Poetry Friday - The Herding Teacher's Name

A little doggerel (or cat-eral) about one of my favorite characters from my Ratha series about intelligent prehistoric cats; Thakur, the clan's herding teacher. It addresses a silly problem with his name. Somewhat inspired by Edward Lear:

The Herding Teacher's Name (or I Should Be Working on Something Else)
(just for fun)

by Clare Bell

The herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR
I'll admit that it's a little bit obscure
Although it sounds absurd
It's a Bengali word
The herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR

Oh the herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR
I can't blame you if you're not really sure
The books where he resides
Lack pronunciation guides
Yes, the herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR

We call the herding teacher Ta-KOOR
THA-kur isn't right and needs a cure
It was a glaring feature in the TV movie "Creature" *
But the herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR

Get it through your furry heads; it's Ta-KOOR
If you say it wrong you may not be a boor
As it's writ in Ratha's Creature
It really does mean "teacher"
The poor herding teacher's name is Ta-KOOR

Ah, the herding teacher goes by Ta-KOOR
Regrettably it rhymes with "manure"
You must do quite a dance
When herding elephants
Since they leave behind a whole lot more than spoor.
And the herding teacher says his name ... TA-KOOR!

(copyright 2008 by Clare Bell)

ClanChirps - Ratha on Twitter

Twitter, according to many Internet experts, is the next hot item for promoting people and their creations, including books. Twitter is a microblogging service that limits posts to 140 characters, thus challenging its users to generate intriguing and provoking messages within that format. In that aspect, it resembles short forms of poetry. In answering the question, "What are you doing right now?" Twitter lets users give peeks into their lives and engages them in what kidlit blogger Mark Blevis (http://www.JustOneMoreBook.com) calls "short, snacky conversations".

I was peripherally aware of Twitter, but most Tweets (Twitter posts) I'd seen seemed to be either totally obscure or completely boring. Sheila Ruth of Imaginator Press (publisher of Ratha's Courage!) and Wands and Worlds told me she was using Twitter, so, encouraged by her example, I decided to give it a whirl. Hearing that another writer had given her characters Twitter identities and had them Tweet each other several times a day, I thought it could be fun to have Ratha, Fessran, Thistle-chaser and the rest of the Named gang make their little snacky comments about their world, our world and each other.

So why ClanChirps? Well, for one thing, I hadn't quite figured out how to make multiple user identies on Twitter, and I wanted to get going, so I just decided to preface the clan cats' Tweets with a word that would distinguish theirs from mine. Cats, however, don't tweet, which is one reason why the Twitter logo is a bird. Cats make lots of other sounds, however, and they use short high calls that are described as chirping or trilling. Yes, cats can chirp. Listen to a mom kitty calling her babies. Big cats do it too. As Bira says in one of the earlier posts, " Ask any cheetah."

So, once given Twitter access, the Named have left their tracks all over it. From Ratha's first online chirp in response to the care of monarch butterfly caterpillar waste removal ("Can't you teach your caterpillars to use a litterbox?" ), through a clan variation of a 4th of July barbeque:

ClanChirps - Mondir: "Why are we dragging this toward the firepit? You aren't going to throw it in and let it burn up, are you?" 06:06 PM September 01, 2008

ClanChirps - Cherfan: "That's what a barbecue is, dung-for-brains! You grab the meat out before it burns. Makes it tastier..." 06:12 PM

There's Fessran's garbled attempt to participate in "Talk Like a Pirate Day", and baffled feline comments on human election year politics:

ClanChirps - Ratha:"I'm peeking into the future human world. What's a 'sarah palin'?" 01:44 PM September 15, 2008 from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't know, but I see a really scary thing called a 'mccain'. Poor humans." 02:05 PM September 15, 2008 from web

ClanChirps - Fessran: "I don't think the sarah palin would like me. I'm in a book, I'm sexy, and I think I'm in love with Ratha... 02:16 PM September 15, 2008 from web

Fessran: "I'm not really. I just wanted to claw-poke the palin, who doesn't think us females should love each other." 02:56 PM September 15, 2008 from web


As you can see, the Named have been romping around, making absolute Twits of themselves.

