That strange distant stare, flavored at times with… was it hatred? That's how it struck her, so much so at times that when he would reach out his hand to her, start to stroke her breasts, run his fingers over her neck, her shoulders, her face, and she would actually have to beat down an impulse to scream out, to pull away, to run…!

But from what?

She had no idea. She still lacked the distance necessary for true objectivity. Their situation, their isolation were still givens in her life, like the color of the sky, breathing, dawn and dusk…

But the seeds, sown probably at birth or perhaps before, taken root from her earliest years of awareness, were now beginning to sprout, to grow, to bear fruit…

So far, her rebellion expressed itself only in the act which now preoccupied her.

Dancing through the woods, she seemed from a distance to be perhaps a doe, maybe even a fawn, so perfectly did she melt through the trees, the underbrush, the foliage. As she ran, she had no conscious goal. The running was an end in itself.

To be alone!

To be a part of a world so much more vast, so much older and expansive… that was her desire.

Coming to a clearing, she climbed a rock and standing at the top, she stripped. Naked, captured in the first ray of sun cutting a yellow swath across the tops of the trees, she might have been a wood nymph, the very embodiment of whatever spirit ruled the forest.

Her stance was defiant. Arms akimbo, legs spread, long waves of thick hair washing down her shoulders, her back, dipping down to the two rounded cheeks of her tanned buttocks.