? Guyber, they're both stronger than any of us.." If only she had the Amulet with her, and at full power..
Agnus peered down on the three of them with a sort of paternal gentleness. "Let me do it, la."
With grim deliberation, he drew a sword Chariset had never seen before from his back. Purposefully, he marched to the combatants, raised it high, then drove the blade down into that churning, swirling mass.
An outraged shriek rose from within. "Catch, la," called the Welsh giant over the scream, lightly, almost playfully.
He flicked the blade, and a tiny, white spirit was 'popped' free of the mass of energies--it barreled into her upper body hard enough to send her rolling across the room, landing against yet another wall. Only then could she finally see what she held.
A spirit-baby, smaller than any newborn. A baby girl. What was more, she was clean, uncontaminated, with the potential to be anything or anyone. Agnus had liberated Odia.
Agnus had sacrificed himself...
"No!" cried Guybrush and Elaine in unison.
Chariset looked up, horrified, as the swirling energies of the Daemon Big Whoop rushed up Agnus' arms, leaped upon his spirit-body and merged in a horribly indescribable manner, a thorough and terrible rape of a living soul. The man shrieked once--and then he was consumed..
Subsumed.
Assimilated.
And the largest creature Chariset had seen before or since towered over Guybrush and Elaine...and Murray.
Fueled by every ounce of life-energy Agnus had possessed.
Controlling the last remnant of Monkey Island's magic.
Guybrush and Elaine still glowed faintly, that phantom fire of power, but it was moot. One sneeze and they would all die where they stood. One bolt of lightning, and Monkey Island itself would be no more.
"Chari, la," choked
a voice from somewhere inside. "Help me.."
In the dead calm which ensues when time has come to a near-standstill, Elaine seized the tiny jar of root beer.
With every ounce of her personality, strength, and drive, she raised it high above her head, flying in the face of the monster's unthinkable wrath--
--leaped into the air and hurled it to the ground at his feet.
Glass shattered. Root beer sprayed out in a brown explosion. Each tiny piece of glass or drop of brown hovered in the air with Elaine, motionless, dancing. The monster began to realize exactly what she had done..
--Time resumed. The sound of breaking glass resonated within the cavern.
Big Whoop, splattered with root beer, began to shake and convulse wildly, a prelude to the explosion..
Elaine seized Guybrush by the arm and fled towards the exit. Murray ran to where Chariset still sat against a wall, ducking low and covering his head. She folded herself over him, sheltering both her man and her infant niece, eyes up and watching.
The monster-Agnus shrieked and went up in black flames. "Thank you, la!" she thought she heard, as the creature writhed and twisted in slow agony, shrinking lower and lower into a fetal curl of death....
It shrank into a seed of itself, and then exploded.
Chariset covered her head as the world descended into black chaos.
Murray yelped once or twice as pieces of the ceiling showered down upon them. Guybrush shouted something. Elaine made a low sound of anger or pain...it was impossible to say. There was no way to even understand what was happening, let alone describe it--they could only endure as the earth around them went utterly mad, throwing them about like toys, shifting and shaking like a child's pan of sand in a sandbox, rolling them around like pebbles.
An eternity passed. Then another...
Then, finally, the Island stilled.
Sunlight filtered down, incongruously, upon the still forms of three humans, half-buried in a mountain of silt. Chariset shook the dust off out of habit and looked up at what had once been the ceiling.
The thick haze of dust obscured the view, but it was impossible to miss a gaping crater-window, open to the sky. The mountain above must have been simply vaporized by the force of the explosion.
"How on earth did we survive that?" croaked a voice. Elaine struggled out of the dirt, hair in hopeless tangles.
Chariset gazed down on the fetus-spirit of the baby girl, who lay silent, sucking her tiny thumb. "I guess we got lucky," she said gently, handing Elaine her daughter to hold.
The other woman accepted the infant soul with an expression of pure wonder. She gingerly, disbelievingly hugged the tiny child, which promptly vanished.
"Oh! She kicked!"
"Oh, my head," groaned one of the guys. Guybrush, as it turned out. "Tell me we won't have to do this again for a whi-hey!"
Elaine had seized his head and was holding it to her stomach. "She kicked! Here, she'll do it again.."
