re-ravagement of the beast part 2: energate cronkrun

It was a dream or wasn't--wasn't a dream--it's drunker, it's later, and Sophia is on the couch and according to her pictographic memory i am on the floor with my head in the carpet.

This is what i said:

I go to the bed. For it is late. It has been hours.
And where was i when he lay dying? where was i?
Away. i was away from his side.

i pulse with guilt. guilt thick in the mouth like a varnish, and pooled and shimmering in the variegated crevices of my skin.
as though i were an urn, cracked in the kiln.
skin stained with red.

The Beast lay in the bed, dark golden shape against moth-eaten sheets, the spray of rose petals across his chest--his chest still, massive, like a monolith, and the mouth open, and the eyes open and dull. It was terribler than I can express, because i was too late. And because it was my fault. He was innocent, you know, though his looked like the face of some primordial terror, because there's nothing intrinsically wrong in being a beast. Yes, the face of his desire was sometimes terrible, and yes he wished to devour me with animal fervor...but...

Could he help that? Could he help hurting for me? His desire had done no more to me than--than regard me, and his eyes had done nothing to condone that activity. If there were a million terrible beasts in the world, I had still killed the one good one, by straying away from his side.

I did not know how i ended up knelt by the bed, with my face pressed against his stone-still chest. When he said my name, I was suffocated with the enormity of his death, and for a moment i did not hear him, but then i scrambled backwards, a realization of the re-issue of his pulse run through me as if an electric shock. as if a string in me had suddenly sprung taut for plucking. His eyes were looking at me. after a moment he sat up. Petals drifted from his torso.

You were dead, I said.

I was dead, he agreed.

You died for me, I said, on half a sob. He smiled slightly and held out his hand. I took it, and came closer, and his eye sharpened on me.

Arc of the nostril flaring--he smelled it on me. No sense keen enough to hide from a beast.
his hand dropped as if in an arc. "Beauty" he said.

"I love you," I said and died in his eyes. After a moment i heard a strange sound as if fabric were tearing and i looked down--he had one claw with which he was engaged in ripping my shift open, slowly, carefully, so that it fell.

It hurt me to be the woman he wanted. but then that did not lessen my enjoyment of it. shining animal eyes reflecting a vision of myself, myself for once habitable. for one shabby half-hour, i endured it, loved to endure it, because i loved him, and when he turned back into a man in the middle i did not notice. abandoned to his arms, i enjoyed it, more--i enjoyed it, more, when he lost control, when his thorns made me suffer. joy in pain. like a lip bit to its splitting: bed dropped with gold.

because he was mine. because he loved me. because he was good, not bad. because i loved him.

because something was wrong, the whole damn time--it was something in me, not in him. and so i loved him. and so outflung.