The Chirps also include a little ongoing tale, done in dialog, which is a prequel to Ratha's Courage. Featuring Bundi, from Clan Ground, and Mishanti, from Ratha and Thistle-Chaser, this little Twitter-playlet relates how the rumblers (indrotheres) Grunt and Belch came to be among the clan's herdbeasts and how they got their names. Composed directly on Twitter, this Named Twit-improv (Twitprov?) is coming directly from the kitty's mouth, so to speak, and not even the author knows what the Named will do or say next.

Mishanti, warning Bundi to be careful while getting a threehorn milch-doe from the herd to provide milk for the rumbler babies:

ClanChirps- Mishanti: "Not get kicked in head, else you talk like me and Thistle. Kicked in furry butt, maybe OK." 10:18 PM September 04, 2008 from web



Join me (Twitter ID"rathacat") and the Named bunch and "whitetip" (follow) us through the interlinked paths of the Miocene and the present day.

As Ratha says, "Yaaaarrr! Chirp!"

A Taste of Ratha's Courage

Update 2: The book wasn't up as of 4/3. E-Reads has done the E-Book file, checked it and has sent it to Baen. As well as herding the book to E-publication, I am currently writing the kickoff announcement article that will appear on the E-Reads Blog (http://www.ereads.com).

Ratha's Courage to be released 4/1/08 on Baen Books (http://www.baen.com) along with E-Reads (http://www.ereads.com)

Ratha's Courage
by Clare Bell
Excerpt copyright 2007

Chapter One

A shiver of excitement went through Ratha. She began her stalk, belly fur brushing the ground. Grass whispered past her legs as she felt the slow controlled power of each muscle. Her tail-tip tingled with the urge to twitch, but she held it still.

The horse the Named called a striper tossed its head and flapped its tail, eyes widening. Ratha slowed her down-wind stalk so that she seemed nearly frozen, yet was still moving. The striper swung its neck around, jerking its head and ears back.

Ratha stilled until the herdbeast settled, then quickened her stalk, easing her weight from one foot to the next, placing each directly ahead of the one behind and moving so smoothly she felt as though she were flowing across and through the grass, a green-eyed river of tawny gold.

Nearing the striper’s dancing rear hooves, inhaling it’s sweat-sharpened scent, Ratha trembled with the impulse to dash, spring and wrestle her prey to the ground. She took a long slow breath, as the herding teacher, Thakur had taught her, mastered her urge and crept around the striper, circling in front of it.

Stripers were new to the Named herds. This horse was dun, with dark brown mane and tail. Ratha turned her head to bring her gaze down along its banded forelegs to the three-toed feet. These feet differed from those of the smaller dappleback horses that the clan had long tended. The striper’s center toe, sheathed in a single hoof, was larger, the side toes further off the ground. That hoof had far more power than the four and three-toed feet of the dapplebacks. Ratha had dodged it many times and other herders had been sent sprawling.

The striper grunted and whinnied, its nostrils flaring with her smell. From her crouch, Ratha lifted her chin and stared up at the horse, trying to catch and hold its gaze. As if sensing her purpose, the striper reared, its forefeet cutting the air, its tail whisking its flanks. She froze again; waited.

When the striper dropped down, she pounced on its stare with her own. Again it evaded her, closing its eyes and ducking its head, showing her only its bristling mane.

She knew the stripers were smarter than the dapplebacks; by now her stare would have a dappleback helplessly imprisoned.

Thakur had warned her that the stripers were clever; that the larger head held a more alert and cunning mind. Suppressing her frustrated growl, Ratha made several rasping snarls that were almost barks.

The sounds had the effect she wanted. The striper’s ears swiveled, the head came up, the eyes opened. Again her eyes sought the striper’s gaze and this time she captured it. The animal stiffened, as if about to fight, but snort and stamp as it would, the striper couldn’t break Ratha’s stare. It stilled to near-immobility, only its hide shivering.

Ratha felt triumph strengthen her heartbeat and deepen her breathing. She was so close; she could reach out and tap one of the horse’s forelegs with a front paw.

Again came the rush of desire that threatened to propel her up onto the horse’s shoulders, driving her teeth into its neck. In her imagination, she was already atop the striper, feeling the stiff upright mane bristle into the corners of her mouth. Part of her already felt the velvet-furred skin resist, stretch and then tear through beneath the points of her fangs, her neck muscles pulling and twisting in just the right way so that her fangs would slip between the neckbones and skillfully separate them while the prey’s blood flowed in pulses over her tongue. . .

