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It is in quiet, solitary moments such as these that I allow myself the luxury of misery. I sit with my thoughts in silence, and it breeds such solemnity. So I think, solemnly: what peculiar times we endure. Much has surprised me; not yet July, and the world is positively inflamed.
Carp in the pond have roasted, I hear. I did not ask about the water lilies, but she informed me of their misfortune regardless. In her grief-stricken report, she mentioned water lilies being her absolute favourites—which I also did not ask about. She is often this way. I have known her for less than three months—excluding the period before she was appointed as my personal maid—yes, *maid*—for as much as they want to see her as a scribe, her work is not so prim and distant—yet she acts nothing of the sort. She takes it too seriously. Yes, the fish died and the flowers shrivelled up, but must she cry? She does not cry when the servants isolate her, so why must she cry over a few cooked carp? It is completely unfair that she should grieve before me when I have not even set foot in the garden for the past few months! How is it just that she makes me look bad in her love of aquatic creatures, while those who mock her are welcomed? I have never seen her weep at their poorly disguised malice.
…If I could, I would make someone weep.
But I cannot. That is reality, plain and true. I cannot even *advance*. My feet are really quite unwilling. Summer hail has disarmed me so brutally; I am stripped of the ability to walk. I cannot even hobble—let alone fence.
*En garde*, I have forever been, and if it were not for this severe chill, I would still be—but that is wishful thinking. The truth permits no wishes: no form of practice, no matter how rigorously disciplined, proves itself immune to the elements when they get up to their melodrama. It is only logical. When blades clash beneath a storm, it must metamorphose into a tempest. To remain unprovoked is such bad form; to strike back, however, is proper etiquette that should be maintained at all times. The heavens are aware of this, and have honoured our fight by bestowing upon me the most horrific of fevers.
I suppose a greater man could find within himself grace to accept cosmic defeat. After all, the body is but dust, and flesh but grass; it will surrender to earth. Is it not poetic to fall on nature’s sword? One can certainly desire humbler ends—vermin plagues, for instance, or a particularly dire trip-and-fall—but to have fallen immensely ill from a vicious duel with shipwrecking weather is pure exhilaration. To be licked by midsummer swelter, and be *alive* to rival its inferno with a searing temperature of my own is, I admit, a tale too royal for me. I am in no way that greater man. I am barely a man as it is; I am noble, in every sense except the significant ones, and my maltreatment accompanies me so lovingly through this expedition called life. As of the present day, both the bedbound progeny of an adulteress and his bloody, conscious carcass are six-and-ten years old.
…Well. Back to my ailment, then. Back to something I can see an end to if I squint my eyes blind.
What fascinates me is this: fevers do so much in so many. Unlike other troubles, no one is excluded from a hearty serving—and if my portion dictates for these temples to spasm into eternity, fine. If my malady demands my unwavering devotion, so be it. Anything to please this shrew in my skull. *Anything!* And I dare the ground to erupt and swallow me *now* if there is a shred of boast in my claim! For goodness’ sake— I am frail, exhausted, and wholly at a lesser beast’s mercy— who is to fault me for making ready love to death if it snatches me this instant? No one.
No one gets a say. No one gets to draw the short straw. All the straws are mine! Although my vigour thins, my vision worsens, and my voice has yet to be regained— I will keep my straws as long as I know her name, and I will eat it; I will masticate on her vowels until my jaw is strong again, and I will no longer have to sit through one of her disgustingly sincere deliveries of my suitors’ letters— for I will be able to read them out loud to myself and correctly subtract the warmth from the repetitive prose. I will know not to appreciate word choices, nor cling to names the way she does, and I will know which ones to burn and which ones to fold and tuck away for future entertainment. She knows none of the sort. What she knows, though, is to collect the letters and arrange them in piles— by name or by flammability, I have no clue— because she wishes to “write them back”.
…Good Lord. Moreover, she wants me to direct them, as if that absolves any of her…*insanity.* The letters are in no way for her, yet she acts as though she is smitten with all these girls, none of whom have her name in their vocabulary. None of whom have an adequate vocabulary, frankly, and while I do not detest her own writing, I question her judgement when it comes to quality prose. Sure, her scripts can be, from what I’ve been shown, elevated— though there is the odd piece too fiercely bizarre for the usual palette— which I respect, and this respect is precisely why her commitment to meddling with my fireplace-business vexes me horribly. Why waste lovely composition on subpar, obligatory professions of the same-old? When I receive juvenile passion, I feed it to the blaze so that it may learn the intensity of real yearning. But no, she nurses fire with wonder, while the flimsiness of those doting words remain blissfully unknown to her.
