Eventually, I manage to keep a part of myself withheld enough to observe and take note of the flowing current. My knees are jelly, as is the rest of me, both physically and emotionally, but that's all right, it's a good jelly state. Very, very good jelly. I'll just sit here and be jelly for a while, shall I?

Except I can't, because we're doing work. Rats.

"Water is a very useful element to channel through another person. It's not just a way to arouse emotions and encourage surrender; Water is also a healing element. There are far worse ways to encourage healing than through a touch, or a gentle kiss. It's also good for dreams and visions; a well-directed kiss can be transforming. Come to think of it, a touch or a kiss of Fire can heal and transform, too, but Fire is not a gentle element to work with, as I have emphasized from the beginning of your education - Fire is purifying, and its purification sears. Indeed, the root of purify is pur, the Greek word for Fire. Water can be dangerous in its seductive power, but it's a much gentler way to encourage healing and transformation than Fire is, provided it does not drown your subject. Now. Try it on me."

I blink at him.

"Beloved one, it is important that you practice this skill and master it before you try using it on another person - especially with the Water element, which can be elusive and tricky. That is why we are here today, by the river rapids: to use its proximity to help you focus and boost your power. I do not think you will hurt me. Aren't you just a little curious about what you might bring out in me? I am." He leans his forehead against mine. The sudden sensation of being touched by his presence is impossibly intimate. "It's all right," he whispers. "I trust you to not shatter me if you hold me."

I take his face between my hands, drawing on the misty air, the river that surges below us. He starts to tremble. "Se philo," he whispers, and closes his eyes.

Then our lips meet.

Deep within, a warm, flowing current pulses. It wants to swell. I am profoundly thirsty, and oh, I'm hungry. Swell the current. Raise the river, bring down the rain, overflow. Overflow your life into my mouth, and my dear love, let me in, let me in. I have never needed anybody so, and here, you need me too, I can taste it in your kiss, in every wave I drink in, I am here, let us float together. I will hold your head above the water. Let us swim in love, rushed along the currents at flood. We will swim in eternal bliss.

You are so vulnerably beautiful, naked in this torrent.

When I break the contact and release his face, I see a drop of blood pooling on his lower lip.

His eyes are astonished when he opens them. "My God," he whispers. "My God. I didn't know that it was like that for you."

We melt off the log and somehow manage to navigate the hillside paths without stumbling or slipping. The wider part of the trail is a welcome sight, however, and it is with relief that I set my feet upon it. I don't feel tired - quite the opposite, in fact, which is odd - but my joints feel like river water, and my limbs all seem to want to tremble.

When we get back into the car, I find myself reaching for him again. There is something about the warmth that I sense under his coat that lures me. Soon we are unbuttoning each other, seeking each other out with our hands.

Did I ever love, or hunger, before him?

Yes, but not like this.

Our groping hands brush up against each other by accident, and I clasp his in mine, pressing it to my breast. Our eyes meet. He smiles.

"Let lips do what hands do; they pray. Grant thou, lest faith turn to despair."

Two can play at this. It's a famous passage, after all. "Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake."

"Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged."

A flood of bliss. Waters flow back and forth between us, drenching us with desire.

"Then have my lips the sin that they have took," I gasp at last.

"Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again."

We float together on this boundless sea of our own making, caressed by waves, dissolved by tides.

On the way home, he stops the car outside the post office that is on the way. He looks down significantly at the stamped, addressed envelope that rests between us in the well between our seats.

Sighing, I pick up my college application and run out the door with it, to drop it in the mailbox for the next collection.

The rain begins to fall in earnest. By the time I make it back to the car, I am soaked and freezing.

Once home, with the door shut behind us, he steers me to the bedroom and starts undressing me. Or maybe I started undressing him first. I can't be sure. I do know I desperately want to get our wet clothes out of the way, and he seems to be of the same mind. Our coats and gloves fall to the floor, soon followed by other articles until we are naked, and all our clothing kicked into the corner.

A gust of wind blows rain and sleet against the window.

"God, you're warm," I murmur into his lips when our faces collide. "Feels good. More."

He is smiling as we sink onto the futon to tangle our limbs and bodies together. "Cold?" he asks. "I would have thought you'd have warmed yourself up by now. You've never had problems generating heat."

"I want yours." I run my hand through his hair. His hair is one of the most magnificent things about him. The parts that are still sable really are black, while the increasingly large number of silver strands are a true silver, not grey or white, and it's glorious to feel under my hand: thick and very rich, the sort of hair I could bury my hand in indefinitely. There have been nights when I fell asleep stroking his hair, while he dozed against my shoulder.

"Hmm. I'll consider it. You seem quite warm already."

"I do?"

