I get up early to sneak away from the cottage for some peace.

Saddling up my borrowed stead, I look forward to the sensation of riding again. It's been a while and I have missed it.

We head straight for the beach. The flat, wind-swept sands are empty now. Salt is whipped into my face on the breeze, but it's a welcome sensation.

We walk, then trot, then finally we gallop.

Ga-dunk, ga-dunk, ga-dunk the hooves repeat.
My heart beats along in the same rhythm. The horse and I are one.

A fleeting memory of Patrick Swayze teaching Jennifer Grey...

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"I'm dead. Really dead. Not in the "there'll be a twist at the end and I'll be saved" kind of way. Just dead."

At least I assumed so otherwise they never would have activated my Stored Intelligence Module.

Dad had been the brains so when he died I had been all too happy to sell out to Graftech. I had paid for the deluxe package and knew that when I died I would be downloaded into my custom android body.

But then had come the stock-market crash of 2241 and all that had changed. I lost virtually everything and now...

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You know damn well the head is in the box. You know damn well how this movie will end. But her legs are across yours and she shaved. They're smooth like you could have only guessed, because in winter she was all jeans and tights.

You've been hovering with your hand on her knee and she's so into this damn movie that you've seen one hundred times. She hasn't mentioned that she thinks about sleeping with Brad Pitt, but you see the way her eyes get when he comes on screen. She has yet to give you those eyes, but...

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She could tell I was faking it. After twenty years of marriage, she could read my thoughts like a book. She spoke to me with her eyes and, although she was silent, I heard everything.
"What's wrong? Why won't you talk to me?" Her green eyes shone as she "spoke." I looked down and my eyes fell on my wedding band. How much longer would this last? I knew what I had done. I had lied to her. A marriage can't stand on lies - I know that.
She looked at me again and reached for my hand. I squeezed...

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Time stopped the moment I recognized the driver. I clenched my fists and stepped back onto the curb but the car screeched to a stop and I knew he'd recognized me.

I could have run back into a building, found an exit into an alley. Instead I bolted into the middle of the street and froze on the crosswalk. My eyes met the driver's and I heard as if from a distance the honking horns and screams of cars and people.

My throbbing pulse sent cold pumps of blood through my body and my skin prickled, and my clothes dampened...

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They were trapped for seven days. Susan would have laughed if you told her should would never be trapped that long. She had grown up in Alaska and had only even been trapped indoors for four days when the snow gathered past the roof and the tunnel they had shoveled to the car collapsed.

But here they were, seven days later and still trapped. She sighed and walked around the periphery of the bedroom. When they realized they would be trapped for quite a while, they had assigned everyone with a room, to ensure privacy. Susan thought it was silly...

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I looked at the passport, and then back up at the woman standing in front of me.

"Are you serious?" I asked, a puzzled look on my face.

She looked sad.

"What is to be funny?" she said, her broken English somehow endearing.

"I don't know how they do things in..." I turned her passport over, and looked at the country name listed. It took up three lines, and many of the letters just looked like squiggles to me. "...your home country, but over here we do things differently."

"Is me!" she smiled, and I felt my tough exterior melting...

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Our eyes locked right before she went for the stuffed duck. I watched her bite it with resolution, shake her head back and forth like a dog. Her eyes met mine again with a clear and concise message: "My duck."

The duck became her best friend. I hardly talked to her unless she was eating my food. Then I yelled. It probably wasn't the most mature thing to do.. but what the hell. I fell in love from afar. I fell in love with her maple brown eyes, with her glistening nose, with her adorable whimper. She didn't know it...

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They were listening. From somewhere distant, came the familiar sounds of gunshots, stone-throwing, angry slogans. But here it was quiet- deserted streets, shut down shops, boarded windows and houses so dead that they wouldn't be out of place in a graveyard.It was safe to be here. Nobody would mind, nobody would bother. They flitted out in the glorious sunshine of a bright day, trying to ignore the smell of dried blood mingled with the fragrance of the lake, the trees and the mountains. The pigeons of Srinagar were not worried about the curfew.

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Some people have never touched the snow, or swam in an ocean, or taken an elevator to a rooftop.

I once watched it snow on the ocean from a rooftop. I took the elevator to the lobby and walked out to the beach.

First I stood in a sandstorm. Then I ran in a snowstorm. Then I fell in the snow and the sand.

The snowflakes looked like stars falling from the night.

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