Mine is education. Hers is leniency. Am I not gentle? Am I not tolerant? She is not silly enough to mistake my patience as laxity. Forbidding me from repurposing the unsightly letters is an informed, calculated, deliberate decision, and I am certain she will only continue to surprise me with more of these…schemes. For instance, the stablehand clearly writes to her. The situation is laughable; an illiterate writes to a scribe, the scribe then turns around and harps on about how a horse ate a fallen apple while holding a rag in her hands. There are at most five words on said rag, and four of those five words are so structurally liberal that they resemble quartered mealworms. After this circus act, the scribe writes back, *carefully*, and attaches high-end parchment in case “Benedict wants to try a different medium”.
…I did not expect his name to be Benedict. I also did not expect to find myself more and more irritated—no, I should write *irritable* — lest my moral nemesis happen to be not only a whore but a snooping one, which, given her *curious* tendencies, would not surprise me at all, not really—in fact, I would not even be stirred in the slightest when she eventually stumbles upon this text because of course she’ll one day discover the worst I have to offer through an honest stumble, for her legs are quite useless in that way; every time she brings my slop, I spy the pair of sickly calves and note, in my mind, how their incessant shaking must tire all eyes that behold them.
And her *speech*. Oh, her need to torment with it!
I cannot, against good conscience, lie about the immense envy that plagues me whenever I am reminded of Marcell’s deafness. *How could I?* When fate is so that a rotund *house cat* is to have what its human master shall never obtain—a quiet life void of sharp, stubborn little noises that keep circling round and round and round until an impossible corner is born through sheer dogged determination and one is forced into it arse-first, *praying Cerberus barks threefold harder than she bites—*
…
When these are my circumstances, *how can I lie?*
…
It is not as though I do not offer care. I do! I am not so unaware. More than once have I suggested taking the thin silver tray that weighs bricks in the icy palms of a particular someone—someone insolent, someone *bold*—bold enough, evidently, to have such air in her lungs and take such pride in emptying it—for she argues far, *far* beyond reason. Constant arguing. Constant as the shin-shivering. About breakfast, about tea, about soggy roast being an oxymoronic dinner, about being *fed* and not *fulfilled*, about the body being separate from the soul and how mine is *here, it is*—this irks me. About time I am irked, about time I separate the voice from the girl and leer. About time she understands, *she stands below me*. About time she sits—for she cannot stand to be small—by her lord’s underbelly, about time she stomachs the shame and *stands* me, about time I am *stood*, and in a manner belying how she does not stand my pawing about, she stoops to resume arguing about the bedding change. *Should it be red? Or are you feeling a bit more mauve* as if colours are to be felt and not seen. About time runs out, about time is up, about time heals and she remembers—it is visible in her breath, she breathes again; through the haze she recognises her foil.
The heat burns, and scrutiny makes frost shudder. I have red bedding and red-hot iron pokers—she wants to hear me say I feel mauve, which is laughable; nowadays I more so feel dissolution rather than blue. It could be that the breeze visits—maybe a Tuesday afternoon melts beneath seasonal rain. Perhaps it gets cold, so I stoke whoever’s teething flame, and find myself reduced to ashes by fires unseen. The trumpets’ll then blow a kiss, and the choristers’ll harmonise.
*Farewell, dear boy! You will be mourned. Wedged between pitiful sniffles, an agreeable ‘what a fiery end!’ shall earn several nods. Predictions about the past will be made, they may be conceited; please don’t mind the chin-wagging, it is harmless. Focus on the smoke. Note the petals in the urn! Focus on passing naturally. Focus on—*
Naturally, the mourning is done at a distance; it would be rude to crowd. Though, amongst themselves, they settle upon a wicked thought: One should approach, just to satisfy the murmur. Now hush, hush! Only those who—oh? No, let us hear, come forth—but keep it proper; propriety is of utmost importance, in fact it is more—ah. That. See, that is—oh. Oh, yes. Yes, why not; that one’ll do, they’ll get along *beautifully.*
…
As such, the angels have decided: only the hellhound raps at my door.
