Spock is dreaming.
Until now, he's slept the deep, unmoving sleep of exhaustion. The recent circumstances of his life--the constant danger and isolation, the secret flights from town to town, the endless demands of his followers--have taken their toll, and his body is in grave need of a few hours of unbroken, dreamless sleep. But today he's had to bear the double shock of Sarek's death and another, perhaps greater, loss he hadn't even known he'd sustained. Add to that the impact of our unexpected mental and physical joining, and it's no wonder that his tired mind is attempting to arrange the events and emotions of his day in some logical, or at least functional, neuronal order. His fingers tighten, then relax, then tighten again where they rest on the curve of my hip. His breathing is shallow and erratic; if the nightlight on the wall were just a little brighter, I could probably turn and see the rapid movement of his eyes beneath the fatigue-shadowed lids.
I could so easily enter his dream.
I could drop the light mental shields I've been maintaining and soothe whatever anxiety troubles his unconscious mind. He did it for me often enough while we were on Earth, when sleep brought bizarre, frightening images of what might befall my family and friends in the aftermath of the Enterprise incident. I think fleetingly of Tal, and how I could never for one moment let down my guard with him. How I could never, even in the haven of his arms, even in the privacy of our marriage-bed, lower completely the psychic barriers that kept the truth--my truth--from him. How I had to teach myself not to lie too near to him in sleep, so that he would never share the dreams that left me trembling, crying, aching with desire for a man who was not my husband, a man who was blood-enemy to my family and my people. How, in the years after Tal's death, I'd never risked a sexual liaison that might last longer than a night or two, never encouraged a friendship that threatened to grow beyond the safe confines of work and duty, for fear that I might relax into carelessness and betray Spock or myself. How, finally, a closed and secret heart had come to seem a good thing, a prudent thing, an attribute worth cultivating.
Spock turns away from me, sighs, but doesn't wake. I move with him, reversing our positions, and he settles heavily against me, curving his body into the angle of my thighs and belly. I slide my hand gently under his arm and along his side, so that I can feel the beating of his heart beneath my fingers. Alive, beloved. Alive and whole and in my arms.
I could so easily enter his dream, but I won't.
I have no real reason to scruple at so small an invasion; tonight, permission for much greater psychic intimacy was lovingly asked, lovingly given. But I know I shouldn't interfere with the natural processes of his sleep unless the dreams become distressing. He'll need every resource he can muster for the day that lies ahead.
Myself, I'm fighting the soporific effects of the potent brew of hormones and endorphins that we concocted between us. I could sleep for a tenday, or at least until full morning, knowing that for now Spock is as safe as he'll ever be. I might even wake rested, energized, ready to face with renewed strength whatever Stilpa and Picard have in store for us. But what if this night, this one miraculous night, is all I'll ever have? Can I afford to miss a moment of it, when it may--very likely will--have to last me the rest of my life?
Miracle, miraculous: I can't stop repeating those words, can't think of another way to describe these past hours. The concept has its analogue in every known language--except, of course, in modern Vulcan. Perhaps the Vulcans would be satisfied with a rationalist's definition: an event whose occurrence is so unlikely as to approach impossibility, but that contrives to occur anyway. And why should I care whether this night has its origins in divine intervention or statistical improbability? It's enough that Spock sleeps here in my arms, in my bed.
The thought brings a shiver of remembered pleasure.
His touch was so different tonight, and yet so much the same. It's said that we make love as we live our lives, that our sexual habits mirror our traits of behavior and personality. I've always thought that observation trite and oversimplistic; but now I'm beginning to wonder whether there isn't something to it.
So much the same, and yet so different ... Mindful, attentive, focused on the other's well-being rather than his own: in the act of love, and probably in every other aspect of his life, those qualities still define him. But all his youthful diffidence is gone. He's confident now, mature and experienced, wholly aware of his abilities and strengths. And much to my delight, he brought every atom of that self-assurance into bed with him. It strikes me that he must be very successful indeed in his practice of diplomacy. Although he can be stubborn--and he comes by that trait honestly, for there's more of Sarek in him than he'll ever admit--he hasn't grown arrogant. He's willing to listen, takes nothing for granted, alters his course of action when necessary. In memory, I hear myself crying out in his mind: There. Yes. Harder. And his murmur of assent, compliance, culmination: Yes. There. Now.
