Long, graceful fingers, easy smile, sharp wit. I can remember that much even still.
It is cold here, and there is no light. I don't mind. I was never one to linger in the light and warmth overmuch. Still, I cannot seem to recall when last I felt anything at all in these fingers of mine--they have been so numb for so long, I am not sure I will feel anything ever again.
Yet I can sense when she is near me. She does not make a sound, she no longer even hums the sweet little melodies she did so very long ago. In my darkness, I feel her light, and I know she lingers near.
Sometimes, just sometimes, she favors me with a touch.
Those long, graceful, pale but strong fingers I can feel against my flesh, even once she is gone again. She caresses my great mane of hair, dextrously massaging my scalp beneath. Her fingers trail across my smooth forehead, barely brushing the silky hair of my eyebrows. They never stray toward the empty sockets where once my eyes did reside.
Once, just once, she touched my lips, and when she did I shuddered, and a growl rose in my throat as the great beast within me grew fitful and restless, just for a moment.
I tamed him
But she had felt him, too. She has never since touched me thus.
Instead, I am patted about the head or shoulders, like a faithful pet. Occasionally, she will allow her deceptively delicate hand to linger there, resting like a feather on the muscle, as she did before all this, when I held her in my arms and she stroked my broad shoulders playfully, asking if I were carved from stone, or if I should like to be.
She was an artist.
She came to me to me today, and spoke for the first time in ages. I had almost forgotten the sound of her voice. She says she will find a place for us, where I will be welcomed and not feared or despised for what I am. She promises to be with me there.
I do not reply.
She is always with me.
From the moment she first set these chains upon me, and I dropped willingly to my knees before her, she has been with me. She did not know then that I loved her, not until after she had pushed my long, thick hair away from face and driven her beautiful fingers into my clear blue eyes, not until after she had bandaged the wounds and held me silently in her arms for hours. Not, I think, for some time after all that, after she had made of me her art--all bone and muscle and hair, her bound Prometheus, beautiful and loathsome all at once.
I was bound willingly.
She is my slave.
I move, gently, like her hands, so that my chains hardly make a sound. I lay my cold, hard fingers over hers, against my shoulder, and she shudders only a little. She knows the fearsome power she has granted me, and I can hear her, softly weeping, as she sinks into me, against me, just like old times.
I am with her, always.