Thrice a day, thrice a turn. Enduring eerie textures of tasteless meals, I am urged to rest. But the messenger despises the message; she delivers, lingers, refuses to leave—until I curse whoever’d let porcelain split the sad portrait behind her frost-bitten ears over mere sludge. Fine, I say. Very well. Have your tray. Have your spoon. Have your skirts smell *sorry*. Have your soap wasted, scratched into grey pleats, have your callouses stained with more than ink, and have Marcell, won’t you, take my—
—Oh.
…But Marcell loves her so.
The wretched, flat-snouted fool. A whiff of food and he goes bounding off. She taunts, too: *Here, here, oops! A little more, Marcell—there, there—brilliant!* Then, violent smooches smear shortbread crumbs into his glossy fur—a gloss that is a new phenomenon. In less than a week, Marcell’s coat has adopted this almost… *regal* glow ever since she made him eat that chicken broth, boiled with tender meat stolen from the kitchens. The shortbread, I should add, is also of guilty origins. While I fully acknowledge that the maids—and recently the illiterate stablehand—do supply her with refreshments at an excessive frequency, she is at fault for accepting them. It pains me to sit with her condemnation, but I do not lie: her eager acceptance of their quaint little offerings makes her an accomplice in what is, by faithful law, a crime.
She thinks I do not know.
I *know*; I simply do not care to report her acts of theft. Let her think she is unseen; it keeps one humble. The sole matter I am ignorant of is *how* she concocts the broth itself. I am not a cook; I have no interest in cookery. Cookery is *generous*; a scrap soup fed to a Persian feline can surely not be born of *cookery*. From how Marcell leaps into her lap after consuming that broth, it strikes me more as an item of witchcraft than any proper cooking practice. It could well be some exotic variant of witchery. Mediocre, Oriental mythology—brought to life with stolen broth and affectionate chanting rituals—grants the user the magical ability to turn a defective puss into a boneless mess under her mouth. How *substantial*.
…
On a Wednesday morning, I make a comment about punctuality. A voice raises, it is not mine. In efficiency’s favour, I may or may not rock an empty fist; tears may or may not fall but if they do, they are escorted away and upwards. There the sun bakes them—slow.
Meanwhile, doves gather, *slower*—
As I, too, gather.
I—
with not much,
with no more; with nothing—not a crumb, not a single hairline fracture of some meaningful substance I dare puff out this chest and name as mine—*save this bare back stuck to me; save it* before this mad boy passes, lest the bruise-to-be lose her sweetheart too soon. Truly; ludicrous as it must sound or seem or read, *I*—incapable of gathering courage, volume, strength, pasty hair out of a feverish face—*I* gather.
So does silk. In fisted bundles, it goes about a languid crawl. First, from a gentle swirl it emerges; then, it invites more fabric through sly, hypnotic motion, until warm weight is felt around the one burden I can confidently say I possess—that is, as fortune would have it, my ill flesh. I no longer awaken the way free men do. Day after day, I find myself the product of nocturnal digestion—and am made a hollow remnant by this foreign bed I keep soiling out of spite.
…
*Come closer*, I say. Or rasp.
*Come closer*, I rasp. And she *does*. For all her bull-bloodedness, she *does*.
…Day after day, she approaches the sodden pile.
Damned is the one who fights not to gag on the stench of waste.
Damned are the anaemic knees that kneel in bedside spew.
Damned are the cool fingertips that pale skin sizzles under; damned are the bookish spectacles that mist over in the presence of a dying blush.
And damned are the lips near my febrile profile that part around a soft, “*Would you care to bathe?*”
…Damned is she, with heartstrings tousled by balcony winds, with the damned hands that mop up despair. Damn her—she has hexed me; I am tricked into guileless *hoping*.
But alas, death has his fun also.
