I'm staring at his eyes, because they are stars, and I'd somehow missed that before. They mesmerize me with their light.

   Shining. Dancing. Full of the fire of eons.

   "...Come back. Can you hear me? Attend. Come back." He grabs my chin and holds me fast. "Can you hear me now?"

   I flash agreement with my eyes. He's used the language of instruction, so I neither speak nor move.

   I can't hear anything but him now, now that he is touching me. My entire being is attuned to him. Nothing outside us exists. His hand on my chin is a promise of ecstasy. I want more. I don't want to let him go. Ever. I feel his being pulsing under his skin, and sense the passions he bottles up so well that he can't even speak them aloud; and a terrible, consuming guilt when he looks at me. I sense the pain of swollen hand joints, reacting badly to the cold, damp weather outside. He never told me his hands hurt him. Why didn't he say anything? I can comfort him; I can take it away. I know this, I know it as surely as I know the air I breathe. I reach for his hands, covering them with mine, and absorb his pain into myself, letting it soak me; then push, flooding the areas of pain with warmth and healing love until they are permanently washed away.

   The act arouses me. I want him to touch me more, and harder. I ache to be claimed.

   "...Attend!" he shouts. And then he sighs. "Sorry. Did not mean to yell... I think I might have demolished barriers that only needed a door to be cut into them. Your energy is a bit messed up. I am very sorry for this, my ancilla. I doubt it will be permanent, but let's see if we can't help repair the damage and get you back to the land of the living rather earlier."

   I let my eyes convey assent. Anything.

   "Let's work on grounding and centering. I think more meditation work would be useful now, too. It will help you find enough of yourself to rebuild your walls. They need to come back up; they're as much a part of you as anything else, and they seem to have been built largely of your will, and your will is... out on holiday, much farther than it has gone in the past." Almost inaudibly, he adds, "Part of your soul is wandering. The ancient Egyptians called it the akh. The name doesn't really matter, I suppose."

   He hurts. I can't bear his hurt. I take him in my arms and kiss his mouth until the stars shoot up between us and surround us and we entwine and become a column of fire. "Know this. Know me. Know that I love you. Now." I place my forehead gently against his and feel him in his entirety, feel him opening ever so slightly until his emotions flood me and I gulp them down in a torrent.

   He gasps as fire and flood consume us. We dance together in stars, now, a sea of stars.

   "Take me," I sigh. "Use me. I know you need it. I feel you. I feel your need. It's all right; I'm yours. I'm yours as long as you need me. I'm yours forever." Desire melts me from within. My flesh dissolves like wax. His hands are the only thing holding me together. Beautiful. He is so beautiful; how can he not see it? Melting, I'm melting. He burns. I dissolve.

   He is the first one of us to break the contact.

   "We have to rebuild your walls," he says sadly. "Awakening without being able to control your energies is a very good way to permanently lose your sanity. This isn't quite you speaking. Come with me. Let's ground the energy, since you'll be useless for anything until we do; and we will work later." He takes my hand, leading me to the bedroom. I follow. Anything.

   He is gentle as he undresses me, nudges me down, and arranges me on the bed. "Se agapo," he murmurs, his voice trembling as he takes me. "Se agapo. Se agapo, se philo, s'ero, eromene." With each slow and careful thrust, he whispers into my ear, my flesh. "Se agapo. Anistaso." His mouth finds mine. His hand is on my forehead, soothing me on the painful place just above and between my eyes. "S'ero. O, eromene, se agapo, se philo, s'ero, anistaso. Se agapo, se philo..."

   His need transfixes me.

   An overwhelming of light.

   When he finishes, I am shaking and weak from climaxing. He strokes my hair.

   "Enupniazomai, eromene, sleep and heal. Dream of wholeness. Dream of rebuilding. Find yourself again. Gnothi sauton. O eromene se agapo se philo..."

   His voice holds me close and entrances me. I sleep.

   His arms are around me. I am warm and secure. The room is dark; it is nighttime.

