I kept focusing on my breathing, trying to regain my center.“How long have you kept that inside of you,” Risa asked.“It comes and goes,” I exp...lained, “But I am not trying to suppress it. It’s just that this was a special holiday for my family. For me too I guess,” I wiped my eyes.“And when Christmas comes?” she asked. I felt a flash of anger and pain as my body tensed.“That’s what I thought,” she stated. I sighed.“At some point, I am going to have to embrace this when I am alone,” I cautioned. The crossbow bolt hit him in the chest and drove in so deep that it did a good job of slicing up the man's lung. The fletching of the bolt was all that protruded from the victim's chest, so the people did not realize that this was what had caused the man's injury. There was considerable consternation among the others because none of the people of Doug's Town had done anything that they recognized as a hostile move. The man fell so that he was lying on his back, and he quickly drowned in his own. The age thing bothers some people but I am going to say I Love him. He has always shown himself to be a good man and a fine human being. I can put up with his human foibles and I admire everything else I have ever seen in him." Susan"s smile grew older and a little more serious and she turned an adoring gaze on Mark and continued, "I very deeply care about him and what happens to him on this adventure of a life." She returned her eyes to the server, " He is taking me finish out my senior. We gave them the complete story about the weapons on the ride back to town and over supper that night we finished up with Anna and Yolanda learning to shoot and some of their encounters with would be abusers and bandits including the fact that Anna was responsible for killing four of the six bank robbers trying to rob Hiram’s bank. Over our after-supper coffee Anna also told them about Tai Chi and the hand to hand fighting she was learning.A couple of days later we started our third week in.