I'm losing my train of thought.
I shut my eyes tight, trying to concentrate. So different, and so much the same ... A new understanding hovers just out of reach, almost but not quite graspable, an elemental truth having to do with a duality of nature imposed and yet somehow freely chosen, thesis and antithesis impossibly joined in synthesis, reason and passion integrated and whole. I know I'm missing something obvious, some important clue or key that will make everything clear to me.
What I need, I decide, is a unified theory of Spock.
What I need ...
Spock's breathing slows, quietens. His dream has ended. I burrow closer to him and press my mouth to the nape of his neck. I mean to bestow a light goodnight kiss, nothing more. But my lips open of their own accord against that sweet and vulnerable spot, and when I taste the rich mineral-salt of sweat that's dried on his skin, when I breathe in the heady, clinging scent of the two of us together, a sudden rush of arousal makes me gasp.
Oh, yes. I know exactly what I need.
A good night's sleep, says the voice of reason. A clear head, a logical plan, a sure grip on reality. But right now none of those things seems attainable or even especially desirable. And if I dwell much longer on what is especially desirable, neither Spock nor I will get any rest.
With infinite care I ease myself away from him and out of bed.
Naked, barefoot, unable to see much in the nightlight's dim glow, I manage to locate my nightdress lying crumpled on the floor. When I pull it over my head I discover that although one of the closures is torn, the rest of the garment is intact. I could make my way to the kitchen for a cup of hot tea and not risk embarrassment if, by unlucky chance, I should encounter Picard. But I don't want to leave Spock even for that short time. What if this night is all I'll ever have? I want to keep watch over him, satisfy myself that he's safe and at peace until morning. See his face when he wakes ...
There are two chairs in the room, but the window-seat draws me like a magnet. After decades lived aboard stations and starships in cold, perpetual midnight, the warm dark sky of a Romulan spring seems gentle and unthreatening in the hours before dawn. The storm is over; in a little while the clouds will pass, and friendly, familiar stars and moons will reveal themselves once more.
As quietly as I can, I unseal the window and open it just enough to admit a breeze that carries the scent of rain, of river, of ocean. Of home--
"Aerlyn?"
Spock is awake, propped up on one elbow, momentarily disoriented.
"Forgive me," I say. "I didn't mean to disturb you."
He straightens to a sitting position, alert and wary now. "Is something wrong?"
"No. I couldn't sleep, that's all." Not quite a lie.
"Come here."
A universe of meaning in that softly spoken invitation, an expectant certainty, intimate and thrilling, that he has the right to ask, that I have the right to accept. He lifts the sleeping-robe that serves as our coverlet, making a place for me beside him. But the gesture is more than one of tender solicitude: Think, says the lifted hand, the offered space, the waiting stillness. Be certain. Is this truly what you want?
If I feel a nanosecond's worth of panic, if some primal instinct for self-preservation urges me to flee back to my ordinary life while I still have the will and the strength, I don't bother examining the impulse on its merits. And if all my misgivings about his dream of reunification suddenly rise to the surface of my conscious mind, I push them down and away before they can gain a purchase there.
Then I go to him.
"Quarter lights," I order softly, and the brightening lamp casts the planes and hollows of his face into shadowed relief. I can sense his strong desire to take me in his arms, but he doesn't act on it. Instead, he spends some moments turning my hands in his, caressing fingers and nails and palms, comparing reality to memory. Finally, satisfied, he cups my face in his hands and slowly traces the contours of brows and cheeks and lips with his thumbs, as though to corroborate sight with a second sense. The mindlink tingles and sparks between us, a vital current, and once again I see myself through his eyes. "No," I protest, and not from any false sense of humility: I know I've never in my life looked like that. Not even the goddess Caltha looks like that.
"Yes." Gentle but insistent, denying my denial. "So rare" --his voice is nearly inaudible-- "and so beautiful." His hands are in my hair now, his fingers spread against my skull, deepening the link. My fingers slip through the silver-black silk of his hair and, with a memory of their own, come to rest at the meld points. His involuntary moan of pleasure draws an answering sigh from me: this touching, this communion, is food after famine, air after vacuum, life after death. How did we survive so long, or at all, without this?
