All creatures needed some type of work and yet she had none and she wanted none. Outside of the obligation of motherhood, all that she engaged in were art and prostitution. Neither one of them were movement in the strictest sense and so as such they were not work: the former was not action but contemplation and the latter one involved lying on a bed. In both art and prostitution she did not need or want praise from others for she had nothing to capture in movement since she was not moving. Even in motherhood, she was not trying to obtain some being to fill a void in her life. There was no void. She had been accepted as an FBI profiler prior to finding herself pregnant. She could have gone to that or to nothingness; and with the obligations of motherhood she had slowly chartered a path into nothingness. She did not need anyone telling her that she was beautiful or that her art work was worthwhile. Matter of fact, she did not need them at all. Others could come and go from her life through the revolving door in her castle if anyone had the power to budge it after crossing her moat. They could come and go and she would inhale and exhale them like respiration so long as they made no claim on her as she made no claim on them. Breaking definitions of work, how to make a living, and sociability, she told herself that she was a macro- human living with mere earthlings she could not fully identify with. Her mind was a bit scrambled in what she was thinking. Maybe she was saying that she was pure contemplation--someting like that. She wasn't a hundred percent sure of any of her ideas. They changed with the moment even though ideas should be permanent and immutable when the physical world was neither. Being profound was like driving one's car through potholes for the hell of it and hoping to not get a flat. Maybe contemplation was movement. If the cat wanted to follow its instincts, contribute to her pathetic meals, and gain a bit of praise, she did not mind. She or Nathaniel could praise it; but this sport of playing with one's eventual meal, however, was loathsome. It was hard to revere Mother Earth and Father Sky, or nature as a whole, when it was essentially barbaric. She hated Mouse when it allowed its half dead prey to escape so that it could recapture it again and slap it around with the stiff rackets of its paws. She opened the window. "Who are you?," she asked. "I'm Rick," said the other boy. "Do you have a last name?" "Quest," said Rick. "Quest as in Mr. Quest at the school?" "One and the same," said Nathaniel. "What's with the cat?" she asked "It got a black bird." "Not the owl?" She was anxious that it not be the owl that had nested itself in a wooden flower pot that hung beneath her window. "No, your owl is okay I guess." "Good." She turned to Rick. "Are you staying for lunch?" asked Gabriele. "We will if your cooking doesn't make anybody sick," said Nathaniel. "I'm sorry. What did you say?"