title: The Tale of Broken Tail
author:  Chi Varnado 
description: Chi Varnado is a contributing writer for The San Diego Reader and the artistic director of the Dance Centre of Ramona. Her memoir, A CANYON TRILOGY: Life Before, During and After the Cedar Fire and The Tale of Broken Tail are available on www.amazon.com, as will be her soon to be released novel, The Old House in the Country. Her collection of essays, Quail Mutterings, appear in www.ramonapatch.com and www.ramonasentinel.com. Please visit www.chivarnado.com. Dorothy Mushet owns the Banner Queen Art Gallery in the hundred-year-old Trading Post near Julian, California where she specializes in painting wildlife, landscapes, farm animals and children. She works mostly in watercolors and oils.
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  Tubb E. C.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Nectar of Heaven
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  E. C. Tubb
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Nectar of Heaven
  
   _E.C Tubb_
  
   _Chapter One_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  All night the wind had droned over the workings dying at dawn when a pale
  yellow sun had illuminated a world transfigured by cold. Ice coated the mounds
  and gullies, frosted the humped buildings, gave a transient beauty to the
  harsh lines of functional machines. A thin, white blanket covered the torn and
  ravaged soil, snow filling hollows and softening peaks, a dry powder which
  held treachery.
  
  "Dangerous." Hart Vardoon kicked at the accumulation, a white dust flying from
  his boot. "Be careless and you could slip, break a leg, maybe." He glanced at
  the humped machines. "Worse, even."
  
  Dumarest glanced at the mechanisms; tall, their fronts set with curved teeth,
  the whole moving on wide treads. The operators sat back and to one side
  guiding the tearing action of the grabs which tore into the dirt and sent it
  in massed l