How else am I going to pass?Oh, well I had to ask.* Are you sure you're alright?Yeah, I am. Honest. I wish you could be with me though.* So do I, but ...it's not to be.Especially at night.* At night?In bed.* Oh.That's the worst.* I know what you mean. I dreamt about you last night.You did?* Uh huh. Hold on. I'm just shutting the door... It was a rude dream.Yeah?* Yeah. Erotic. We were making love under a waterfall, and I woke up.Wow.* Before we finished.That was bad luck.* Yeah. Mike?Yeah.* We've. It was only when we saw the video of the Queen being killed by the Teth’rak that we knew you had ejected safely, and then Cuetz’xauh’qui sent us a message telling us that you had been handed over to the Earth’nay in Yilgarn.”“Relatively safely,” he chuckled, wincing as her tight grip on him hurt his back.She pulled away, looking apologetic.“I knew that you would prevail,” Coza announced confidently.“You cried,” Ayau teased, Coza’s feathers flashing in embarrassed purple.“We waited twenty. Yep, this would be getting a workout when I couldn’t get the real thing. I would have taken it for a test ride, if I hadn’t heard Henry leaving his room.I took a quick shower, got dressed and headed down to breakfast and the Christmas morning antics of gift unwrapping. The most notable of the gifts were Henry’s new computer, from”Santa.” Mom’s new diamond earrings with matching necklace. Dad’s new Rolex Submariner, the same kind of watch James Bond was known to wear. The gift that I was most. While sitting on a blanket they ate the picnic lunch the girls prepared. Mike was amazed at the change in Susan's appearance. Today, she looked totally different from the way she did on their first meeting. The night before she had been poised and elegant; today she looked like a hoyden. She was wearing skin-tight Levi's, a Smith College sweatshirt, and had her hair tied back in a pony tail. Mike remembered the magnificent female body he had seen in the painting. He could see the painter.