The Knapsack...part 1

Alistair had had to stop and talk with another of the Glen residents and so didn't notice when Ahnna came out of the bathroom at the Meridius' New Year's Eve party. She'd seen him engaged in conversation, was glad, and quietly slipped out the kitchen door into the rear garden. He was too kind, too good, and all the damaged parts of her soul rose up, screaming at her that she was a fool for thinking about him the way she'd begun to.

She sat heavily on a garden bench, burying her face in her hands. Everything in her life had gone wrong. And she'd done it herself. There was no one else to take the blame. She would never get past it. There was simply no way. It was something she'd have to carry with her the rest of her life. You couldn't put something this big down. But, oh, how it weighed. Her back curved forward under the weight of it. Sometimes she thought it might crush her.

There were times when she looked in Alistair's eyes that she almost forgot about it. The clear beauty in them as he met her gaze did things inside her...until she remembered. Tonight had been like that. They were talking, everything was fine, then the memory of what she carried on her back welled up and she simply had to get away. She was too shriveled of a soul and his presence made her aware of that.

Her eyes screwed tightly shut, she tried desperately not to think of what she'd done. But it was there; it was almost always there. And it should be! She should suffer because of it. The rare occasions when she still encountered her younger sister, the look in those eyes affirmed that. Her sister was all she had left, and Marce would barely speak to her. She'd ruined Marce's life as well, sent her off into places that the mere thought of made Ahnna shudder. But she couldn't blame Marce. Her sister was right. She'd ruined everything.

She hoped to find some quiet, some bit of peace, working in the Greenery. But even there reminders came. She'd been looking at a pot that contained a small rhododendron plant, a yellow one, very, very rare. It had been her mother's favorite bush in the yard of the house where Ahnna had grown up in Armidale. She'd pampered that bush, watched over it like a hawk, and when it bloomed her mother was in seventh heaven. She photographed it endlessly, even keeping an enlargement of it on the wall in their breakfast room. Ahnna hadn't expected to find a small version of it in the Greenery. It was so rare and the Greenery so newly-opened. She'd been surprised to find it sitting there beside a golden azalea plant. Fingering its blooms, tears had sprung quickly, and memories flooded through her, all the yearning that what had happened had not happened, the irrevocable fact that it had. That had been the moment when Alistair had come up behind her, asking after blue iris.

Alistair. Something in her yearned toward him as she also yearned toward the life she had lost. But she didn't deserve someone like him. She was crippled inside, broken in a way beyond healing, and he was more whole that she'd imagined anyone could be. So she sat there alone on New Year's Eve in Joimus' garden, her face buried in her hands, not seeing how the brilliant light of the sailing moon tipped all the blossoms with silver light.

His conversation done, Alistair located Joimus in the kitchen. "Have you seen Ahnna," he asked, concerned over the manner in which she'd left him.

"A while ago." She nodded toward the kitchen door. "She went out that way, I believe."

Alistair opened the door and stepping onto the side patio, looking for her. The scent of the garden was almost heady and he inhaled deeply, lifted his eyes briefly to the irresistible pull of the moon, then headed down the flagstone pathway that led around a curve into the center of the garden. He stopped when he saw her there on the bench, the moonlight limning the top of her dark head. Quietly he approached, squatting in front of her, placing a hand gently on her knee.

"Ahnna, are you all right?"

It took a moment for her to lift her head and when she did, the misery he saw in her eyes clutched at his heart. "Oh, Ahnna," he breathed.

"You shouldn't have come," she whispered, her voice breaking. He was like some wave of light, breaking over her darkness, and the glow of him...hurt.

He smiled the barest smile, keeping his hand on her knee. "But I have come, Ahnna."

She knew. She just didn't know...why. There was no place for someone like him in the wreck of her life. She straightened, lifting her head toward the moon, her dark hair waving over her shoulders. "It...it's not right," she murmured, not looking at him.

"How can it be made right, Ahnna?"

She looked at him then. "It can't be, Alistair. There are some things that can never be made right. Ever."

"I'm not sure that's completely true," he said softly.

"For you, maybe. I can see that. But it is true for me."

"What is it, Ahnna, that cannot be made right?"

She gazed at his earnest face. No one ever spoke to her as he did. "It doesn't matter," she sighed.

"I think it must matter more than anything."