It's not surprising that two disparate emotions are at the forefront of our shared consciousness: joy at the miracle of our reunion, and grief--remembered and wistful for me, raw and new for him--at the loss of our child. One of the rare points of commonality between Romulans and Vulcans is a respect bordering on reverence for the family: suddenly it seems profoundly illogical, an unconscionable waste of potential, that we two should have lived mostly solitary and mostly celibate lives for so many decades. But if an inchoate, hopeful question lies just beneath the surface of our thoughts, it's far too tentative to verbalize. Another question, more urgent and not at all tentative, is finally pushing its way past everything else, finally demanding its own answer: Why did you abandon me? Why did you not move the heavens to find me?
The voice of reason provides easy explanations. I wanted to protect him. He wanted to protect me. More lives than our own were at stake. We carried out our duty, upheld our honor, counted the welfare of others--of the other--a worthier end than our own happiness. It was the only choice possible ... All of it true, all of it noble, and all of it not even close to good enough.
I wish the telepathic mind worked like a computer. I wish it were possible to order the psychic equivalent of a core data dump, so that each of us could assimilate instantly and without pain everything the other has felt and experienced over the last hundred years, with no hurt, no misunderstanding, no unspoken truths. But though the link provides a depth of nuanced intimacy that psi-nulls can't conceive of, in a situation like this it confers no transcendental gifts: we must muddle through, a step at a time, barely better off than the mindblind.
Spock acknowledges the thought with a sigh. "That day," he says in that same hushed voice, "when we learned that they had taken you away--Jim and I confronted Counselor Elydex in the witness room. Then Jim went to find Ra-ghoratrei, so that he could try to stop your ship's departure. As soon as he was gone, Elydex gave me a padd. When I saw the message written there--those words--in your hand--"
"It was true," I say, blinking back tears. "It was the only choice possible. Nanclus said Ambassador Tilendi was conspiring to overthrow the Empire, and if I stayed on Earth it would seem as if I'd colluded with her. My family and friends would have been punished--probably executed--for my actions."
"Elydex tried to explain something of that to me. She communicated somewhat forcefully the idea that if I tried to intervene I would be risking your life as well as my own. I tried to--I wanted--" But no more words come, only a confused rush of long-buried images and emotions.
He begins reflexively to summon the powerful mental discipline that enables intellect to displace affect. That response, both learned and instinctive, is predictable in the circumstances: it's illogical to dwell with remorse upon things that can't be changed. But the curse of every mortal heart, yes, even a Vulcan's heart, is to wish against all reason that they could. I know that if we don't find a way to mitigate the past, we may never take the first step into the future. And oh, please, let there be a future ... Before he can control sufficiently to will his emotions away, I follow my own instincts and reach for his thoughts. Show me, beloved, I whisper, projecting both command and reassurance, making him recall another time of sharing that began in anguish and ended in healing. Show me what it was like for you.
* * *
The first memory that comes to his mind is, oddly, connected with the event McCoy described to me while we were on Argo. A landing party in desperate search of ryetalyn; a dispute with the human known as Flint; Kirk's sudden passion for Rayna; her death from the neural overload caused by her conflicted emotions. But McCoy had omitted from his account--surely out of concern for Spock's privacy, for he had been the keeper of the katra and must have known everything--all that had happened later in Kirk's office, when Spock was left alone with his captain.
McCoy's speech about emotions had, contrary to the doctor's belief, neither hurt nor offended Spock. That McCoy's assertions were untrue was not important; the possibility that Kirk might be in the same kind and degree of pain that Spock was experiencing was the only thing that mattered. At the time, it never occurred to Spock that he might be doing Kirk a disservice, though now he hears his friend's voice clearly: Our pain makes us who we are. If we lose it, we lose ourselves. I need my pain. But that was a lesson learned in another lifetime ...
It had been easy to locate the memory in Kirk's mind. Easier still--dangerously easy--to alter not its content, for even in his extremity he would not violate that fundamental ethic, but its connotations. He saw to it that Kirk was left with no more than regret for a lost love, a feeling of sadness that would linger for a while and then fade into memory, eventually to be integrated, as in all sane beings, into experience and personal history.
But there was no one to do the same for Spock, and he was unable to do it for himself.
