"That Riser."
"I have never had indiscreet disrelationships with That Riser, Morrison Cheyenne, nor have I ever had indiscreet disrelationships, with any Riser, while I have been serving in my posts here that the Administrators have not pulled."
That Riser, he calls her. There she sat on the Stock Bows page like a sad-eyed puppy, a queen in a slave market, a thoroughbred amongst the draft horses. I took her in, fed and loved her, bought her the finest limbs. Once paired, she sang, warbling merrily through the woods and mountains, secure in her place in the world.
Discarded? Like some used trollop on the side of the road? Sent luggageless out of state to Lord knows what fate? What rough hands? What questionable purposes?
Nay, sirrah, I say thee nay! I can no more squeeze the magic from the heart of a bow than I can squeeze money from a stone, or pity from a government agency. Nor would I have the callousness of conscience, nor the thorny heart to try.
She is going to the woods today, also. Along with a certain BBO, and a Fox Maverick. And the bow that let magic flow up my arm like silken sleeve, to infuse my heart with joy, and to show me what famed marksmen of old saw when they loosed their lightning'd bolts from risers long turned to dust. For it is the honest truth that a bow's magic can never be drained, nor can one remove magic from a bow through force or deceit. The magic is part and parcel the bow, which, in finding a kindred spirit, allows the magic to bubble forth as clear cold water burbles from out a joyful and exuberant spring.
Indeed, that mighty foursome and I will be laughing in the trees, leaving ill-conceived ideas of lost innocence and schemes of acquisition far behind us in the haze of a dimming computer screensaver.
Killdeer