As mouldy bread is to a stove, I am to this velvet room lacquered in gold dust mid-ferment. What is the purpose of my decay? Not a half-speck of wealth will ever belong to me unless my devil bleeds a river six feet below some ridiculously symmetrical rug woven by smooth, intact wrists—for it looks bland, tastes tame; tame how gazes are, how they harden young and grow stale before rising to threats empty as lukewarm air, tame how threads of willow bait tamer ripples, how old wounds itch in ancient dreams, how hind-hooves hitch, trailed by red streams, hitch a pitter patter, hitch a gunshot-stutter—
how a doe does limp from her fawn, how wide-eyed he does follow,
how a hunter with two deer will hunt for more tomorrow
how a prince can wake before dawn, and feed sapphires to his swallow,
how a snowy winter night will judge a statue’s choice to wallow
—I cannot fathom. *Tame*, tame as a deaf Persian cat’s too-loud purrs, as sweat that diffuses before boiling pig blood, as foxes of tempers milder than foxgloves—tame as some of us are and some of us are not. *She* is not tame. Melted thunder, silver tongue—put to use when she reads me lightning, for even in leisure I must still be struck. This she knows, and leaves us both with tremors. Some in her throat, some in mine, though none so intense as that in her wrist, which she wrings gently while reciting to me the very believable tales of an obnoxious monster with an appetite for spoiled children—boys and girls alike, but boys especially, for they seem to spoil worse—and how my attitude invites the hellish presence of *Thod’kar or wait, was it Thod’kor?* because she improvises and never remembers this poor demon’s name, and conveniently forgets that I am but seven months younger until I remind her of it. Alongside her station, which she also enjoys forgetting. I remind her of these matters; not everything is a jest.
*Then* she gets sheepish. *Then* she wrings her wrist harder, *then* it starts to hurt and *then* she glares at me as though I am the head of this household. I am not; of this subject we are certain. Hence, I observe her. Wait for realisation to roll into motion.
And the wait never disappoints.
Her glare *wilts*. It always does. Her nature distracts herself from hate; in place of sustained resentment, she offers an assortment of sentiments instead. For instance, her lightly salted indignation is, without a doubt, one of the best tasting, yet not my most preferred choice. My most preferred is *sublime*. Indignation, regardless of flavour variant, does not compare to it. Indignation does not compare to dark, bitter irises, hammered into thin bands, poured into moonlit rings with a thigh-soft give; irises which, in their resistance against inky forever-dilation, mimic the plushness of something supple to the touch, not only, but supple also to the eye of he who beholds; behold the eye she serves me—it sours century-old wine.
Now, to mull this fervent eye over consumes me as an urgent priority—this priority is as urgent as it had been yesterday, and shall be as urgent as it will be tomorrow, and is to remain urgent for the far, unforeseeable future. And I seize certain hypotheses in private thought, the way one may seize oneself in private: *If I were her pupil, her iris would stretch around my form.* Then: *If I were her tutor, she would stretch around my form.* Then: *My lowly scribe is easily impressed; the stablehand impresses her, the dull weather impresses her, the yellowing hag-maids impress her with biscuits—she lets Marcell mount her lap, a tutor would be no different. Anything can, so surely anyone could.*
….
I seldom catch myself before she does.
Yet, I never halt; I merely continue. My grasp does not loosen for shame that is not mine. I even hold her gaze, occasionally, and with a loose smile I may speak directly to her.
*Watch me, wench. Watch me attentively. Do nothing else.*
…
I did not anticipate her stay the first time. Nor the second. But she stayed, and she has done so through all five times. She watches me attentively—and sees right through.
Through a noble bastard’s best cotton shirt, a moist chest surfaces, and heaves to the discomforting want of a bedbound body. Through illness, a flour tongue curls to slander the very image it so eagerly wets in restless, side-to-side dreaming. Through the acute trembling of a spine angled for minimum visibility, she sees marks scattered across raw skin. Through gritted teeth and tear-blur she proposes fierce tenderness—I’ll recoil and name it voyeurism; she’ll get up, mumble curses and punctuate them with my name, which she will not forget when she cries through a dozen new drafts; nor will she forget the oil for my back—which is not here, as it is with her, though some of it accounts for that painfully specific feel of something handcrafted, something distinctly *menthol*, something that is pure bliss on this purple maze of a backside—while I have ointment, hidden in the bedside drawer, meant for a sore wrist I have yet to hold.
…Next time.
Next time she comes, I *will* ask to hold her hand. I will not flinch. I will not embarrass myself. I will tend to her as she tends to me; I will have the bravery to cherish her radiance.
…She is, in all honesty, *radiant*.