Guybrush's skeptical expression was replaced by one of wide-eyed wonder. "She did!" He pressed an ear to Elaine's abdomen, listening with intense interest. "She's really alive, Elaine." He looked up at her without moving his head, somewhere between joy and hysterics. "She's real! I can't believe it!"
"Murray?" The man hadn't moved. "Murray, are you alive?"
He groaned and opened bleary eyes. "Chari....what about the crystals?"
The crystals.. They must be buried under a hundred feet of rock by now.
"It doesn't matter," she tried to make herself say...but it was too hard. Disappointment closed off her throat. This was a happy ending in so many ways--just not for her...
Elijah appeared, his timing admirably bad. He whistled at them. "You come?"
Elaine and Guybrush were still carrying on as though theirs was the first baby ever to kick. "Not now, bird."
"Everyone ask for you. All...family."
Murray looked up sharply. "All what?"
Elijah actually sighed. "You come. I show."
Murray stood on the beach and stared without shame. I can't believe Horace pulled this off--I really can't. Who'd've thought he had it in him?
The scene resembled nothing quite so much as an anthill, purposefully swarming with people of all descriptions. Conspicuous among them was the Voodoo Priestess and the Necromancer, moving from body to body in a shaded area under a large, makeshift tent. Here and there, the ghostly image of a spirit hovered, searching for his or her body--with the help of one or the other wizards, each settled in, awakened, remembered how to breathe, get up, walk around. Some of the Threepwoods were already moving surely, at home in themselves once more--some were taking much, much longer.
Many of them were gathering around two centers of interest--one a small tent in which Horace, all but tied into a chair with pillows, was recovering from casting the spell which rescued the crystals. It seemed like every Threepwood there wanted to personally thank him, something the little man was having trouble adjusting to. Still, he certainly deserved their gratitude.
Every magic has a price, thought Murray.
Under another tent were Guybrush and Elaine, both bandaged up, receiving hero's honors. Guybrush sported two enormous white lumps where his feet habitually were--there was no walking around for him, at least for a while. Not that he couldn't find any number of people willing to carry him.
He was also clearly in his element, telling the entire story of LeChuck and Big Whoop to an audience who actually wanted to hear it, illustrating key points with wild and sweeping gestures. Elaine endured this for about five minutes, then went after him with a pillow.
Murray chuckled as the two honored 'heroes' engaged in a completely undignified War of the Cushions, in which a few of the bolder Threepwoods joined.
"He'll never change," sighed Chari affectionately.
"Speaking of that.."
The woman, still a spirit, regarded him with amused, tired eyes. "I'm just waiting to make sure everyone's safe. We might not have found all the spirits from the Island, and when I'm alive again, I won't be able to check.."
"You worry too much." He took her spirit hand carefully in his. "I have something to ask you, and it's almost sunset, and there's a beach and the ocean right here....it couldn't be more romantic."
She sighed again. "You can be too darn persuasive sometimes."
"'Stubborn' is the word you're after, I think."
"One of many, yes." But she was smiling.
They stood still for a moment, enjoying one another's company. Then--
"So, how about that walk on the beach?"
"Maybe 'stubborn' was the word.."
"You insult me with your 'maybe's, stubborn wench."
She mock-glared at him. "All right, now you've done it. Excuse me while I go put my body on--"
He made a suggestive sound with his tongue against his teeth.
"--so I can punch you!" She abruptly turned away and flounced down the beach, doing a fine imitation of righteous indignation.
"I look forward to it," he called, laughing inwardly and following. It wasn't often that he got the better of her.
Down on the main beach, under the watchful eye of the Priestess, the Necromancer, and her brother, spirit-Chari floated over her physical form, looking down with a mixture of excitement and fear. Murray knew that, for all that this was the moment she'd been waiting for, it was still a leap into the unknown, going back to herself. The spirit world was becoming more and more familiar--what would it be like to be earth-bound, to have the physical needs and sensations of any other human? "I knew I shouldn't have let myself fly," she mused aloud
She looked up at him. "Here goes nothing."
With an uncertain hand, she touched her own face--and immediately vanished back into herself. The body gasped and resumed breathing normally. Murray watched anxiously. She was still far too pale, but her color was slowly, almost imperceptibly, improving, perhaps aided by her old Amulet, now burning with a faint blue flame.