Outwardly Ratha shuddered, yet kept her eyes fixed on those of the horse while inwardly she swiped the feelings aside. No, such a fevered attack was not the way of the Named. She had fought this internal battle many times before, when she trained as a cub under Thakur, and later when she began her duties as a herder. Even when she culled herd-beasts, she would not let instinct run wild.

Ratha used her frustration and desire, pouring them out savagely through her eyes. The horse was now as still as if it were already in her killing embrace. The muscles and tendons atop her forelegs quivered with the need to drive her claws out and deep into flesh.

She lifted out of her crouch, rearing up on her hind paws to lay one foreleg almost gently over the horse’s shoulders and up along the back of its neck. In spite of her care, the beast started, but before it could begin its escape flurry, Ratha slapped the other forepaw around the underside of its neck.

Now Ratha used her claws, but only enough to maintain her hold as she pushed backwards with her hind feet to unbalance the striper and pull it over. She was so close to the horse now that she couldn’t hold its gaze, but she no longer needed to. It was falling into the daze that doomed prey often assumed.

Instead of digging into the striper’s nape with claws and teeth, Ratha used the pressure and friction of her pads combined with her weight and her experience in knowing exactly how and where to push in order to topple the beast.

As if in a trance, the striper sank to its knees. Ratha climbed further onto it, using her weight to press the horse down onto its belly. She draped herself across the animal, one forepaw keeping the horse’s forelegs, with their dangerous hooves, at a distance. She wrapped the other forepaw around the top of the horse’s head, twisting it up so that the throat lay exposed.

Feeling the striper's heartbeat thudding through its ribs and into her own body, Ratha bent her head, jaws starting to open. The heart’s beat was strong in the creature’s neck, visibly jolting the skin over the great vessels and releasing a deep temptation in Ratha to bite deeply and hard.

Instead she opened her mouth to its full gape and set her teeth in position for the instinctive throat bite. With the horse’s sweat-smell hot in her nose, she squeezed her eyes shut with the effort not to bite, feeling the jaw-closing muscles beneath her eyes and on the sides of her forehead tremble with the strain.

The onlookers, Thakur and the young cubs learning herding from him, had grown quiet, as if they sensed the conflict within her.

Slowly, deliberately, she pulled her head up, feeling the skin of her muzzle slide
back over her teeth as her mouth closed. She swallowed the saliva that had flooded her mouth, staying atop the striper while the youngsters shrilled their praise and Thakur added his deeper note. Their cries sounded strangely muted to her, as if they were distant or her ears muffled...

(End of excerpt)

Ratha's Creatures - Shongshar

Ratha’s Creatures

What is Shongshar? A sabertooth cat?

In Clan Ground, Ratha admits Orange-Eyes, an UnNamed stranger, to the clan. Later, when Ratha angers him by taking away his cubs by Bira (since they lack the Named “light” in their eyes), he becomes the fierce and arrogant Shongshar. He drives Ratha out of the clan and nearly kills Fessran with his long fangs.

Some readers think that Shongshar is based on the sabertooth cat Smilodon, a different species than Ratha’s kind, who are based on the cheetah-like nimravid, Dinaelurus. Smilodon, however, evolved millions of years later than Ratha’s people, appearing in the Pleistocene. The Miocene nimravids, on which Ratha is based, had both sabertooth and “conical tooth” species. Barburofelis, a distant Ratha relative, out-sabered the later Smilodon. Barburofelis had huge fangs that were so long they needed to be protected by a large bony flange on the animal’s jaw.

Even the more cat-like “conical tooth” nimravid species, such as Nimravus and Dinaelurus, had longer fangs than many cats. Nimravus, being more like a leopard or a clouded leopard, had longer fangs than Dinaelurus. Clouded leopards have the longest front fangs in the modern cat family for their size. The whole nimravid family had strong sabertooth tendencies. I often compare Ratha’s kind with the modern cheetah, but fossil Dinaelurus skulls have longer and sharper front fangs than do cheetahs. (See my reconstruction of a Dinaelurus crassus skull in clay).

