Last weekend, after intervals of beach walks and the repeated culmination of mutual desire, there had been a shared companionship when she lay on the rug reading, and Griff lay on the couch reading.

Now, on this late-game-starting weekend, Griff had a lot of reading to do, but there was not much reading for Caydance's forthcoming class -- just sorting slides and updating the class notebook in which she documented each student's work. Other than worry about Griff's workload, the only thing of concern from her point of view was that usually on weekends she worked on her own creative practice. That that had not occurred in the past few weekends was not an immediate issue, but this time she had packed artists materials.

In addition to her camera and tripod and warmer clothes for the October weather, in her canvas bag, Caydance had packed her black-bound drawing notebook, drawing pens, paintbrushes, tubes of watercolor paint, a metal box of slides in slide trays, a handheld slide viewer, and the class notebook.