Chapter 1

All her life Daisy had had a sort of hankering. She didn't know what for, but she was about to find out.

She lived a simple life, out on the farm. She did her chores, feeding the animals. What little enjoyment she got was from reading anything she could get her hands on.

This included anything from the farmers almanac to ... well this is where Daisy discovered just what her hankering was.

One day a neighbor who had heard she liked to read, dropped off a box of books. They were a collection of mostly pulp novels and junk.

Daisy thanked him kindly -as anything was better than nothing- then set about digging through the box.

"What a bunch of crap!" she thought to herself as she was digging through it.

"Why, some of these books don't even have covers!"

She went through it anyway, dividing the books up into categories. She found some westerns, and only a few of the romance novels she really liked. Most she had already read.

She just threw the books without covers into another box. Nothing got wasted out on the farm; junk books without covers could still be used to light the stove in the morning.

It only took her a couple of days to exhaust the few romance novels, then she was back digging.

The westerns held little interest for her. She just didn't see anything that she could read. Out of desperation she started digging in the box of books without covers.

She found one that had something to do with romance, but was hard to read. She dug again. Finally she settled on a Greek romance translation.

She settled down in the hayloft. Mostly she liked hanging out up there cause her brother and Pa never did a lick of work, so were unlikely to find her there.

She started reading.

The book was some sort of collection of love poems. Most weren't very good. Then she got to a section that caught her interest.

They were deeply moving poems, about the object of one woman's desire.

Suddenly as Daisy was reading she realized that the object of this woman's desire ... was another woman.

At first this bothered Daisy greatly. How could a woman want another woman? It just didn't seem natural.

She kept reading, trying to fathom it.

After she had exhausted all the poems, she found herself going back and re-reading some of them.

They seemed to touch something deep inside her. At the time she didn't know what. Even so she was strangely attracted to a couple of them.

She read them over and over again. After several readings, she had some of them memorized. They talked of grace and tenderness.

Over the next month or two, she mostly forgot about the book of poems. She had other things to occupy her time than silly nonsense about a woman who desired another woman.

Even so, the poems began to come back to her. One night, in her room she got to thinking about it.

Daisy's body had come to term several years before, but she found little interest in the farm boys who lived around her. They were sweaty and callous. Folks about thought of her as a tom-boy. She could -given a mind to- lick most of the boys who had ever taken a shine to her. She had done this often enough, most stopped trying.

The memories of those boys flooded back to her as she thought about tenderness and grace. These were qualities that all of them lacked. But she knew several women who had them. She wondered if she did.

She got to wondering just how attractive she herself might be -she didn't think to notice she meant to other women.

She got out of bed and moved in front of the looking glass.

She stripped off the night shirt and gazed at her reflection.

Her long blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. At night she let it out of the pony tail. She was just 17, about 5'8" and 130 lbs ... Her legs were strong and sleek. Her stomach firm. Moving up, she had her mothers breasts. The damn things were always a nuisance. They were larger than the ones most of the girls her age had. She knew that they were largely the reason that she had to lick many of the boys who bothered her. For some reason they all wanted to touch them.