Rendezvous with Hymera Read Online Free

actively participated in conversations, being very pleased that the wine and cookies she had brought met with enthusiastic success.
    Robert intrigued the table guests when he took out his cell phone, a miracle of modern technology; beside all kinds of intelligent functions, it had installed an anti-mosquito application.
    “What in God’s name is that?” asked Rose, who wasn’t a fan for any sort of gadget.
    “It works using ultrasounds,” he explained. “It produces some frequencies we can’t detect, but which mosquito’s detest.”
    Clara, also curious, studied the object in question with the owner’s permission, making a mental note to document about the said application.
    “I wonder if Tony can intercept these ultrasounds,” she said, looking around after him.
    But the quadruped was blissfully unaware, munching with ecstatic pleasure at a piece of steak, which he had obtained in a suspicious manner at the least.
    An interesting character was the old gentleman Garcia, who, although he’d had a tumultuous and dramatic life, had remained kind and gallant. He was a war veteran and, with the gradual emptying of wine glasses, the usually taciturn old man began telling them stories about his life, about war, death and destruction, and about his long lost love.
    Clara found herself profoundly impressed by the tale of this idealistic man who had fought with all conviction to change something for the better, according to his patriotic sense. The exchange was that he had lost his wife, who had been his life partner since their teens, his home and, in a very symbolic meaning, his life, being repaid for all these with a now rusty stained medal and a miserable pension.
    Clara also gathered from bits of conversation and her own deductions a diluted version of Rose’s biography. Her husband had been a relatively wealthy farmer, and, in spite of the fact that their union hadn’t been blessed with any children – at least Rose had never mentioned the existence of an offspring – the two had had a happy and harmonious marriage.
    Three years before, Rose had become a widow, as a consequence of a tragic car accident, which had kidnapped the one who had been her life partner for over thirty years, leaving her inconsolable. After the funeral, Rose had sold absolutely everything she owned in terms of property, not being able to continue living alone in the home surrounded with so many memories.
    She had bought a trailer and crossed the country aimlessly, without purposes or dreams, searching for escape and oblivion, running away from the pain and uselessness that overwhelmed her since the death of her beloved husband, who had been, until then, her center of existence.
    When she had arrived in the place she now owned, the cottages on the lakeshore were the property of a hotel network, whose owners didn’t know how to get rid of them faster, because they were not cost-efficient . After only a few days of living there, Rose had made them an offer to buy the property and, in a couple of weeks, all the paperwork was finalized.
    “Something drew me here,” the old lady was saying now, wiping her glasses with an embroidered handkerchief. “The serenity, the peace, nature itself. Here I began to heal and...To resign myself, to learn living alone and enjoy what’s left of my life.”
    Everyone had listened to her quietly, each of them meditating in the privacy of their own thoughts at the moodiness and unpredictability of fate, which can turn any moment into the last spark of a man’s life.
    Long after midnight, Clara headed, sleepily and a bit melancholic, to her cottage, with a lazy Tony dragging after her. On the way to the stairs leading to the bedroom, she glanced through the living room window facing the lake, and froze.
    In the middle of the lake, which in darkness seemed a liquid abyss, with her back to the cottage, stood a woman. She was steeped in water to her waist and her blonde hair hung loose on her naked back.
    In her