And then, all at once, every movement of every memory synchronizing into one. One caress. One stretched belly beneath a careful palm. One desperate breath through shaky lungs.

It was so much that it was nearly too much, and I could not discern fear from ecstasy, experiencing from remembering. I wanted to run from being so many beings at once, but the nature of being is that one cannot run from it. Being is not an event. It is not an occurrence. It is continual. It is all the time.

This overwhelmed me, and the pleasure itself was so great that I could no longer stand it.

Just then, Alexander lifted me off the ground and held me close to him, wrapping his arms around my body and leaning my head against his cheek.

I turned so I could breathe in the smell of his skin, leaning my face against his neck as my small frame trembled. For yes, I felt very small in that moment. And fragile, like I could shatter or melt like a snowflake in his palm.

As he held me, I felt I was being held a dozen times over. Among the boulders at the foot of a raging river or unclothed in the yellow hay or wrapped in silken sheet on a grand mattress or swaying in the tiniest canoe in the vastest ocean.

I was not held, it seemed. My being was held.

How many lovers had Alexander drunk from? For I saw men and women, old and young. Was I one of a thousand? Did he travel through time collecting humans like me?

<<I cannot see the lives I have lived>>, he meant to me. <<They unravel in my hands. I cannot remember the Sleeping or the Waking. They are like water through my fingers. Each moon, they leave me. Each moon…I leave me. But you…you hold them for me. You hold me>>.

Episode 75: The Bleeding and The Bleeder Pay A Visit To A Manor

I did not know why I wanted so suddenly to stand up on my own two legs, to feel the trees against my own palms. I scrambled to my feet and away from Alexander.

He did not try to persuade me to remain close. Instead, he stood to his feet as well. <<Slow down>>, he intended.

I did not want to obey but I did choose to listen, for everything seemed to be going too fast. My heart would not stall its racing, and my mind could not be tethered to my body as it was before. It was as if the trees themselves were pulling me from myself, separating me like many fingers pulling apart a silken spider web.

<<Are you unwell>>? he meant carefully.

I put my hand out, hoping he understood to stay away from me, at least for some time. My breathing would not regulate if he was too close.

<<In a moment, I must tend to your bleeding>>.