Francisco de Zurbaran Still life

Francisco de Zurbaran Still lifeAlbert Bierstadt The Last of the BuffaloDante Gabriel Rossetti Venus Verticordia
She found room for the last little goat's cheese wrapped in its vine leaf, smiled and bowed again, and took a last drink from the spring that bubbled up among the gray rocks. Then she clapped her hands gently together as the old couple were doing, and turned firmly away and left.
She looked more decisive than she felt. The last communication with those entities she called shadow particles, and inquired, and found nothing. But now, she thought, as she turned up the little track away from the olive grove, she would have to look for guidance.
Once she was far enough away from the little farmstead to be sure she wouldn't be disturbed, she sat under the pine trees and opened her rucksack. At the bottom, wrapped in a silk scarf, was a book she'd had for twenty years: a commentary on the Chinese method of divination, the I Ching.
She had taken it with her for two reasons. One was sentimental: her grandfather Lyra called Dust, had been on the screen of her at their instruction she had destroyed that. Now she was at a loss. They'd told her to go through the opening in the Oxford she had lived in, the Oxford of Will's world, which she'd done, to find herself dizzy and quaking with wonder in this extraordinary other world. Beyond that, her only task was to find the boy and the girl, and then play the serpent, whatever that meant.So she'd walked and explored and