…
Through time, I pray I will come to accept that she somehow sees me through compassion and not pity. To her, *love* is not too grand a word for anything at all. I now use this word in her honour: to love her is *so*—
—Must life be this way? This constant battle—this tiring fight that draws brutal conclusions? She draws too; she draws deep water from me. Or from my soul—if she really was being truthful in telling me about souls and how I *do* have one—for it is as though I am her well. She looks down and into me; I reflect a distorted babe, she pays no heed and saves both our time by bringing me up, bucket by bucket, beaming through her solid work while I stir uselessly in her tired arms. Indeed, she draws.
She is excellent at drawing—this time I speak of the artistic sort of drawing—which I know turns her towards competition. It is a rather new side of her that I do not know very well, but I should say that competitiveness births loss—for if there is a winner there must be a loser—thus *What if someone loses?* is not even a legitimate question. *What if someone is lost?*, however, is a question worth considering.
What if, say, I lose *her*, and am left with but my rotten soul? Would I then still hear (*as heaven forbid I am finally rid of my hearing when no one ever speaks to me*) each bird cooing for a piece of her sun-dried sorrow?
…
…For I do. I hear it often and oh, how it *aches*.
Indeed; while some soft sobbing fattens lucky pigeons, the iron cane of a faux father feeds no one's weeping child. While this bed canopies deviance, a change of bedding introduces the experience of *red*.
I imagined it differently. Not that I imagine quite so often, especially about how colours may be more than paints or pigments—but *redness*, I suppose, is adamant on being noticed. From there, the mind can only imagine.
I imagined, then. Except imagination alone did not satisfy me, thus I turned to investigation for pleasure. This investigation started as something small, something I humoured upon uncharacteristic whimsy—and I had no intentions of having it transform into anything more than a mere pastime. Its birth came through the exhaustion of cynicism; romance was, in its usual callousness, entirely absent in matters of creation concerning me.
Much like myself, this pursuit was unloved. It started rough; I pondered non-romantic material such as: bedding, nightmares, rag muzzles and snotty blood—and I believe I was so bored, or perhaps so sick of being bored, that when I was struck with this incredible, never-before impulsivity, I deemed it marvellous. I must have been delirious! Indeed, I must have been possessed, for I swear on my everything that I heard light calling out to me from behind the curtains, beckoning me near: *look, look, over here!*, it exclaimed, and with a wild whooshing of blankets I did untangle myself from the bed—*look!*, it hurried me, and I heard the desperate, uneven thumping of bare feet that have been dormant too long to perform a smooth walk, bare feet that were wrestling a fresh momentum, bare feet that marched a pathetic limp-drag-limp-drag as I was thrust to the carpet when a mistimed forward motion hooked my right foot onto Lucifer's horn—yet wondrously, by a white-knuckled miracle, I caught the curtain and though I wavered, I did not fall. By that point, the light had gone quiet; believing it had given up on me, I went on to free my ankle with my hand locked tight around the curtain. But curtain is cloth, cloth is soft, it does not hold and it in fact, did not hold—so in my stumbling, not-yet respite, my frantic attempt to still myself by tugging at the curtains led to me accidentally swinging them to a far side with a horrible yelp and for the very first few seconds I thought I would never see again.
*Daylight*, it was. Cremation by daylight.
…
For such a long while I had my eyes closed, that when I eventually opened them, the space had become new. I was dumbfounded, sluggish in my admiration—and I stood by the window with my eyes widened and my mouth agape as I basked in the warmth of a bright afternoon. It was *light*—light that comes through, even if it means coming through a pane of glass in a wall, or through a thick, crimson canopy of a four-poster coffin, or perhaps even through the seemingly endless fog in a young man’s feverish head—it was, and is, and will be *light* which poured, pours, and will pour life into things, as it pours fire in the face of evil.
In flames, I saw that the portraits looked insentient, ornamental, no longer sinister—the bed had been exorcised, set ablaze in the hearth of high noon sun, and it was utterly powerless; all vampirism vanquished, all soul-leeches made luminescent wisps of ruby. Flecks of dust went about, frolicking in liquid, transitive gold—and my ears opened to her exclamation.
…She must have tripped.
