The thorn.

He remembers her eyes. If he remembers nothing else as time wears on and he continues, changeless and cold, he remembers her eyes -- silver starlight through the forest leaves.

If he takes a moment, he can recall her hands: slender and pale with soft fingertips that would never bear calluses or ragged nails. (unless. but he won't touch that thought.) Rings. She sometimes wore rings. Small and silver, with little stones that she recited the names of, if anyone asked, a quiet litany of things remembered, knowledge shared.

Her hair. He thinks, her hair was soft, too. And always shorter than he remembered it being. Red, but dark red -- heart's blood, neither carrot nor flame. Thin tendrils rippling around her face, and she always brushed it out of her eyes with her left hand.

No more, he thinks. No more. He doesn't want to think of her voice, of her touch, of her body, of the bruises he left, helpless to find another way to show his love. (so like her father, a small voice grinds into his ears. so like her brother.)

One more memory he allows himself, doling out the pain one thorn at a time. The first memory.

There in his library -- she is ragged and torn and lost, but full of a deep-worn pride at her manifest escape. He is at the fire, a cup of tea on the desk cooling as he regards her. Her skin shines through the shreds of the dark velvet dress, showing a lavender bruise here and there, and he has no inkling of what she will become to him. She is merely a beautiful winter rose, plucked from a strange garden full of tangling thorns.

He holds her in his mind, letting the memory blossom to its fullest, then allows it to fall.

Reprobation.

I am exiled. I know this. Her hands will never settle on me again. I am made of ashes.

I always was made of ashes, but I had the truth from God -- that I could be saved by the ones with wings, the ones who glow. The muses. The angels. And so I was.

I found one, and I ate her. Ate her up, wings and arms and legs and soft trembling hands. I held her in my mouth and took her glow. Held her down and forced her to open her breast to my fingers, my tongue.

I became the Beast, the ash-man, the creature of cold and dark and burned out buildings. With her love trapped in my stomach, I drew the city as I saw it, nuclear sky and rain-washed cement and torn girls with broken and shattered souls.

I walk through this city half-asleep, knowing that the light will never return.

The many joys.

It's raining today, and I wish it weren't, but it's still a kind of beautiful. It's not that cold, and it's not that bright, and there are people waiting for me to finish and come into the warmth of the bookstore so we can watch a man read and then go have adventures. I'm sitting here thinking of things that are going, going, gone and wondering how long time takes to pass, how long it takes people to change entirely.

Rumor has it that you change every cell in your body about once every seven years. I've never bothered to verify it, because it sounds so charming. I think seven years ought to be long enough, and yet. And yet.

I always seem to be running on the same fumes. I've had the same basic hairstyle since I was fourteen. That's twice seven. Should I change it, though, just for the sake of changing? I can understand the joy in that. The need to shuffle around the visual appearance so that people will treat you differently. I've changed my clothing habits (though not for quite some time, now. Maybe seven years?)

Today I got a lovely gift from a perfumer. She had made a perfume based on a poem that I love, and I expressed that and ...she sent it to me. A full ten-milliliter bottle, plus four sample vials of other scents.

This is easily the most friendly community I've ever found myself a part of.

I won't ruminate further on that. I've kept them waiting long enough, and I like them.

Next week, then. Have a good one. :)