Saberteeth have arisen in many mammalian lines. Creodonts, which were early, less specialized carnivores that arose long before cats were even a thought in Nature’s mind, had weasel- and martin-like forms with saberteeth. Nimravids gave rise to Dinictis, often called a “dirktooth” cats and Homotherium, known as the “scimitar-tooth” cat. Many of Ratha’s relatives are known as “false sabertooths” to distinguish them from the later “true sabertooths” of the Smilodon line.

Sabertoothed forms also arose among marsupials (kangaroos, opossums and other pouched mammals. Thylacosmilus, a lion-sized South American fossil marsupial carnivore, would have given Barburofelis competition for the nasty-saber award.

Saber-like teeth have emerged in many species, including primates. Some male baboons have fangs that make leopards think twice about attacking.

So, back to old Shongshar. What is he? Well, all of the UnNamed and the Named are the same basic species, although the Named have branched off in their own direction. Dinaelurus and the more leopard-like Nimravus were close sister-species and might have been able to hybridize.

As stated previously, all the nimravids had a tendency to develop saberteeth and Shongshar was an extreme case. Or he is a hybrid between Dinaelurus and Nimravus.

(Or he is a Smilodon that time-traveled back from the Pleistocene to the Miocene – no, just kidding. Or you can write that story.)

When you first read Clan Ground, what did you think Shongshar was (other than a big pain in Ratha’s tail)?

Comments?

CB

Ratha's Creatures - Treelings

What are the treelings?

In Clan Ground, the herding teacher Thakur (pronounced Ta-KOOR, since it is a Bengali word meaning “teacher”) literally runs across a small furry creature and accidentally injures it. His first thought is to eat it (he is a cat, after all), but he becomes intrigued by the little fur-ball. He calls it, Aree, based on the sound it makes, and decides to keep it as amusement and as a companion. Aree has hand instead of paws or claws, and uses them to climb trees, pick fruit, throw things, and pick ticks out of Thakur’s coat. Thakur discovers that Aree can do many other things, including some that influence the clan’s use of the Red Tongue (fire).

Once he convinces the clan that Aree is more useful than tasty, Ratha and the others accept Thakur’s odd little pet, letting the treeling groom them. When Aree turns out to be female and has babies, Ratha and other clan members adopt little treeling companions.

What kind of prehistoric creature is Aree? Readers have made many guesses, including monkey, ape, squirrel, raccoon, lemur, tarsier (bush baby), other type of primate, other type of rodent, other member of the raccoon family and totally made up by author.

Here’s a hint. I made one mistake in describing Aree, enabling her to do something that the real prehistoric species probably couldn’t.

Any ideas? Many readers already know, but I’d like to hear some guesses.

Next up in the Ratha series guessing game. What is Shongshar, the clever tyrant who uses the worship of fire to take over clan leadership?

CB

What inspired me to write the Ratha series

The wonder, majesty, and terror of Earth's life, as embodied in cats, both large and small. The flashing beauty of the cheetah in the chase, the arch of the mountain lion's spring, and the quivering of flesh as two huge male lions rebound from each other in a fight. The fossils that speak of cats and cat-like creatures millions of years dead, yet alive and stalking in human minds. The small cats in my life who bring the jungle into the living room, who stalk and pounce on my emotions and deliver an alien but deep love.

The human minds who have created and recreated cats in words and between pages, fiction and non-fiction. Joy Adamson's Elsa and Pippa recline beside Bagheera, Kipling's great black panther. I wanted so badly to be Mowgli, who was privileged to rest against that velvet side and hear the deep rumbling voice, so fierce and so wise.

Even more, I wanted to be Bagheera, to escape the Bandar-log taint of the human world. To swipe it away with the stroke of a paw, to yawn at it with curled tongue and white shining teeth, and then pad away like a mystery, leaving awe behind.

That was a child's dream, with a child's anger. That child grew up to become part of the human world and the anger became an energy directed at changing the bad things about it, such as war, starvation, hate, greed, cruelty, despoiling and destruction. Perhaps some of that energy did actually cause some small changes.

I can't say exactly what created Ratha and her world. I walk inside her skin, look out through her eyes, feel the muscles that retract and extend her claws. I live her struggles with the tyrant Shongshar and she lives with mine against an unfair and unjust Iraq war and those who grow fat on it. She tries to befriend Thistle-chaser and I try to do the same with an uncertain and equally prickly young stepchild. I stroke my kitty Athena and she nuzzles Ratharee, her treeling.

And if readers can experience Ratha as I have, it is a great joy.