"Eromene, you are an inferno. I don't think you are in any danger of contracting a chill. On the other hand, making sure you stay warm does have a certain appeal, although it might not be a very comfortable sort of warmth for you. I'll have to give this more thought. Right now, though, we still have work to do. This is a much more appropriate place to practice channeling Air through a kiss. We're lying on a futon. It's a safer place to be if one of us passes out than on top of a log over a high ravine."

I look at him wide-eyed. "Is that likely?"

"I won't rule it out. You're a novice, and Air is another element that can be very tricky to work with, so until you get more accomplished at what you are doing, results can be somewhat unpredictable. We are dealing with the original stuff of life. Psyche, translated, means not just soul, but also life and breath. The bride of Eros is sometimes depicted as being a butterfly, or as having butterfly wings, further emphasizing that Psyche is the embodiment of life and spirit and showing her link to Air. Meanwhile, further to the north, Odin is seen as the Father of All because he took the clay being crafted by Loki and breathed life and soul into it. In the beginning is Air... The first few times I started experimenting with it, I wound up giving both myself and my partner a nasty fright. I hadn't known my own strength. In the end, everything turned out all right and nobody was hurt, but - well. She took a long time to regain her consciousness, although her breath came back almost immediately after I stopped kissing her. It certainly felt like a long while until she came back, though it was probably only a few very frightening minutes. At any rate, there is a slim chance you might take enough breath away from me when kissing me, or impede my airflow somehow, that I'll start to lose consciousness. I doubt I'd accidentally do the same to you, but on purpose is another matter - come to think of it, putting you on the receiving end of a large working of Air might be a good way to help you get the feel of the element. Something more subtle would be too hard to notice at first. And I do need to replenish all the energy you inadvertently took from me when we were perched on that log. At least, I presume it was inadvertent on your part."

Gulp.

"You shouldn't be nervous. I think I mentioned having done this to you quite often, just not to any dramatic degree. You've always seemed to enjoy it." He smiles. "Immensely."

Oh. I see. He's been using the Waiting for Godot method of foreplay.

"Do you trust me?"

I nod. Of course.

"Then I am going to kiss you. This time, I will not hold back." He reaches out for my cheeks and holds me as he covers me with his mouth and body, rolling onto me almost like a heavy bank of clouds.

At first, I don't notice anything unusual. It's a kiss. I bask in the warmth of his lips, the gentle feel of his hands caressing me, fingers stroking lightly along my torso, around my breasts, up and down, circling over and over, pinching and kneading the nerves and meridians he knows so well, playing my strings until I start to sigh and moan. More - so much more, my skin is alive under his fingers, singing, higher and higher, spiraling up until the orgasm seizes me between my legs and up and up my spine and I am screaming into his mouth. Screaming. Gasping. Gasping... Then I notice it. My breath is leaving me faster than I can replace it. He's eating my air. My life. But I can't stop coming or crying out, any more than I can stop him from sucking the wind out of me.

If I am going to die tonight, I will die of pleasure.

There are worse ways to die.

Eventually, my screams become moans, then mewing noises, and then I feel my limbs shaking uncontrollably. Dizzy. I think I'm going to be sick. Still coming, despite it all. That can't be humanly possible.

Blackness.

"Five minutes. I suppose it could have been worse."

The alarm clock winks at us from its place on top of a pile of books on the floor.

"Glurg," I mutter articulately into his arm.

He wraps himself around me more tightly; I sigh happily. "Did you manage to trace the path of the wind that I was raising and drawing out of you? I would prefer to not do that again tonight. The five minutes I just spent were a little too long for my liking."

No, I nod.

"I think we'll save further intensive work with this element for another time. You seem too tired to focus."

I nod again.

He lets go of me briefly to get up off the futon and walk a couple of steps to the window. "It's a bit close in here. That can't be helping," he says, lifting the window sash. Icy, wet wind begins to blow into the room.

It actually feels good.

He crouches down to sit on the floor, his naked back propped against the bookcase that takes up space on that wall, and beckons me to him with his arm. Somehow, I manage to drag myself off the futon to cuddle up against him. I suspect he was testing me to see if I needed to be carried.

The late afternoon sky darkens to dusk as we gaze at the cemetery through the open window. Rain and sleet continue to fall, and every now and then the wind will swell, blowing damply against our faces. One gust lingers, cold and sharp and wet, but somehow managing to feel like a caress, despite its biting cold; it's as if the wind loves me. It tickles under my chin in an eddy before slowly quieting.

"Air is your element, isn't it?"

"Yes."

We rest together in companionable silence, gazing out at the bare, wind-swept trees, the sleet driven against the windowpane.

"Can kisses of Air do anything besides take breath away?" I eventually ask.

"Of course. You can breathe life into someone else if that person is receptive." He cups my face. "Very useful, for instance, when someone's energy is too low to allow play to continue, but both of you want to keep going anyway."

The warmth of his kiss makes me sigh with delight.