   My stomach is an empty cavern.

   "Hungry," I whisper.

   He kisses me on the forehead and lets me go. I feel him leave me, and soon sounds of food preparation emanate from the kitchen.

   In time, he returns with a bowl of something warm and steaming. It smells like chicken broth.

   "Eat," he says, and hands me a spoon.

   I try to sit up on my own and fail. He helps me up, and I find myself attacking a stew made with rice, a great many large chunks of chicken meat simmered in its own broth, egg drops, and chopped garlic. I taste lemon juice, ginger, onions, and pepper in the broth.

   I am too tired to ask for a second helping, despite still being hungry, and I let my head fall onto his chest.

   And then I begin to cry.

   "Sleep, my eromene," he says, stroking my hair. "Hypnotte."

   I sleep.

   His repeated murmurs haunt me, dancing ahead of me in my dreams like will-o-the-wisps. Se agapo, se philo, s'ero, s'ero, eromene...

   It's still dark when I awaken again. I've had dreams of suffocating, sealed alive in a tomb. It's too dark. I weep uncontrollably. There is so much dark.

   His arms tighten around me.

   "I can't breathe," I sob.

   "Hush. You're breathing right now. You are strong," he tells me. "Anapnei, eromene. Breathe in life."

   "The rocks are too sharp..."

   "You are strong. You are finding your way."

   His hand strokes me back to sleep.

   In dreams, I climb. And climb. And climb. My hands are shredded to ribbons.

   Surfacing through grey haze. I am missing something. I need to find it. There's only one problem: I don't know what I am looking for. I start to look around me, but something, some winged voice I hear inside me, says, No. What you seek is not there. I open my mouth, and it fills with water, and I am sucked below waves of grey.

   I will drown if I do not find the thing I have lost.

   Falling down through the waters. Through the cold.

   Swim. I must remember how to swim. Frantically, I undulate, and my undulation becomes a speeding flight through waters as I am sucked out and away.

   And then I remember. I remember my Self.

   I swim toward a circle of light that dances before me, showing me the way.

   A pale ray of early morning light falls through the window. My eyes focus. His eyes are already open, and they are watching me. They no longer dazzle me with stars.

   They are just his eyes: grey, worried.

   I reach for him; it doesn't take long to get him hard. I have to undo and work off his trousers, however, because he is fully clothed. A part of me wonders idly when he put on his regular clothes.

   "Eromene..."

   "Hush. This is what I want. I'm not just responding to you." I grab his hand and place it between my legs. "Feel me. Feel that? I want you. Now. I want you now. Take me now."

   He teases me.

   I groan, riding his fingers, and seize him by the shoulders, pinning him to the futon. "No more waiting. Now, dammit."

   "Ah. You're getting pushy," he says, and smiles. "A good indication of will. Welcome back."

   And then neither of us cares for words.

   It's hard for two people to work simultaneously in the small kitchen, but that's all right, because he's insisting on making food for me while I rest. I can't object to it strenuously. I'm still so tired that the very act of walking from the bedroom to the living room is a chore. It's all I can do to sit on the couch.

   Besides, he's cooking.

   In the background, I can hear his stereo, which he has tuned to the local public radio station. They're playing some kind of instrumental Baroque-era piece, something in which violin strings predominate. It's not mathematical enough to be Bach, at least not Johann Sebastian. It's not brutal enough to be Leclair, and it's definitely not Vivaldi. Odds would indicate Telemann, who seems to have never stopped composing even for sleep or food, going by his output. My instincts want to go with either Geminiani or Corelli, though. I flip a mental coin, heads for Geminiani, tails for Corelli, and get heads. Geminiani it is. It's a very wild guess, though, because I'm shaky when it comes to Baroque composers, outside of Bach and Vivaldi, who I imagine being, respectively, to the Baroque era what Led Zeppelin and Rush were to seventies album rock. Their styles are too distinctive to be mistakenly attributed to anyone else; and people not particularly interested in the genre would be tempted, not without reason, to say that every single song by its respective artist sounded like all the others written by the same artist.

