Like little red butterflies hovering in golden sunlight, they lodged in her many-braided yellow hair, or fluttered down the long curls that hung in front of her ears.

She laughed again under the caressing shower.

Then she tore away the remaining petals and tossed them up with an elf-like daintiness, not at the crouched and expectant kitten this time, but so that the whole red rain floated tenderly down upon her upturned face and into the folds of the white kerchief crossed upon her breast.

She waited for the last feathery petal.

Her hidden lover saw it lodge in the little hollow at the base of her bare, curved throat.