heavily sedated, barely moving and unsteady on his feet, Lupu appeared sick and Letitia’s heart felt a stabbing of pain. Without any hesitation she took Lupu inside the house and fluffed up his bed near the open fire. Then she raced immediately to her well-equipped pantry and selected what she needed for her potion. It must be the usual poison, she thought while gathering the ingredients.
Once in a while, her dog or cat would eat something that was poisonous and get very sick. In most occasions they got better after receiving her remedy. She made an infusion from a bit of dry ginger and milk thistle and gave it to Lupu with some food. She then rang the vet in the nearby town. He wasn’t of much help and not very optimistic. His view was that if the poison was taken some time during the night by now was already absorbed and the only thing left was to pray. He agreed that fluid intake might be useful and reluctantly accepted to see Lupu if he didn’t die in the next two hours.
‘Such a man!’ said Letitia with indignation, a bit later, when she explained the conversation with the vet to Luca, her stable hand.
They both looked at Lupu who was still laying quietly in his bed and hoped for the best. It was now a matter of waiting. In the middle of all of this the matter of the cigarettes butts was forgotten.
Luca and Letitia went to the stables to check out the horses. They could hear them neighing as they got closer. It was time for feeding. They were kept in an old style barn with hayloft on upper floor, cobbled lower floor and drainage channels coming from each individual stall. The stable was positioned at the back of the main house. In between them was a small garden of herbs, veggies and flowers. The four horses, Faith, Lucky, Star and Tarot showed their happiness snicker greetings.
By 08:00 am Letitia returned to the cottage to find Lupu on his feet and greeting her by the door. Finally, things were getting better, she thought and then suddenly she was overwhelmed by emotions and tears flooded her eyes and cheeks. About an hour later Luca found her in the kitchen reading a book with the dog and cat by her side while the food was cooking slowly on the stove. She was making sarmale. Luca recognized the smell. And then he identified another familiar smell, the smell of fresh bread coming from the oven.
Letitia looked happy and content and as he strode in he felt like he was stepping into a peaceful and forgotten fragment of time and he felt so at peace with himself. Half an hour later, after finishing their nourishing breakfast of sunny side up eggs, telemea and zacusca, they were indulging with Turkish coffee when suddenly Lupu started barking and went to the door. Glimpsing through the window they both could see the mischievous red fox darting by at a small trot. It was the one whose fluffy tail ended in a patch of white. It was a vixen. They had seen her before and named her Rapid which in Romanian means fast. There is also a local football team wearing the same name. Letitia and Luca smiled at each other and tried to settle the dog. They were both animal lovers and sympathized with the little fox who probably was trying to find some food. The foxes were not protected by law in this part of the woods and Letitia knew that they could cause quite a bit of damage if allowed among the chickens and turkeys. Not that you could see a fox very often these days as many farmers kept dogs around the house.
To Letitia the sight of the little fox was a confirmation that nature and humans can survive side by side. She was encouraging mother-nature in small and various ways herself. Over the years Letitia was an adoptive mother for different suffering small, wild critters: from a small fledgling to an injured hatchling, a kid; and during the winter period when food was scarce in the snowy mountains she always made sure that she placed, strategically on her property, some fodder for different animals. She had hay for the grazing ones, seeds for the birds and dog food for the foxes.
Not all her neighbors shared her perspective; she knew that and kept her opinion to herself. Luca knew about Letitia’s theory and condone it although they had never discussed it in detail.
Lupu had a similar point of view on foxes although the two humans were not aware of it. He was not particularly friendly with a specific dog fox that he considered conceited but otherwise his barks were merely part of the conversations with them. In the previous bad winter he was saved by the fox. It was immediately after a lot of snow and Lupu made the mistake of venturing out too far away from home. Luckily a family of three foxes living nearby allowed him to hide in their den when he was running from a group of hungry wolves. Lupu had never forgotten that scary experience.
