“How does one save a lost buck?” Maria exhaled nervously.  All she had was the quadruped’s leash after a big, peculiar bird had severed the rope round its nape.  Her pounding heart gripped her throat.  The cries of the animal rang at the forgotten crag which had been seeding.  She could manage through its naturally low, rocky curb but beyond the boundary was dense.  Creeping vines and leafage as thick as the countless sand on the seashore had harbored the historic cavern and sunk around the entrance.              However, the awkward girl had got little time to waste sightseeing.  The attacker was perhaps also still at large.  She had to hide for a while until the coast was clear.  Again, called the goat, Meh-eh-eh.  Maria was not an expert in mutton semiotics, so she had no discer

              Thud!  Thud!  Ben pounded a hammer to the concrete wall of his daughter’s bedroom.  They had been decorating their house and had placed a crucifix above Maria’s wooden bookcase.  “Maria is not home yet,” said Josefina to her husband, she had asked her daughter to get a young goat from her grandfather for mutton.  “It’s still early in the afternoon, dear.  She will be alright— the hillside is always quiet.  Yup— it’s going to be a quiet afternoon, no—” said Ben and he continued to hammer and affixed the wooden cross.  Thud!  Thud!               It was also a quiet afternoon at the crag to the witch’s garden.  “Help me gather vegetables, Siegfried!  Get your cupid’s shaving brush and the swollen fingers to pitch in and help.”  

             “Aha, just what we wanted!”               The golden stout grains were planted.  Mighty sprouts emerged as the soil swallowed the grains.  The desolation of a field of thistles and tumbleweeds was now a bed of perpetual succor of green to golden.               The people of the broad plains and rolling hills made a joyful noise.  They broke into a song and sang ballads with string instruments, the melody of the lyre, and the music of the harp.                         “Streams have come out of the rocks and carried water to flow like a river—             All  glorious the day we

              “I shall not lie down before I devour my prey.”  Ditiori did not let anyone survive those who attacked his wife.  They had slapped and pushed her.  Maga had fainted.  Dressed in her beautiful garments and all the finery of a woman, Maga had lain cold as the bleak temple floor.  Her dark, hooded, velour cloak was a gift from her beloved, Ditiori.              “Douche your hooded cloak in the ashes you’ve gathered.  It will allay thorns and vermin and protect you, but it can’t protect you from an attacking human though—" Ditiori once said with joshing to his espoused.  By the stream, they bathed and teased after washing their dirty clothes, enjoying dipping their bodies in the frigid cold water of the whistling stream.              “It’s of no use then, I’m used to bush

              The following day after they had the he-goat for mutton, Maria set off again to the crag to the witch’s garden.  She had to keep her promise to the witch or else they would behest the seraph, or any of the witch’s creatures, to search and destroy her existence.               The cool morning had made all the cocks crowed around the hillside.  The sun was rising but the clouds were dense and the sunbeams formed a silver lining on the duplicitous stratocumulus.  Maria had told her parents, “Mother, Father, I’m going to help out a woman at the west side of the craggy hill for a few days.  The he-goat broke her omnium-gatherum and I have to pay her by helping her out in her garden.”               Maria made a long story sho