After Dinner

  "Why did you agree to give them Stryard when we just got him back?" Cassandra paced back and forth. Her dainty oval tipped fingers turning into harsh abstract art as she picked and prodded at them. "We didn't just get him," he mused barely audible. “And Alda-Casidy! You just handed her over leaving Eliane crying." She stopped in her tracks. "What if even she goes back?"

  “There is nothing we can do." he attempted to reason with his wife, but this was not the time. “Technically they are still married."

  "Marriage means nothing in his eyes. They are all but property. What will we do?"

  "Without death, nothing."

  "Nothing you do is without death."

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Stryard after Dinner

'I don't understand why I'm being forced to go with this man I don't even know, nor do I know why he wants me.' Stryard thought. 'Why father and mother agreed, but I do know something. And that little girl rubs me the wrong way I don't even know why I'm going into the kitchen to meet little Elizebeth. She hasn't changed at all, always having a plan to wrap everyone around her little finger. Like when we were young everything was mine or the twines fault.' Stryard open the kitchen door. "Elize-

About an hour has past; Stryard doesn't know where he is. He eyes weight about a ton, too heavy to open and he can move hands or feet. He musters all his effort to lift his head and peak through his lash, but he cannot make out the space.