She closed her eyes. "It's too late, Alistair. Far too late."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not." He stood then sat beside her on the bench. "I'd like to know what it is."

She stared at her feet. "No, you wouldn't."  No one who knew ever looked at her the same again. She couldn't bear to see that in his eyes, too.

"Ahnna. Please?"

She shook her head. "I ruined everything. You don't want to hear about that. Believe me, you don't."

"I do, Ahnna. Truly."

Turning her head to the side, she studied his eyes, reading a calm patience in them, a genuine concern. He was too beautiful. He wouldn't understand her ugliness.

Her hands were clasped now in her lap and he placed a palm over them. "Truly, Ahnna," he repeated.

Lifting her face upward again, she closed her eyes. "I killed them. I killed them all."

That wasn't quite what he'd expected, but he'd heard so many things in his pastorate that he didn't even blink.

 "Who, Ahnna?"

"My family," she groaned. "All of them except my sister."

He increased the pressure of his hand over hers. "Tell me, Ahnna."

"I had a new car," she said, her voice little more than a whisper, her head turned away from him. "I was driving them up to Brisbane for a day trip. We usually always went in my father's station wagon, you know, but my car was brand new and I absolutely insisted we had to go in that. Pop sat in the front seat beside me, and my Mum was in the back, between my two little brothers. I was so...happy...that morning."  She paused, breathing through her mouth. "Then I got all full of myself and started acting silly, doing stupid things with the car just to show off. " A ragged breath cut through her words. "Stalled it on the railroad tracks at a tight curve. Kept saying it would be all right, that I'd get it going again. Just stay in the car, I said. I can handle this. Then it came. Around the curve. Didn't know it was there until the whistle started to blow." She shuddered, the whistle still haunted her dreams. "I don't know what happened. It's all blacked out. But somehow I was standing there beside the tracks and my car was nothing but crushed metal, screeching along in front of the engine."

She turned to look at him. "I got out. Don't you see? I got myself out...and they didn't. I don't know how that happened.
But I saved myself and all of them died. Horribly. I did that. Me. I killed my parents and my little brothers and the weight
of it is killing me! There's no way to stop it! I don't deserve for it to stop! It's my fault. All of it." She made little guttural
sounds in her throat. "I'm so ugly!" she gasped. She felt like a murderess. She felt like she'd defiled her spirit.

He licked his lips and slid an arm around her back, just holding her while she sobbed. After several minutes she quieted
and leaned her head wearily on his shoulder. He prayed silently for guidance as he held her, waiting quietly for the right
time, the right words. She was obviously being crushed. Often, he didn't know what he would say in a time like this,
but he had learned to rely on the passage that promised, "Open your mouth and I will fill it."

He started to speak, his voice low, even. It was a story, something he'd begun to see clearly in his mind as she cried.
Something Ahnna needed to hear, needed to know.

It took her a moment, but his voice was something she couldn't ignore and she stopped the last of her sobs, listening
with her eyes closed. He was saying:

As he saw her coming along the lane, his handsome brow furrowed in concern. He had been walking in the evening, the breeze cool upon his face, the rising moon casting a soft sheen on his glorious tuxedo with its long tails, its wide cummerbund, its silken shirt and tie.  She had no shoes on her cut and bleeding feet, and the fibers of her old dress were worn and caked with the dust of her long journey. Bits of hay clung to her knotted hair, gotten he knew, from the barns in which she spent her nights. The evening air blew toward him, carrying clearly the scent of dried manure.

Tears furrowed in little tracks down her dirty cheeks as she made a half-hearted attempt to wipe them away with her hand, her nails cracked and filthy. Her back was bowed under the weight of a great, canvas knapsack that shifted as she walked, keeping her constantly off balance.  His own eyes welled with tears as he watched her stumble, falling hard, skinning both knees.  She knelt there in the dirt, her stringy hair draping forward over her face, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

He wanted to go to her, to lift her to her feet, but he knew that should she see him dressed as he was, she would be shamed and not let him near. Turning, he ran quickly into the large, stone country club, shedding his tailed coat as he went, dropping his cummerbund on the marble floor, unknotting his cravat. He slipped out of his patent shoes, left his gold brocade vest draped over a chair, undid the pearl buttons on his satin shirt. In the broom closet, he found the janitor's change of clothes, old and all in shades of brown and tan. He smiled as he pulled up the baggy pants and buttoned the frayed flannel shirt, then turned once again and ran toward the shadowed lane. 

