And she is still thirsty, thirstier than before. She is thirstier than she is happy, and this does not seem right to her. She is lying very close to her husband, his skin warm and breathing. She wants very much to pull him closer and wrap her arms around his chest and squeeze him, but she is afraid to wake him. For a while she does nothing except observe the tiny, cool gaps where their bodies can’t meet. But the longer she observes, the more gaps she finds, and the more unhappy she becomes. By this time she is more unhappy than she is happy, but as long as she is thirstier than she is unhappy, things might still be all right. She decides she should stop thinking about the gaps where she and her husband cannot meet and try instead to relax and observe the moonlight, the swimming shadows, the way they reached for each other in the night, the chandelier shimmering silently above them.

The room passes into darkness. Then the moon returns and the chandelier crystals catch the light and swallow it whole.

One crystal, hanging on the outer edge, mesmerizes her. When she tilts her head a little in one direction, the crystal throws out a sharp, alarming light. Another way and it slips into dark. Another way and she sees the extraordinary light trapped inside, cool, glowing, pulsing.

Slowly she peels her arm from under her husband’s, feeling moist stickiness and then a light cooling on her skin. Blood rushes back into her limb. He turns away, taking some of the sheet with him. She slips out from the covers, tip-toes to the foot of the bed, and stands under the chandelier. Her hands find the hard back of a chair and she pulls it towards her and climbs onto it. It wobbles a little under her. She stands up slowly, and then, with careful fingers, reaches up for her crystal, unhooking it and bringing it to her chest. It is bumpy and cool. She opens her palm and stares at the dark thing. Then she looks up and sees that there are many more, all still glowing. She reaches up again, toward the middle this time, and plucks out a smaller one, then another, then another, until they almost spill from her hand and chest and there is nothing left to do but stand there, slightly elated, cradling her bounty. The pieces of blunt, warm glass begin sticking to her skin.

She imagines herself then—naked, on a badly made chair, dismembering a chandelier—and her skin starts to tingle with shame. Slowly she climbs down. She takes the chandelier pieces and lays them on the carpet under the bed. Then she sits in the chair with her hands in her lap and thinks about how, compared to when she first awoke, she probably does not have that much happiness left.