* * *
In the early aftermath of the inquiry into the Enterprise incident, Kirk, whose conscience was as much a driving force as his self-esteem, had tried to find out through his Starfleet connections what had happened to me. But the Treaty of Algeron had forced the return of the Federation's deep-cover operatives who had lodged themselves on Romulus, and reliable intelligence was hard to come by. So while Kirk called in favors, while Ra-ghoratrei and Sarek denied responsibility for their moral lapses and claimed credit for their political achievements, Spock, afraid to confide in Kirk for fear that he would somehow compromise my safety, was left more or less to himself. And by himself he had tried to master an onslaught of unfamiliar, even frightening, emotions. Sadly, almost any other sapient being in the universe--barring, of course, any Vulcan--would have made a better job of it.
For a while he had tried to bury himself in his work. In the past he had found that tactic effective, and at first it seemed that Fate was conspiring to help him. A series of challenging and even bizarre assignments followed one upon the other, leaving him little time to think. He began to believe that he might make it through to the end of the five-year exploratory mission, at which point he would resign his Starfleet commission and find a way to cross the Line without losing his own life or endangering mine. He had already started to construct the bare outlines of his plan when a garbled transmission from the Romulan Empire reached the Enterprise via Starfleet Intelligence: a report, as McCoy had said, of suicides, trials, and martial law, and of the sudden disappearance of Commander Aerlyn Tayva, formerly in command of the imperial flagship Eidolon.
In the absence of any further information--at that time, Hellguard was not a name known to the Federation--only one logical explanation presented itself. McCoy had expressed it succinctly on Argo: We all thought you were dead ... what else were we supposed to think?
* * *
Not long before the Enterprise crew was due to stand down from its five-year mission, Kirk was ordered to evacuate the few remaining inhabitants of a planet called Sarpeidon, whose sun, Beta Niobe, was expected to go nova in a matter of hours.
Spock's memory of his and McCoy's inadvertent transit through time by means of a device called an atavachron is clear. Only when he tries to recall the details of his sojourn in Sarpeidon's ice age do his memories become fragmented and disordered. But he remembers McCoy's illness, his own growing inability to think rationally, his regression into a mode of conduct typical of his pre-Reform ancestors. And he remembers the woman called Zarabeth, banished to her world's distant past many years before Enterprise came to Sarpeidon.
Through him I see her face: fair, characterless, expressionless except for vague smiles and frowns, incapable of deep thought or complex emotion. Whoever or whatever she might have been in her proper time, she was well adapted to survive in the prehistoric age to which she had been exiled. And through him I comprehend her simple needs--food, shelter, companionship--and her single-minded willingness to do or say anything that might secure them.
Unable to stop his rapid decline into the barbarisms of his own species' past, Spock was consumed by a primitive desire to have the woman and eliminate McCoy, his only rival. His behavior on Sarpeidon was governed by biotemporal effects that he was powerless to control; nonetheless, he had understood what was happening to him, and why. He had been sincerely tempted to remain with Zarabeth in that simpler if not easier existence, where his memories of me would soon fade and die. Not as quickly, perhaps, as Kirk's memory of his pain at Rayna's death; but soon enough that there would be an eventual end to the anguish and the guilt.
When he later came to understand that he and McCoy must return together to the present or perish, he had tried to find a way to bring Zarabeth with him to safety. But she was as much a construct of her time as Spock was of his, and they parted with no more than minutes to spare before the temporal gateway closed and the present-day Beta Niobe went nova.
After Sarpeidon, McCoy, who wondered whether Spock might be grieving for Zarabeth, had tried several times to probe the state of his emotions. Spock deflected those unsubtle attempts without much difficulty, and immersed himself in the many details that had to be addressed before Captain Kirk's final mission briefing could be presented to Starfleet Command. Only once during those last days had he given anyone the slightest hint of what he now had in mind.
McCoy had stopped by Spock's quarters to issue an invitation to breakfast. Spock was at his terminal. McCoy, seeing that the subspace coder was activated, felt compelled to comment on that fact. Writin' a letter home, Spock? he'd asked. Dear Mom and Dad, send money and clean socks? Spock had guessed that the doctor was making a joke, but the point of it escaped him. He informed McCoy that he was attempting to get in touch not with his parents but with his meditation teacher, T'Sai. Then he declined the invitation to breakfast as courteously as he could. McCoy left, unsurprised and apparently unconcerned.
The five-year mission ended not long after that. Enterprise was consigned to a Martian spacedock for refitting. Kirk was grounded--promoted, according to Starfleet, but it amounted to the same thing: he had tried his superiors once too often. McCoy accepted a research grant that would allow him to explore interspecies applications of Fabrini medicine. And Spock went home to Vulcan.