She was there, her forehead now bent to the ground as great sobs wracked through her.  He inhaled deeply, then knelt beside her in the dirt, placing his right palm gently on her shoulder. She shuddered, then brought her head up a little, pushing back her hair.  Her eyes took in his shabby clothing, then rested themselves upon his eyes where moonlight reflected in his brimming tears. Her lower lip trembled and no matter how hard she clamped it with her teeth, she could not make it stop.

"I'm so...tired," was all she managed to say.

"I know," he replied as he half-stood, extending his hand to her, palm up. 

She studied it a long while, then gasped, "I...I can't."

The Knapsack...part 2

Alistair's voice broke through her pain. He'd caught her up, taken her out of the garden, away from the crushed car, and she was the woman on the road, the knapsack crushing her.

He continued the story....His eyes slid down to her knapsack, knowing its weight kept her from lifting her hands off the road. Silently, he grasped its thick shoulder straps, pulling it off her back.  It was, indeed, very, very heavy and unpleasant, musty scents rose from its confines. In the silvered light of the night, he stood there beside her on the lane, gripping it in his hands. Again he inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, pressing his lips together tightly.  He had known it would be heavy, but this...this was already straining the sinew of his shoulders. 

She watched him, not yet able to discern fully his intentions, but strangely attracted by the moonlit beauty of his face.  Slowly, his lids opened, his lashes starred with his own unshed tears.  The corners of his lips turned up in the tenderest of smiles as he shifted the weight of the knapsack, moving it around and onto his back, settling the straps over his shoulders. 

"Why did you do that?" she asked in barely a whisper.

"So you could stand," he replied, once again extending his hand to her.

She felt his fingers, warm and strong, curl around her palm as she lifted it hesitatingly out of the dirt. At his touch, something inside her that had been pulled tightly all the long years, snapped, making her gasp. Her other hand flew to her mouth, clamping there, trying to muffle a cry that seemed half pain-half something else. Breathing rapidly, shallowly, she let him lift her to her feet.

"Where are you going?" he asked quietly.

"I...I'm going to the bridge," she replied, nodding down the lane.

He knew of the old stone arch that crossed the narrow stream a mile further on and said, "Ah, I am going that way, too. May I walk with you?" 

Side by side they made their way to the bridge, its dark arch resembling a cave in the night.

"I am resting here," she said, stepping off the lane. "You can give me back my knapsack  now."

"Is it not too heavy for you?" he asked, looking at her frail form.

"I have carried it all my life," she explained, "adding to it little by little and am very used to its weight." She looked at him carefully. "Do you not have a knapsack of your own?" she inquired.

"No," he responded, "I've never... needed...one." He followed her off the lane, down the bank to where a wide shelf of grass went under the bridge on one side.

"You are coming?" she asked.

If I may," he said. He stopped beside her, looking at her seriously in the soft light. "Do you wish me to come?" 

She turned her eyes from his to the darkness of the arch, imagining being alone. She was familiar with aloneness, yet somehow the thought of his leaving her now made the darkness seem strangely darker and solitude an unbearable thing. "With all my heart," she murmured, surprising herself with her sudden depth of feeling.

He sat, then, at the edge of the small stream, patting the grass at his side. "Come, sit," he invited...and she did.

Tearing off a piece of his shirt tail, he dipped it in the rippling water and began to wash the dirt and grit from her bleeding knees. Never had she been touched so gently and again her chin trembled as a silent tear tracked down her cheek. Then he gathered leaves, making her a bed just a bit under the curve of the arch. He sat down outside, leaning back against the stones.

"You did not lay down my knapsack," she commented, nestling into the leaves.

"I know," he replied.

An early morning sunbeam found its way under the bridge, waking her with its rosy brightness. She saw him then, standing in the grass near the stream, a loaf of bread in his hands. "You have bread?" she asked, amazed.

"I do," he replied, breaking off a large piece and handing it to her.

Just then a jogger passed by on the lane, his outfit new and expensive. "You have bread?" he, too, asked when he saw the man by the stream.

"I do," the man repeated, giving the jogger the rest of the loaf.

