He was too tentative. I guided his hand, pushing the heart deep into my wrist, watching the vein along my arm turn black. For a moment I could feel his thoughts as he had been writing, could see myself the way he saw me. I held him tight.

“What is happening?” he breathed, tracing my arm. The phoenix glowed.

I raised my hips and he moaned, all other thoughts gone. The phoenix lightened, fading from dark to gray as he rocked into me. His notebook fell to the linoleum with a clatter. We were as connected as two people could be. Our bodies pressed against each other, his thoughts coursing through my blood. My body Reforged his words eagerly, the most pleasurable Reforging I ever had.

I closed my eyes and let the Reforging take over. There we were, on his bed. The last time I had Reforged his pencil was six years earlier, a lifetime and a continent ago, when I saw him working on his math and felt a hint of his love. But this time I felt all of it, or what I thought was all of it. I basked in its warmth, its safety, having no idea how much it could grow through the decades, how far-reaching it could be. I saw him fumble with the pencil I had given him, watched him write nothing but scribbles in his notebook.

I recovered to find him propped up on an elbow, looking at me curiously.

“I asked you to write something, not just scribble,” I laughed, tracing a hand along his cheek.

“It’s very difficult for me to think properly in certain circumstances,” he offered.

“And I thought you were the brightest in Taiwan!”

“Hardly. But even if I was, you have always been my weakness.”

He reached his hand out, and I gave him mine. Pulling me back into him, he ran his fingers along my wrist, traced the dormant phoenix.

“But how did you know I scribbled?” The notebook was still on the ground, untouched. “Tell me what happened to that pencil heart.”