Everything seemed to happen at once. Stella lived at two speeds simultaneously. In what felt like it should have taken only a second or two, the moon sprang upon her back and spread out like an effulgent tarpaulin, pressing her skin into the pricking fenc…

Feeling the moon approach, Stella tried to hurry her steps, but it was not easy; the barbed fence just past the water's bank sometimes was too close to the water, so she had to klinkerstep between the river and the bank; movement was inhibited, clumsy.

Th…

Stella trundled along the brook's edge, gazing behind her all the while when she could. The moon, the MOON! It was always there behind her, even when the brook changed directions like an eager puppy on its first trip to the park after a water-drinking con…