"You gave...him...your bread?" she said, frowning, when the jogger had run on toward the country club.

"He needed it," was all he said.    

Together, then, they walked as the day came. Without the weight of her knapsack, she carried herself taller and straighter and for the first time noticed there were pear trees along the lane. She laughed as he reached up, plucking her a piece of the fruit. She bit into the pear, letting its juices run down her chin. He smiled, delighting in her happiness, his eyes dancing with joy.

Seeing his face, she paused. "You...you...love me?" she whispered wonderingly.

He took a step toward her, wrapping his arms about her shoulders, kissing the top of her head. "I do," he replied, his heart filled.

She tipped her head up to look at him. "But you have no reason to love me." 

"Love both has and is its own reason," he said, but she did not understand.

She was, though, beginning to love his love for her. Now when they walked, she slid her arm through his, drinking in the sound of his voice, wanting him near. They sat in a field of daisies and she said, "I think I love you."

"I know you do," he replied.

"You know I love you or that I think I love you," she pursued.

"Yes," he said, closing his eyes.

She laughed, shaking her head fondly at him. "But you love me?" she went on.

"Without boundary...without end," he said.

She liked that. She wanted to be loved like that. "Thank you," she said playfully.

"You are welcome," he replied, but a sudden shudder shook his body. She was too happy, too in love with his love to notice.

They walked more and he picked grapes for her, and figs. "I didn't know there was so much fruit along this lane!" she cried delightedly. Then she smiled at him again.

"Not until you came," she added. "Not until you began to carry my knapsack."

"It is often that way," he said.

"I think I love you," she giggled.

"I know," he said, a tear welling.

"Will you love me no matter what?" she asked, dancing in a small circle.

"No matter what," he said, thinking of the meaning in 'what.'

A single lily grew beside the lane, its scarlet petals shading into peach. She plucked it, putting it in her hair, unaware of a brief pain crossing his face.

"It was lovely," he said, looking at the severed stem.

"I needed it," she replied, "to make me lovely, too."

"No," he whispered, touching one of its petals. "You were arrayed in love."

"I needed more," she said.

"There is no more," he smiled.

"No more than love?" she frowned.

"It is everything," he said, "the beginning...and the end."

"Love has an ending?" she asked, her frown deepening.

"Sometimes it may...appear...that way," he said so softly she could barely hear.

Throwing the lily to the ground, she stepped upon it.   "I do not like these words!" she cried.

"I know," he said.  

Looking across the stream, she saw a man in golden robes, holding a bouquet of lilies in his arms. "He will give me lilies!" she snapped at her companion.

"Yes," he agreed, "he will."

"Do you CARE that he will give me lilies?" she almost shouted.

"I care more than you can think or imagine," he said.

"How can that be so?" she replied, her eyes narrowing.

"It has been so...forever." 

"I doubt that," she said sharply.

"I know."

"STOP!" she cried. "I want no more of your knowing! Give me back my knapsack!"  She looked across at the dark-eyed man clothed in gold. "He," she said furiously, "will give me lilies and never say, 'I know.'"

Turning her back to the stream, she grabbed her knapsack, stumbling and surprised at its forgotten weight. She did not see the man in gold drop his lilies and draw his bow, aiming between her shoulder blades. Her companion did, and moving quickly, stepped around her, the feathered shaft lodging in his chest. As he fell, his hands gathered up her knapsack, holding it as he crashed to earth, its weight driving the arrow completely through his body.

Stunned, she looked down at him. "You would carry it for me even now?"

"Even now," he gasped, his mouth filling with blood.

"Why?" she shouted. "WHY?"

"It's why I came," he whispered.

"I thought you came to love me," she said.

"I loved you...before," his voice was fading.

"Before when?" she begged.

"Forever," he said, and died.

The man in gold across the stream had regathered his lilies and was holding them out toward her. How beautiful they were! How beautiful they would make her!

Her companion lay still now, his blood puddling beneath him on the grass, her knapsack lying on his chest, bearing its weight for her even in death. "I think I love you," she said, blowing him a kiss, then struggling to lift the knapsack in her arms.

The waters were cold on her feet as she waded across the stream, but the man in gold came forward, smiling, handing her dozens of lilies.

"You are beautiful now," he said, his black eyes glittering.

But the lilies seemed somehow to add to the weight of the knapsack and when he said, "Come, walk with me," she could barely stand.

