Click for Fields of Gold.

In three years time you manage to establish a franchise on woodcutting and
delivery.  It was not easy but extra cold winters has lead  farmers and
villagers to use up all local supplies of fallen wood and available trees.
Seeing the situation, you secured exclusive rights to the king's Great
Forest to collect fallen wood and chop dying trees with a reasonable fee
being returned to the royal treasury.  Well, actually, there is slight
surcharge which others with less cunning might call a bribe which you
return quarterly to the king's steward and acquisitions manager.  
   This has eliminated your competition.  Your market share has expanded
to include twenty-six villages and towns.  The world, it seems, is in the
palms of your hands more than you could ever have imagined.
Congratulations.  Success is reward in itself.
    Now then, about your love life.  You fell in love shortly after
meeting the mysterious stranger and bidding him farewell.  And though life
is really, really boring and predictable--I mean who gets excited about
collecting wood?--somehow fate has managed and contrived to present you
with terrible, terrible choices. 

   Karen:  She is as sweet as honey though once or twice a week she has
the taste of green tea and her voice the sting of a honey bee.  But she
melts in your arms like winter yielding to spring and her moans and sighs
are like darkness in submission to the penetration of moonbeams.  It might
seem that you are the stronger the way she gives so much and asks for so
little.  But in truth,  the proportion is equal:  as you ravish her body,
she ravishes your soul.  You can see it in her smile which has the
lascivious joy of a rose.
   And how did you meet this fair creature?  Her parents died and she was
sent to live with her aunt in your village.  As she went out into the
fields and hills to collect berries for jams, you often would meet her
returning from gathering wood.  The friendship and attraction was there
from the beginning.  There is not a doubt about it.  Karen is your soul
mate and the one who has been chosen to banish your loneliness and bring
your life to completion.

   Maria:  Maria is another story.  She is the daughter of a major client
whom you have just acquired.  As Karen is warmth and spring, Maria is the
long breath and release of fall as its body rises and then surrenders to
winter's dreams.  There is something Eerie about her, an otherworldly
enchantment or a song of fairy which hovers about her shoulders.  You can
see it when her hair swirls as she turns her head or feel it as her hair
like storm laden winds drifts across and tickles your chest. 
   Maria you discover is the daughter of a hereditary witch whose lineage
and oral tradition extend back well over a thousand years.  Though she was
never initiated herself, barely a night passes when her second sight does
not intervene.  She sees in her dreams little things--like the exact
number of geese which will land on the lake the next day or she smells the
gingerbread cake--tasty, slightly burnt, yet still delicious--which Mrs.
Brown will make with a new recipe tomorrow evening.
     She also sees in advance who will die and when and what will come of
it. She knows that a sojourner who comes to town or a officer in the
king's army has two broken ribs not quite healed or a passion for cards
and gambling.  
  Though her gifts are curious and even a bit frightening,  her charms are
even more inviting.  You have to shake your head every time you think of
her.  One kiss and you forget who and where you are--its like a rare
liquor with a hypnotic aroma or a vintage wine left alone by itself to
ripen for a hundred years.  And when her hands explore your body there is
no room for reason left.  You are stripped of thought and morality.  You
might as well ask the bird why it migrates south or the tides why they
rise called by what can not be seen than try to explain to yourself the
desire that binds you to this woman and her dreams.

Pause.  Consider carefully.  You must find a satisfactory answer to this
question:  to what part will wisdom and to what will passion determine
your choice of women?  The person with whom you mate will with certainty
determine your fate.  But be sure of one thing.  Whatever you do you will
look back for the rest of your life knowing at this moment your heart was
spilt in two.  And you will wonder if either passion or wisdom has the
power to remedy the situation.

Do you choose Karen as sweet as honey and as warm as
spring?

Do you choose instead Maria with her Eerie dreams and
her touch which empowers the secret desires of the soul to fly with new
wings? 

Is there a third choice?  Yah, but you really don't
want to know about it. Somethings, like too much suffering, are best left
unexperienced.  But if you must, go ahead and click here.