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."