‘Isn’t he already more perky, huh? ’ said Letitia looking at Lupu who was still barking and wriggling his tail with the anticipation of being allowed out soon.
‘His smell is still good, for sure, ’ replied Luca with a large grin patting the dog who approached them when he recognized that the humans’ conversation was about him.
Luca was a young man in his early twenties. Tall and lean with well-developed muscles from the manual hard work on the farm. He was familiar and knowledgeable with the horses and had been helping Letitia for the last five years. His skin was already marked by the strong weather; sun during the summer months and freezing cold in winter. Letitia liked him for also being able to think outside the box.
‘I didn’t know that you hunt foxes Lupu, ’ said Letitia pensively then seeing the friendly face of her dog added ‘or maybe you’re just trying to protect me’. He wasn’t really a hunting dog but his barking was useful in keeping the strangers away from her house and in winter the wolves. Of course she also had her guns like all the other farmers living nearby. Not that she had ever had to make use of them. And then there was her reputation that kept some potential intruders away. Even those that were not strong believers in occult forces did not want to take their chances with her.
Overall the crime figures were low in their area despite the fact that the village did not have a police force located there and the local cop was actually based about 20 km away in a nearby larger village. The geographical isolation of the village gave the impression of a backward step in time and that had appealed to Letitia from the moment she initially settled in the area more than fifty years ago. What a lollapalooza, she thought then and she had the same sentiment these days!
Baktalo
Rose woke up at 5:59am and turned off the clock alarm. It was another sunny day in this part of the world, she thought. A fairly common situation for her by now. Since arriving in Brisvegas, a few months ago, the weather was on her side, again and again. Eventually Rose started to warm up to this city and embrace her new life experience. She started to gain a sense of belonging.
After an invigorating morning shower with a combination of rosemary and peppermint oils as body wash she used her daily moisturizing lotion. The morning wouldn’t be the same without them. Then the makeup! A well applied makeup was a skill that Rose acquired some years ago. These days it took her just 15 minutes to finish up dressing in the morning.
Time for her first brain juice of the day: Turkish coffee of course. Belissima! You have to make sure that you have freshly roasted beans and not to boil the water too much. Comes easy with practice and it is truly worth it. Another place where timing counts!
Now, her grandma Letitia would drink her cup of Joe after breakfast but Rose had never been able to do that. Since she had been introduced to coffee, at the age of nine, after she moved to stay with her grandma, she always had her rocket fuel before breakfast. Letitia gave up long time ago on trying changing this peculiar preference.
As Rose was sipping her cup of jolt she momentarily thought it would have been just perfect to have a friend around. She would have been able to read her fortune in the coffee grounds. Traditions warn about bad luck for someone who tries to interpret their own coffee grounds and although Rose was not a strong believer in this form of fortune telling but she had learned a few things from her grandma. One of them was never to challenge faith. And fortune telling!
When Rose was living with her grandma, in the morning she would go for a horseback ride on the mountain slopes. Very quiet
and peaceful, just the way she liked it. She missed her faithful pinto horse Lucky. When Rose was in the city she would go for a short walk to the shops or public garden. No jogging for her. Here she checked her mail and planned the day ahead. As she was attending to this chore the phone rang.
‘Hello Rose’, Alexandro said. It was Alexandro Can, from Can & Smith Lawyers, one of the partners in the firm that contacted her initially, months ago and convinced her to travel to Australia. ‘Would you be able to come and have a chat with us around 11. 00 am? ’ he asked. A diplomatic reminder of the appointment already booked with them about a month ago when she last saw him and his partner.
‘Thanks for reminding me Alexandro’ Rose replied. ‘I’ll be there’.
Since she arrived in Brisvegas, Rose had been meeting with Alex and his partner Peter on a monthly basis. There were two reasons for that: first they were handling the will of her recently departed uncle and giving her a generous monthly spending allowance. Secondly they wanted to make sure that Rose had a good understanding of Australia before the end of the twelve months of her stay there so that she could make an informed decision about the future of the