   At any rate, given that the radio is playing actual music rather than NPR news reports, it must be somewhat late in the morning.

   I look out the window. The trees have lost their leaves.

   "Um. Magister? What day is it?"

   He comes into the room and hands me a plate with an omelet on it. "Tuesday."

   Tuesday. The last day I remember clearly, without hallucination, was Thursday – the last day of October. Trick-or-treaters. Falling leaves. Pomegranate seeds. Descent.

   I look around. I am not in the Underworld. The living room is only the living room. I must remember that.

   "You've been with me this whole time, haven't you? Don't you have to go to work?"

   "Leave you? Like that? Eromene..." He stops and composes himself. It seems to take some effort for him to do so, I notice. "My ancilla, quite aside from the dubious ethics of abandoning one's submissive when she is falling to pieces, I don't think I could have left you. You needed me. I was there." He frowns. "I had several vacation days saved up, so I used them. I still have a few left. That, at least, is something that doesn't need worrying about."

   I probably don't have a job anymore, though. I don't have a salaried, stable, full-time career as a librarian. I'm a part-time telemarketer with no clout, and even though I am reasonably good at what I do, I am expendable. Finding a similar position somewhere else won't pose too many problems – this is one field that's always hiring, because the vast majority of people either quit in disgust, or they get fired within days because they can't make quota. I'm looking at a hiatus no matter what, though. I will probably need several days to job hunt unless I get lucky on my first day of pounding the pavement, and then there will be a dry spell while I wait for my first paycheck. I think gloomily about paying bills. If I'm going to make next month's rent, I'll have to skimp on groceries. I was already skimping on groceries before this. I'm not sure how much more I can skimp. I suppose I could simply not buy groceries for a few weeks... Oh, hell. November's rent. I still have to pay this month's rent. It's overdue now, so I'm going to have to pay an extra fifty dollars. I hadn't planned on being gone for longer than the weekend. I hope my landlord doesn't think I've just skipped out on him. Really, if I'd handled this like the responsible adult I'm supposed to be, I would have written my landlord the rent check and given it to him before leaving the apartment on Friday. This crisis was preventable. I'm going to have to call him to make arrangements as soon as I've finished breakfast.

   I attack my omelet, gorging myself on egg and cheese and mushrooms. I'd better eat my fill now. When I go back home – assuming I still have a home – and start job hunting, I won't be seeing much food in my refrigerator.

   He has me doing martial arts again. Specifically, tai ch'i. This is to help me balance my energy. It's been a couple of years; I'm rusty. He had to help me with my forms until my body once again worked out the feeling of flow and started going through them automatically.

   In the morning, when we are awake enough, by the grace of coffee, to keep our eyes open, we perform tai ch'i forms in the living room, with the furniture pushed far back to allow us room. We push hands and perform universal breathing; then, side by side, we go through our tao lu.

   I sense him moving gracefully beside me. It feels good.

   "What did you do to your arms?" he asks.

   I look down. Fingers of red run up my forearms. I have no idea what they are, or how long I've had them, but as soon as I notice them, they start to itch. My spine also itches; I reach behind myself to scratch it.

   He turns me around and runs his fingers up my spine.

   The itching increases. I hiss between my teeth.

   He lifts my shirt and tuts. "Like a bolt of lightning. Well. That's not good." Pensively, he runs his hand back down my spine and places the palm of his hand on the small of my back, low, near the tailbone. "Here. Have you been hurting?"

   He's not referring to bruises or welts from the whipping he gave me.

   I nod.

   "I think we've managed to burn your energy channels. They're raw. Oh, eromene. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. I think it is safe to say that while accomplishing its purpose, your initiation ritual went horribly right." He sighs, and massages my lower back with his hands, which are full of warmth.

