have

of being charmed. Perhaps familiarity truly bred contempt.
His muscled chest glimmered with suntan lotion. I wouldn't mind getting familiar with him. But I would have no chance. He was the wages of fortune and no doubt of natural birth.
Reserved for nats only. No artifacts need apply.
The guide led us down the automatically-lowered gangplank to the shore.
If I hadn't known Mythos had been built by an international conglomerate less than twenty years ago, I would have thought it was just another Greek isle. It looked ancient and weathered another volcanic islet. The only difference was that this one didn't show any signs of ever having been inhabited, much less of the creeping overpopulation that crowded every other isle with massed houses and unsightly high rises.
In Mythos, the white shore rose slowly to a plateau where no building glimmered. Up the white shore, we tourists went scrambling.
The first to reach the summit, I removed my light wrap and stowed it in my ever-present belt-pouch while I waited for the others. Under it I wore a sleeveless short dress, adequate after walking. Even the guide had been left behind by my trot , not surprising, considering what I'd been created to do.
The sun showed itself now, pale but warm. A heated breeze blew. The day would be a scorcher.
On the other side of the beach, at my back, green countryside stretched inland, cut here and there by groves of gnarled, twisted olive trees.
Another party of tourists walked through the middle of a field, stopping to take their tiny cameras to their eyes and snap holos of the view.
The rest of our group finally joined me, one by one and two by two. The guide came first, and accosted me with a buoyant, "You're a fast walker."
Then he looked at the ring on my finger and looked away, towards the approaching party. It took some people that way. As the other tourists arrived, he talked to them, instead, discussing the sea and the heat, the sand and recreated myths. But I'd ceased existing.
Pol brought up the rear, supporting his less decorative companion.
She leaned heavily on him, and no wonder, since she wore five inch stiletto heels in