Nothing more happened for long moments. "She needs time to feel at home in her own body again," the Priestess explained calmly. "She has forgotten how to move."
"I'm okay," Chari croaked unexpectedly. "I just need a couple minutes. And maybe some grog." She opened her eyes, squinting as they refused to focus. "Murray?"
He nodded.
"Get down here so I can punch you."
He obliged. She batted ineffectually at his chin, making a determined effort to sit up. He supported her--which allowed her to land a nice solid blow to his jaw. He jerked back, startled--and dropped her.
"Serves you right," said he, rubbing his abused chin. She glared.
Guybrush covered his mouth, smothering a laugh, but it wasn't clear whose dignity he was trying to spare. "I must say, these resurrections are usually more peaceful than this," commented the Necromancer blandly.
"Murray and I have never been peaceful," Chari answered hoarsely.
"Never," he agreed lightly. "Which means I'd better do this now, before she can get away from me..." She cocked her head to one side, frowning, both amused and inquisitive.
He fumbled around in his breast pocket, finding something small and cold with a rounded edge. Guybrush took his place as Chari-prop while Murray knelt in the sand, wincing as both tired knees complained.
"You see, there's something I've been meaning to discuss with you," he began, tone serious. She matched his sober demeanor, but a persistent smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "An math question, if you will.." He held out the ring with fingers that trembled despite his best efforts. "If you have one, and you add one, how many do you have?"
Chariset ignored the ring altogether, then leaned forward and kissed him. "You have one," she said simply, forehead to his forehead, arms around him. "And maybe, in time....two or three."
He took her left hand and carefully slipped the band over her ring finger. Guybrush tensed, but when nothing catastrophic happened, he relaxed.
She laid an arm on the shoulders of each of the two men in her life and pulled herself to her feet. "Congratulations, sis," whispered Guybrush as she hugged him.
"Thanks, Guyber. I know I'll be happy."
"But of course you will." He paused. "Setti."
"Dollhouse."
"Was yours."
"Was not."
"Was so."
"Was not!"
"Was so!"
"Chari!" Murray broke into the old argument. "If you want that walk on the beach, you'll have to save this little fight for later."
She reluctantly pulled away. "I'll be back," she promised darkly. Guybrush just grinned and hobbled out of their way, letting them slip past and onto the sands.
"Are you ever going to tell them how much her diamond's worth?" asked the Necromancer casually, once they were alone in the tent. Guybrush had returned to his place of honor and resumed the story. Elaine had resumed the pillow fight.
"Why? She doesn't care. Neither does he."
He let it drop. Then-- "Do you care?"
"Not really."
He pulled a gold coin out of a pocket of his robe--a coin engraved with a ship on one side, a cauldron on the other. Gently, he slipped her finger through the hole in its center.
"You said you didn't care," he reminded her startled eyes.
"So I did," she smiled.
Guybrush whisked the tent flap aside, took off his outer clothes, and began the familiar procedure of insisting on an equal share of the bed--Elaine had a tendency to stretch out to fill the space available. Eventually he managed to claim enough of the cot to actually lie down, whereupon the battle for the blankets began. He didn't mind. He actually enjoyed the ritual. Being able to simply find a bed and jump in--as he'd been doing for the last few months--felt distinctly unnatural after well over a year of married life.
He lay there in the darkness, staring up at nothing in particular, one hand absently playing with Elaine's long hair. He'd come so close to losing her today--losing everything, really...it didn't bear thinking about. He had lost his parents, and that was a dull ache which was going to hurt for some time..
Elaine became aware of another warm presence in bed and wanted to cuddle. She curled up against his side, and through her warm skin he could feel the tiniest little flutter. His daughter, alive and well. Never to become Odia, never to hate him. That was no small comfort.
There's a balance, he thought finally, while his little girl did gymnastics against his ribs. Something's taken away, something more is given. Maybe it all works out, in the end.
He pulled his wife closer,
closed his eyes, and let himself drift. For the first time in a very,
very long time, all was right with the world. At least for the moment.
Tomorrow, he decided, could worry about itself.