Chapter 19
'Tis an hour since I saw thee,
And it seems a whole long year;
If I loathe my own existence,
How can I live on, my dear?
.
—Nicolas Gogol
.
MIKHAIL
The milk bucket rattles against my thigh as I fly over the rubble to the decimated back yard where, by some act of fate, Little Nemesis' milking shed was left untouched. She's an ordinary looking brown goat, with a white blaze and underside. To mark her as mine, she wears a discarded chunk of my ship tied around her neck as a goat-bell, held in place by a collar made of colorfully braided electrical wires.
'Eh-heh-heh?' she greets me eagerly at the gate. I frown when I see she has already chewed partway through the rawhide I use to tie it shut, but she hasn't bothered to escape this morning. Yet…
"Come on." I pull the smal
