>>10788590"Go slower," she says. "It'll be easier for you to breathe." He does move more slowly, and after awhile his breathing speeds up but she understands this is not because there is anything wrong with him.
The pain fades. Suddenly he moves more quickly, then stops, stiffens, and makes a sound--some sound. She senses that this is something for him, something extraordinarily special, something like ... like flying. She feels powerful: she feels a sense of triumph rise up strongly within her. Is this what her father was afraid of? Well he might be! There was power in this act, all right, a chain-breaking power that was blood-deep. She feels no physical pleasure, but there is a kind of mental ecstasy in it for her. She senses the closeness. He puts his face against her neck and she holds him He's crying. She holds him. And feels the part of him that made a connection between them begin to fade. It is not leaving her, exactly; it is simply fading, becoming less.
When his weight shifts away she sits up and touches his face in the darkness.
"Did you?"
"Did I what?"
"Whatever it is. I don't know, exactly."
He shakes his head--shefeels it with her hand against his cheek.
"I don't think it was exactly like ... you know, like the big boys say. But it was ... it was really something. He speaks low so the others can't hear. "I love you, Bevvie."
Her consciousness breaks down a little there. She's quite sure there's more talk, some whispered, some loud, and can't remember what is said. It doesn't matter. Does she have to talk each of them into it all over again? Yes, probably. But it doesn't matter. They have to be talked into it, this essential human link between the world and the infinite, the only place where the bloodstream touches eternity. It doesn't matter. What matters is love and desire. Here in this dark is as good a place as any. Better than some, maybe.