At first, his human friends had believed that Spock only wanted to see his family. But soon word arrived that he had formally resigned his Starfleet commission. He did not return to Earth, and he said goodbye to no one--not to Uhura, not to McCoy, not even to Kirk. Messages sent to his personal commcode went unanswered, and Starfleet Command had no forwarding address other than Sarek and Amanda's home in Shi'Kahr. Several months later, when the three friends met with some of their former shipmates to celebrate Uhura's birthday, McCoy told them about Spock's letter to his meditation teacher. Pure logic, my sweet ass! he exclaimed when Uhura had identified T'Sai and her sect. Why the hell would he go and do a thing like that? He was just startin' to loosen up a little! Puzzled, worried, and understandably hurt by what they saw as a rejection of them and their friendship, Spock's friends had at last come to accept the hard truth that he was gone from their lives for good.
But eventually he had returned to them and to the stars, drawn inexorably by an unasked-for mental contact with the machine intelligence he still thinks of as Vejur. And it had taken the foolhardy and nearly fatal experience of a mindmeld to bring home with force the ultimate meaninglessness of everything that he had tried to achieve at Gol. When he finally regained consciousness in Enterprise's Sickbay, he had clutched at Kirk's hand, willing him to comprehend the immensity of what he had discovered: that all the knowledge in the universe did not equate to wisdom, and that pure logic was no more than a barren conceit in the absence of friendship, compassion, and love. What a cosmic joke! he had thought. And the joke was surely on him, for that particular lesson was one that he had already learned well--Is this so new to you, then? This simple feeling?--and, with willful blindness, had chosen to forget.
* * *
"I was not thinking clearly when I went to Gol."
The deep rumble of Spock's voice startles me; my cheek is resting on his chest, and the sound vibrates against my skin. "You always did have a gift for stating the obvious, beloved," I say, knowing that he can hear and feel my smile. I think we've just made a beginning ...
"I was sure that my inability to control my emotions had caused your death." The spoken words don't begin to express the depths of remembered grief and guilt that underlie them in his mind. "I knew nothing of Hellguard then." The very mention of the word threatens to open a door I would rather keep closed. Fortunately, Spock's thoughts are elsewhere. "I believed that you would never have come to harm if I hadn't loved you," he continues. "And I had already violated the integrity of Jim's memories because I could not control my own response to your departure--"
"Oh, Spock, you were empathizing. You only wanted to spare him the same pain you were feeling."
"I dared to presume that I knew what was best for him. And while I was on Sarpeidon, when I thought you were dead--yes, the temporal field had an effect, but I could have fought it harder, and sooner. I was willing enough to evade my true emotions rather than master them. I should not have allowed Zarabeth to believe that I would stay with her." He falls silent for a moment. "There was no telling how much more damage my lack of control might do to those who crossed paths with me. I thought that if I could achieve true detachment I would be able to overcome my weakness. I thought a cloistered life at Gol was the--the only choice possible."
I lay a fingertip against his mouth. "And I thought you'd chosen Kolinahr because you wanted to erase me from your memory."
"That would be the wrong reason to undertake such a discipline," he says gravely, but his arms tighten around me.
"Well, I can't imagine what the right reason would be. Your parents must have been heartsick at the thought of never seeing you again."
"My father did not oppose my choice. He thought it a worthy and necessary undertaking."
"What, the obliteration of every natural feeling? Gods of Remus! Your own mother was a human, with human needs, human emotions--"
"What Sarek loved in Amanda he despised in me."
A violent surge of anger and bewildered hurt wells up in the link, strong enough to make both of us flinch a little. But I know those feelings are mine, not his, triggered by my own empathic desire to defend and comfort him. Spock himself is suppressing nothing, hiding no pain, merely stating a fact. Kaiidth. What is, is. If Sarek had lived another two hundred years, his attitude towards his son would not have changed--nor, for that matter, his son's towards him.
"Don't distress yourself," Spock says softly. "Many years ago I came to accept the way things were between my father and me. Amanda suffered far more than either Sarek or I. She longed to see us reconciled, and it grieved her until the end of her life that we could not ... accommodate to one another."