Stay on this trail -- there will be more.

CB

Two-way Clicker Communication

Clicker Communication from primate (human) to cat:

This morning, I and my gray female kitty, Athena did a clicker session together. Most people, including its originator, Karen Pryor, call this activity clicker-training. I prefer clicker communication or interaction, since it is not just about teaching a cat tricks. It is, as Pryor notes in her book, Clicker-Training for Cats, a wonderful way to communicate with another species. Athena knows that if I ask her to do something, by means of either voice or hand signal, and she does it, she gets a click, which signals a food reward. The click comes from a hand-held device that I press with my thumb.

(See Pryor's website)

Athena often asks me to do a session by patting my face gently, then running into the room we use. She then "offers behavior" to get me to click and treat. She goes to home base, which is right on top of her scratch-post cat tower. It is about chair-seat height. I click and treat her for that.

She knows how to target, i.e. follow the end of a capped ballpoint stick pen. Often we do "around the world" which is hopping from home to a chair then to a desk, then back home. If I stand back and give her free run, she will often go to her cat carrier, open the (unlatched) door and enter. That earns her a treat.

If I hold a hand palm-down and flat over her head or ask her to sit, she will (after a little feline deliberation). She also will target up, lifting her forepaws in a "sit pretty", or sometimes standing on her hind legs and pawing the target stick, looking like a circus lion or tiger.

"Cat athletics" is jumping over or crawling under a board propped in my narrow hallway. I make sure that it doesn't fall and alarm her.

When she wants to end a session, she sits and washes her face.







Some people feel that a cat is "above" learning tricks and that teaching them is demeaning. For Athena and me working with the clicker is great fun. If I am busy, she will often pester me for a session, but she is so sweet about it that I don't mind.
If we don't do a clicker session for a few days, she still remembers everything.

(I don't know what breed or mix she is. I adopted her as a tiny kitten from a shelter. She matches some of the breed standards for a Korat, or perhaps a Russian Blue. I personally think she is a Korat or Korat mix. What do you think?)

Thinking up new things to teach her is often challenging, but fun for both of us. Sometimes she gets an idea, then "offers" it to me.


In reverse: from cat to primate (lemur):

Ratha and the Named keep small lemur-like animals called "treelings" as companions and helpers. In Clan Ground, Thakur, the herding teacher for the clan, teaches his treeling Aree various tasks. He gives the animal spoken commands and nudges it gently with his nose. He clicks his teeth together to get its attention, and purrs to show that he is pleased. He rewards Aree with licks and nuzzles.

This is not clicker-training in the exact sense, but borrows from the idea. Dolphin trainers have used similar reward-based method using whistles and that was in use when I wrote Clan Ground in 1983-84. The idea of clicker-training was just starting among dog trainers back then, although I have no idea how I got hold of it. Maybe Thakur just invented the Named version.

From pp. 110-111 of Clan Ground, here Thakur is, teaching Aree in stages how to build and tend a a small flame of the Red Tongue.

He took the stick and placed it in the fire.... He moved slowly, letting Aree follow everything he did. When the stick was in place, he picked it up in his jaws, took it out and replaced it carefully. Once he was sure the treeling understood, he put the stick back in the fire again, but instead of grasping it with his teeth, he used his pawpad.

The wood only rolled under his clumsy swipes. With an impatient chirp, the treeling reached underneath Thakur's foreleg, seized the stick and pulled it out. With a gesture almost like a flourish, Aree presented him with the stick as if to say, "This isn't so hard if you have paws like mine. See?"

Thakur licked the treeling until he was damp and rubbed against him until Aree's coat was thoroughly rumpled....

Aree learned rapidly and was soon responding correctly to Thakur's directions. He found that the sharp sound he made by clicking his teeth together would command the treeling's attention faster than would spoken words.

Soon Aree could extract a branch from the fire and walk around on three legs, holding the lighted torch.

I'll bet the pioneering clicker-trainers never imagined something like this!

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Ratha and Author Play "Mud-kitty"

My hubby, Chuck, and I installed a new spring-box yesterday. We live in a remote area west of Patterson, CA, and we get our water from a spring on our land. We have a mountain just in back of the place and the spring is way-the-hell-and-gone up the mountain. Water from the spring flows into a collection box, then into a sedimentation box (where all the sand and grit and so forth settles out), then into three water tanks located downhill from the spring. A line down the mountain gives us fresh water at high pressure (try 120 psi) that supplies the household and hoses to fight wildfires if needed.

