Two: Clay

Her mother made the next dog from potter's clay. She threw clay on a broken tournette and shaped the dog with slow turns; her wet fingers erasing the dog into form. To Marcona the dog looked less dog the more her mother formed it. The clay dog reminded Marcona of pagoda dragons and she believed it wouldn't seem out of place anchoring totem poles.  Before the dog cured in the kiln, Marcona set the halves of a geode as its eyes. The factures of purple catching the lick of flame light.

One: Panama

Marcona spent her childhood in Panama. Her father was a doctor and her mother maintained their plantation home. Her mother marshaled a small army of cooks and drivers and tutors from the high backed red leather chair in her study. Marcona ate breakfast with her parents on the patio and dinner in a great hall, and aside from holidays, summer vacations to a small island and the lessons, meals were the only time she shared with her parents.

Every morning after breakfast Marcona walked out on her back porch and watched a magic world of banana trees, small monkeys and birds of explosive color. It was a world held at bay by gardeners, but she knew that if any of the khaki men ever crossed into the green and out of sight that they would forget their lives and disappear forever to live among the trees. She accepted this magic as a friend and a guardian until one morning when she watched a puma cross her back lawn with the family dog in its jaws. Then she started seeing the danger in the magic.