I would like to express my opinion of Sarek, the Kolinahru, and all of Vulcan. I would like to know why, in the name of everything that's sane and rational, Spock thinks the twisted philosophy of that deluded world should be imposed upon the innocent citizens of Romulus. But above all I would like us not to spend another nanosecond talking about any of those things.
Or, indeed, talking.
Indeed.
No one but Spock can imbue that word with so many, and such varied, meanings. In his greeting to Picard in the tunnels, he made it imply challenge, defiance, even contempt. Now, in the privacy of the mindlink, it's tinged with amusement and arousal--and with a depth of emotional longing that banishes forever one small, persistent doubt.
Spock easily perceives the nature of that doubt. He moves away from me a little and studies my face.
"Hadrea?" he says aloud. In other circumstances, the incredulity in his voice would probably make me smile. "Why? What would give you cause to think--"
"She's in love with you, Spock! Surely you must be aware of that. And before we--before I knew--well, it occurred to me that she would make a good match for you. A better match than I ever could."
"Hadrea," he repeats with a frown, as if to make sure that he understands me correctly.
It's clear that he's more troubled by this conversation than he should be, so I make an attempt to explain. "She's a pacifist," I say, showing him my memory of the dinner at the Velvet Mantle. "She believes in reunification, and she approves of all things Vulcan. I--I thought you needed someone like her."
He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against mine: I need thee, t'hy'la.
The Vulcan endearment bears many connotations, most of which can be expressed only telepathically. Cried out in the white heat of our passion, it meant one thing. Now, spoken intentionally and to a purpose, it signifies something else altogether.
"How can you be sure?" I say aloud, for suddenly I need the distance of words. "I'm Romulan, Spock. No, listen, please. I've spent my life in the service of the Empire. I've done things--acceded to things, ordered things--no Vulcan could begin to understand, let alone condone. How can I be t'hy'la to you? Or you to me? You don't know who I am any more!"
I'm not even aware that I'm trying to get away from him until he drops his hands from my shoulders and spreads his arms in a gesture of release. Hugging myself, I sit back on my heels, as close to the edge of the bed as I can get.
"Aerlyn," he says, his expression more eloquent than a Vulcan's has any right to be. "Do you imagine that I am--how did you put it?--in permanent and exclusive possession of the moral high ground?"
"You remember that?"
"I remember. You pointed out certain truths about the exigencies of military command."
"I didn't phrase it quite that politely." You're a soldier like me, Spock. You've taken more than one life in your time.
He nods, as if I've answered a question. "I do not consider myself negligent in my moral duties and obligations, or lacking in a system of ethics. Yet during the course of my service to the Federation, I have violated almost every one of Surak's precepts, always knowingly and sometimes willingly. I tell you this not because I wish to compare transgressions, or because I think your Romulan ethos is free from error, but so you will understand that I do know who you are. I have seen nothing in your heart that repels or frightens me--only much to honor, and to love."
He reaches across the bed to touch my cheek; I realize then that my face is wet, and that he's trying awkwardly to brush away the tears. I catch his hand in mine and hold it tight. He comes to his knees and matches my strength with his own: This is who we are, beloved. Stronger together than apart, braver and better hand in hand.
And yet never more vulnerable than at this moment, when hearts and minds lie open, offered, waiting.
Spock loosens his grip on my hand and lays his palm against mine in the formal gesture that symbolizes peace and life. Then, holding my gaze, he begins the first deliberate movements of the ritual embrace--small, subtle caresses of our paired fingers that mirror the succeeding stages of mental and physical intimacy between a man and a woman. His breathing quickens at my eager response, and his touch becomes more purposeful, more varied, intended not to calm now but to arouse. And when he finally clasps my hand fully in his, entwining our fingers, I show him how well he has succeeded in his intention.
With a low groan he sinks back on the bed and pulls me astride him. He gathers up the skirt of my nightdress, and his touch, like his unwavering gaze, lingers, penetrates, ignites. When he arches against me, hard and searching, I close my fingers on his flesh and guide him slowly, slowly, so that he can feel my readiness: I need thee, t'hy'la.
He rises into me again and again, never taking his eyes from my face, wordlessly calling out my name. Pleasure leaps like flame between us, spills over us in waves of heat. And though the room's soft brightness blocks out the night sky, I know that beyond the open window the stars shine down their clear light, and the galaxy spins all around us.
© 1999, 2000 Kathleen Dailey. All rights reserved.