Due to age and lack of rainfall in the area (an effect of climate change/global warming, probably) our water reserve has been falling. We decided to dig out behind the spring and enlarge the box. Because of the location, we have to do the digging by hand. Chuck's son, Heath, did most of the excavation, creating a muddy pit behind the existing spring-box.

Since I don't mind getting completely soaked in our canyon's plus-100 dry heat (which enables cooling by evaporation), I took over the final phase of the excavation, sitting in the water using a garden cultivating tool and trowel to go down the remaining one-foot depth. Since it was sandy, gravelly, relatively "clean" dirt, I just took my shoes off and plunged in. Since there was no shade on the excavation, I used the few inches of water in the bottom to soak my cotton pants and shirt while flinging muddy gravel out with a shovel, the trowel and my hands. I even rolled in it when my clothes started to dry off.

I became aware that I was getting incredibly dirty by the grin on Chuck's face. Even my glasses were spattered and don't even ask about the hair, although I do wear a hat. I made jokes about piggies in wallows and mud puppies. The water, however, kept me cucumber-cool and I didn't shed sweat like my poor hubby, who was digging on the drier ground. I invited him to join me, but for some reason he declined. Guess he's not the amphibious type. He also tolerates heat better than I do.

I believe that the secret of getting something done is to get as comfortable as possible while doing it. And in 106-degree dry California heat, it is hard. But, by playing "mud-puppy", or, rather, "mud-kitty" I managed to work the whole day and we got the installation done.

I had so much fun that I volunteered to do it again if needed (we may develop another spring).

Then I thought of the passage in my book Clan Ground, where Ratha, Thakur, and others of the Named dig the ditch they use to flood Shongshar's evil fire-den. They do this in the rainy season, so everything is mucky. On my knees in the water, scooping up gravel with one cupped hand while supporting myself on the other, I thought of Ratha, exhausted, soaking wet and dirty, pawing rocks and dirt from the bottom of the trench.

Here's Ratha playing "mud-kitty" (but not enjoying it as much as I did). This is from Clan Ground, pp 238-239, the new Firebird Books paperback (release date July 19, 2007!) Any typos in this are from the author entering the text. Thakur is the clan's herding teacher and Ratharee is a treeling, a lemur-like animal that the Named cats keep as pets and companions.

Overhead, the clouds grumbled and the rain began. At first it was light and helped by softening the ground so that the work went faster. As it grew into a pelting downpour, the bottom of the trench became a bog. The diggers fought to keep their footing on the slick clay and frequently fell into puddles or accidentally spattered each other with the pawfuls of mud they flung aside. Their small companions began to look less like treelings and more like soggy mudballs.

At the end of the day, Ratha would crawl shivering from the trench, her coat soaked, her underside and flanks grimy with clay and gravel. Once she was under shelter, Ratharee made an a determined attempt to groom her, but the treeling often so exhausted that she fell asleep when she had barely begun. Ratha was so tired that she didn't care.

The work grew more difficult and task seemed endless. Sometimes Ratha, in her haze of fatigue, couldn't remember what the purpose of it was. She felt as though she had spent her life scraping away at this wretched hole and would do so for the rest of her existence. When at last Thakur leaned down into the trench again and cried "Stop!," she paid no attention to him and kept on digging mechanically until water began seeping through gravel and soil at her feet.

She felt Thakur drop into the ditch beside her, seize her scruff and shake her. "Ratha, stop! We're finished. If you go any farther, the water-path will flood before we're ready."

She blinked, trying to pull herself out of her daze. She scrambled out of the trench after Thakur and saw that he was right. Only the remaining thin wall of earth held back the stream. When the time came, they would dig at the embankment to weaken it until it broke, sending the flow down the spillway, into the hollow and down the cracks that vented the cave below. The cave-fire would perish in a rush of water, and those who tended it would be swept away.

Despite her exhaustion, Ratha felt a surge of triumph. She was ready. Now all that remained was to wait.

(end of chapter 18)

I've played "mud-kitty" many times in various projects, so I imagine I used some of that experience on Ratha. Not that she necessarily appreciates it, however. Yes, I took a long shower afterward.

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