   I hadn't realized how badly my back hurt until he stopped it from hurting. I groan and lean into him, draping my head over his shoulder. His hands work at me, and eventually, the simple rapture of a sudden lack of pain becomes an entirely different ecstasy that runs up me from a place somewhat below my lower back.

   "You're moving around a good deal more energy than you used to; you seem to be having some trouble acclimating to it. I think we need to work more on grounding."

   I grind up against him. I like the sound of that.

   After noticing my restlessness, Magister decided to give me another reading assignment, one that would require me to go for a longish walk so that I could see the university library downtown. His apartment is within two or three miles of the university, if you take the most direct route. He lives in a midtown section of the city's west side that's mostly inhabited by instructors and non-tenured professors, administrative staff and their families, and a handful of the more successful bohemian types. The walk downtown has a couple of rough blocks near the hospital, but they're safe enough to walk through during the daytime. Just don't walk there after dark.

   Once I arrive on campus, I make my way to the library. I'm not sure why he specifically has me using the university library, because what books aren't on his personal shelves could very easily be found in the local branch of the public library that's only a few blocks from his apartment. I suspect he just wanted to give me a few extra blocks to walk, for extra exercise.

   I'm studying art history this week: occult and pagan themes in the work of Sandro Botticelli and other artists of the Italian Renaissance, and some side reading on Marsilio Ficino, who influenced Botticelli. It's not a very rigorous assignment.

   In between looking up various scholarly opinions on La Primavera and the Birth of Venus, I get interested enough in the classical influences on his earlier work that I decide to start pulling out books on the art of ancient Greece and Rome. Pictures of frescoes, busts, statues, and mosaics beckon. Looking up art history is a lot like being a kid and drooling over the wares displayed in the window of a candy store. Well, for me, it is, anyway.

   One of the books flips open to a full-page illustration of a calyx krater decorated with a picture of an older male cradling the lanky body of a younger one. He's looking at the youth in his arms tenderly; the youth's body curls in, as if to embrace. The lines are fluid and beautiful.

   The caption reads Erastes and eromenos. Lover and beloved.

   My hands shake as I gently place the book back onto the reading table.

   He called me eromene.

   He loves me.

   It's not so much a revelation as it is a confirmation of something I already knew, knew in my very flesh and nerves and bones; even had I not been recently overwhelmed with an onslaught of his emotion, due to my inability to tune out his presence, I think I had already intuited something to that effect. Little hints, here and there; I can't think really when I started noticing, but I did notice.

   It's another thing to see it in print, however, in words as bold as red paint on black.

   He called me beloved.

   He called me back to life by weaving a spell out of his own love.

   He loves me.

   I walk back to his apartment in a daze. When he answers his door I throw my arms around him, pressing my face into the top of his shoulder, which smells like the essential oils of sandalwood and cedar that he likes to wear. I think I will always think of him now whenever I catch a whiff of cedar or sandalwood. His neck is warm and soft and sweet under my lips.

   "You called me beloved," I murmur. "When you called me eromene. You love me. You're in love with me."

   "Yes."

   "Oh, my Erastes. Oh, my love..."

   With one free hand, he shuts the door, and then we are bound together again by our desire, and we heed nothing else.

   Moving with him on top of the sheets. Our hands move. Our mouths move. Our hips rock in unison. Driving deeper. Gasping. We wrestle together, our bodies slick with sweat. His weight holds me fast; I strain against him, lifting off the futon as my hips buck violently. Our usual dance: it never gets old. I want more, more, and my orgasm is lightning as I impale myself on him, crying out my delight. Then we strain together again. Neither of us is finished yet.

   I feel a hand closing about my wrists, dragging them above my head, and moan in pleasure. At last. This. Yes.

   "I must confess, I quite like the times when I do not have you under silence," he says softly in my ear. "I love to make you cry out. You have a very musical voice."

   "I do?"

   "Yes. You do." He strokes down my neck and shoulders with his fingertips, causing me to moan and writhe again, and takes hold of my left nipple. His fingers begin to squeeze. A smile plays about his lips. "Sing for me."