The closer door opened and an acreage of purple silk, strained across wobbling flesh, began to emerge. The bearers reached in and retrieved short arms, pudgy hands overburdened with gemmed rings. They pulled. The fifth man pushed. The mountain grunted and a head appeared, bowed forward, sweat making straggles of thin dark hair across a crimson scalp. A crucifix of gold hung below the wattles and folds of her neck, a hefty thing half an inch thick, a foot in length, a ruby at the crossing point for the blood of Christ. It must have weighed more than a baby. And out she came, the supreme
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