"Please," she asked, her voice almost a moan, "will you carry it for me?"

Arching an eyebrow, he replied, "I do not carry knapsacks, my dear."

She looked back across the stream at the quiet form. "I know," she whispered, "I know."

The Knapsack...part 3

Alistair paused a moment in the story, as if listening for the words that would come next.  Then he began to speak again. She could not take her eyes off his face.

For the next two days she walked with the man who wore the golden robe. Well, more accurately, she followed him as he seemed to walk too fast for her and her knapsack was heavier than ever with the addition of all the lilies.  Finally, she collapsed onto the ground and, frowning, he stopped, turned back, and walked to where she lay.

"Can you not keep up?" he chastised. 

"It...it's the weight of my knapsack," she whimpered. Looking up his tall, splendid form she asked again, "Could you help me carry it....just a little while?" 

He laughed, showing perfect, white teeth. "It's not in my job description." 

"It's so....heavy," she sobbed.

He studied her with glittering eyes. "But you knew that all along....didn't you."  It was a statement, not a question. 

Closing her lids tightly, she sighed, "He....carried it for me." 

The man sneered, his lip in a sharp curve. "He had nothing better to do with his time."

She looked at him again then, and he smiled. "While I....I have work to do, places to go, people to see." 

"You are busy then?" she asked, not understanding really.

He looked back over his shoulder in the way they had come. "Because of him." 

Then he snapped, "Get UP! I have no patience for your weakness! Here!" And he handed her another lily, deeply scarlet with its center shading into black.

She took it, fascinated by its rare beauty. "Put it in your hair," he commanded. 

She did as he asked, but the weight of it caused a terrible pain in her neck and shoulders.  "I...I don't think I can wear this lily!" she gasped.

"Of course you can, " he said, looking at her, his eyes narrowed and hard. "You chose it." 

"I...I chose it?" she asked, confused.

"Did you not?" he almost laughed. "Did you not choose to cross the stream and come to me, taking my lilies?"

"Yes," she whispered, tears welling in her eyes. "I did."

She had fallen near a large pine tree, and digging her fingertips into its bark, used it pull herself upright. Swaying unsteadily, she looked at her hands, cut and bleeding from the rough bark, one nail halfway torn off.  She remembered the warm gentleness of hands that had lifted her to her feet on the shadowed lane, and her chin trembled.

"Tears," he said, "will get you nothing but wet cheeks. You have delayed me long enough! Walk!"  

Inhaling a ragged, deep breath,  she trailed after him.  For two more hours she trudged, barely seeing where she was going as her thoughts were so filled with memories of a hand patting the grass beside the stream, a voice inviting, "Come, sit."  She recalled how he had looked standing in the morning light, holding the bread. Even now she could taste it on her tongue.     

The man in the golden robe stopped and she walked right into him, so unaware had she become of her surroundings.  The knapsack shifted and she fell hard.  He crouched beside her as she tried to get her breath back and when she could focus somewhat again, noticed he was holding out a lily in a flaming dark orange color. 

"Do you want it?" he asked, a knowing smirk on his face.

She looked at it long and carefully. Surely it was beautiful and were she to wear it would be....  Suddenly she saw a face...a face filled with joy as she had eaten the fruit he gave her. Blinking, she looked again at the lily, aware for the first time that these lilies had no fragrance.  In his hand, the orange lily seemed almost to flame and burn, becoming an ugly, horrid thing.

"No!" she said, "I do not want your lily." 

His eyes grew blacker as he stood, glaring at her. "Do you think...he...would have given you better? You have made your choice, my dear. " He poked at her knapsack with the tip of one elegant shoe. "I have proof of your choice." He smiled. "Besides, he is dead and you...you have come to walk with me." 

It was true, she knew, it was...all...true. "I have...rights...you know," he continued, "when you make your choice. You are quite stuck with me, now and forever." 

"He lies," a familiar voice said firmly from behind her.

Both heads jerked around quickly at the sound. A man stood there upon the grass, garbed in a marvelous tuxedo, a smile upon his lips but a truly fierce look in his eyes.

"Who...who...?" she stammered, not recognizing him at first. 

"She is MINE!" the robed one snapped.