It *was* her. It was, I am deathly sure of this. As much as I feel it must have been a cruel dream my mind conjured as a source of comfort, I am painstakingly aware of it having been real and not an illusion; she insists on its reality by not letting me let go of that very noon, and I insist, in my own way, by watering the roses she brings me from the garden. I have once asked her where the roses are from—it was a nonsense question—for I know exactly where they are from down to the rosebush, as I watch her from my room; I listen to her pleasant humming while she selects certain roses she finds endearing. Indeed, she judges them zealously, and her *judgment* is loud enough for me to hear which rose looks *just like a sweet kitten* and which rose bears a semblance to, not in her words yet to a fraction of the effect of her words, *mangled female genitalia*. Her words are too crass for me to repeat. Only she could manage that degree of vulgarity and still sound earnest as ever in her crudeness; I am not so insane as to believe myself capable of such a feat. All I can do is—knowing that she cuts all the *sweet kittens* off before arranging them in an arm basket—choose one kitten from the basket to adopt every three days. Presently, I have accumulated an impressive twenty-six kittens; seven share a vase, a dozen of them take up a nice flower pot, and the rest have been sun-dried—those are arranged neatly along the writing desk, and we will be pressing them into bookmarks together this weekend. The best thing is if—*when*–-I work up the courage to give her the ointment tomorrow, it will mean no wrist pain during kitten-pressing. Or do they stop being kittens, and go back to being roses when they are maroon red and wilted?
Perhaps I should ask her this next time I see her; she really does answer anything. I asked her where the roses from the rosebush from the garden came from, and she answered. Truly, she did! Although she had, in response to this silliness, fixed me with this incredulous look and said, “*Well, from the pond!*” And then proceeded to laugh openly. I assumed she was laughing at me, though in hindsight I now realise she was laughing at the absurdity of the inquiry and by extension, the absurdity of her answer,—but even in the moment, I found the gesture so charming that I began to chuckle, and then it caught on; I produced a hideous snorting sound, she lurched into a brutish wheeze, breathlessness spread like urgent mutiny on our tiny rosebush-ship—and soon we were both howling.
…Howling. A pair of wolves in a den. Miss wolf is but a visitor, and mister wolf is but an occupant—yet she brings him red roses and chicken broth, and he brings her nearer to his heart. Together, they may tell each other how good a loose jaw feels; miss wolf may ask: *Are you feeling red, Castor?*
And I have learnt to say: *Yes, dear, I feel red*, and I have learnt to mean it. I have—from the moment I turned, looked out of the window, and bore witness to her joy—felt the feeling of *red*. Roses are red, or at least the ones she sings to are, thus *purpose* is red—for she gifts me roses and tells me to water them daily, and in demanding this little service from me, she keeps me active and responsible; she gifts me purpose under the guise of entasking me with a chore. In this way, I like to feel red.
Red is felt in a multitude of unique sediments and shales, of course. I sometimes feel as red as her lips when she smiles, though at other times I may feel redder; I may lean towards feeling as red as she denies herself to be when she is bathing me and I politely point out that her staring is unnecessary, then *she* feels a shade of red and gets huffy, slaps a hot towel on my brain, argues *how can I wash you without looking at what I am doing*, then I ignore the towel and tell her to *wash through touch alone* and as feeling a vastly different shade of red is intimidating for her, she chooses deliberately to be obtuse, so I tell her flirtation will not kill her and she nearly throttles me because: “*Yes, but you are naked!*”
…
In so many ways I feel red. I have paid much more attention to redness around me, and take from them a quiet inspiration. Subjects of redness within reach have all been studied both in theory and in practice, and through my discoveries, I feel I have adopted an entirely novel attitude to perhaps the littler things in life. She has spotted a change in my conduct, too, and with a personal pride I declare that she named it *scholarly*. This I believe, upon earnest self-examination, is a fundamental good that has brought me closer to her. And although my continuous investigation of red is lacking in precision, it earns its merit through accuracy; there is always some particular hue of redness that encompasses how I feel.
Despite it being hard to discern at first sight, I have, through rigorous experimentation, come to appreciate that when things are allowed to precipitate, fortune rewards sedimentation with solid weight in a palm. If the abstract is permitted to grow, it will for sure go forth and prosper—and will translate well for the patient and fervent. In my very own journey, this prosperity has acquainted itself with me, and now brings me red roses that yawn in dewy hours. I shall end on gratitude, and conclude with a forever reminder that I am indebted to a life aside my own— and what a wonderful thing that is.
…
So.
*Ahem.*
*Thank you, darling. I can now adore.*