"So it would...appear," the man in the tux replied levelly, coming forward, standing near her.  He looked down at her, his eyes filled with galaxies, with wings, with things for which there are no names. 

"No matter...what," he said, "without boundary...without end." 

He rested a palm on her head and she felt a strange awareness of every cell in her being and that each of them was being filled with some great charge of positive light that changed their very molecular structure.  It was then she noticed the white satin of his shirt was stained with blood and she knew him for who he was. Her hand reached out, fingertips touching the large, red stain. Then, turning her palm, she looked at it, looked at his blood upon her flesh.

"NOOO!" cried the golden-robed man.

She moved, turning toward him, holding out her hand between them. "Yes," she said.

His face a mask of rage, he pointed at her knapsack. "What of THAT?" he shouted.

The other man bent and in one smooth motion, lifted it off her back, dropped it on the ground and placed his foot on it. It disappeared.

"Knapsack?" he smiled. "Was there a knapsack?" 

His eyes turning suddenly lion-like, he said sternly, "Now...GO!" 

Taking hold of her arms, he lifted her to her feet. Pulling the lily from her hair, he crushed it in his hand, though he never once took his eyes off hers. A smile grew and grew upon his lips even as tears of joy welled in his eyes.

"Oh," he said, nodding slightly, "HOW I love you!" 

"Why?" she said, "Why would you love me?"

"It is why you were made," he replied.

"Why I was made?"

"Yes," he continued, "for me to love...to...to...be loved."

He looked at her seriously then. "Do you think you love me?" 

A great light shone in her eyes as she answered. "No." Then she threw her arms about him and cried loudly, "I KNOW I love you!"

Sweeping her lightly up in his arms, he walked swiftly over a long rise, coming out at the entrance to the country club.

"Here?" she said, puzzled, when she saw where they were. "But we...began... here."

He smiled. "It is when we return to where we had our beginning that we know where we are."

"But," she protested, "I...I can't go in THERE!"

He had by then carried her up the stone steps and had stopped just outside the great, carved entranceway.

"Look," she pointed out, "there is a security pad. You see, I can't go inside. You have to have an approved fingerprint to gain entry." 

"Try," he said, turning her so her hand could easily reach the pad.

"No," she cried, "it won't work...it can't possibly work!" She buried her face in his neck, ashamed.

"Try," he repeated.

Hesitatingly, she reached out her right forefinger, but kept it hovering just above the pad.

"Try," he urged again.

Reluctantly, she pressed it firmly on the pad, her teeth clenched down on her lower lip. As though it had been a mere hologram, the huge door simply melted away, leaving a wide open entryway.

"How...?" she marveled.

"Look at your hand," he said simply.

She did and saw that her fingerprint was covered in his blood.

"My God," she said, looking at it, stunned.

"Yes," he murmured.  

Still carrying her in his arms, he stepped over the threshold and into the enormous room, all oak-paneled and with candled chandeliers everywhere. A table was set, close to a large bay window that overlooked the gardens. He walked to it and stood her gently on her feet. Her eyes were wide as she stared at the magnificent dinner that was spread upon the table.

"For...me?" she whispered.

"For us," he said. "It was all prepared but could not be eaten alone...so I went outside to wait. I knew you were coming down the lane."

As she remembered that night, she suddenly recalled how she was dressed, how out of place she was in this glorious hall. She clutched the front of her dress with both hands, shamed by her appearance.

"Look," he said, knowing.

Tremblingly, she let her eyes gaze down her front. All her dirt, all her grime, were gone. She was not only clean, she was spotless, and her dress fell in soft white folds to the floor.

"My God!" she said, amazed.

"Yes," he replied, smiling, "yes."

Alistair's voice stopped, and he simply sat there, gazing into Ahnna's eyes. He had taken her on a journey with
him without ever leaving the bench. Something deep inside her, hard and sharp, began to fuzz around its edges.
"Y...yes?" she repeated.

"Yes, Ahnna," he smiled, reaching out to run a fingertip down her cheek.

"Do...do you think you could...hold me...for a little while?"

He circled his arms around her and she rested her head against his neck. In a few moments a cheer went up from inside the house.

"I think the New Year has begun," he whispered, kissing the top of her head.

She moved enough to lift her face, looking up at his. "Yes," she murmured, the single word filled with meaning, and ever so softly, he leaned, kissing her lips.