FSE

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The world swims around me in a peculiar haze. I can't focus, for some reason, and my heart seems to be trying to burst out of my chest. Something constricts my throat and prevents me from speaking. My skin is clammy, cold, yet I feel hot beneath my fur; in my midriff, on the left-hand-side where my stomach used to be before a legion legion of microscopic butterflies took roost, there is an empty, soaring sensation despite the weight of the delicious meal I consumed in the past couple of hours. An infinity away the stars swim above the sloe-black sea and the moon glitters in a side-tilted smile.

And there you stand, in front of me. That smile on your face probably starting to freeze a little into concern: even confidence such as yours can be made vulnerable at times, and undoubtedly that is one of those times. I watch your tail drift back and forth in slow motion and almost feel the wafting of your scent to my hypersensitive nose, so familiar and well-known and comforting; why does it smell so new now? Why do I detect so many new tones to it tonight?

I feel my own tail swaying, rippling back and forth in the warm summer air. An offshore breeze catches the front of our dress jackets, pulling them away from our bodies just a fraction; your bow tie ripples and flutters, and I'm sure mine does, too. But all I can think about is the buzz in my head, the flat not-quite-subsonic ringing that interferes with my thought as much as it does my hearing. And by now your eyes are beginning to tinge with anxiety, and it's creeping into your scent as well, a sharp-edged note of mild and querulous fear, self-doubt and worry. You're still smiling, your tail is still swaying from side to side, and nobody who didn't know you could see it --- but I do know you, and I can see it.

I know you. I know you so well. As well as one person can know another person. I've held you while you cried; I've comforted you when your enterprises failed, just as I rejoiced with you when they soared; I met your parents and behaved myself until I realised I didn't have to any more; I danced drunk with you on a dance floor filled with people half my age and didn't care what they thought when we got close and began to grind; I've explored every square inch of your body with my paws and my muzzle, and each time it's come up new yet still familiar. And you know me, too: you've lived through my tantrums and my tiaras, my soaring ecstasies and my crashing lows; you've supported me through the worst of times and run beside me in the best; you've taught me to love myself and my body and how to love another person with that body, in whatever form the moment requires; you've met my parents, and helped them to accept that a male can, indeed, love a male, though they might not be able to understand it.

And yet I don't know you at all. That shapely muzzle, the beautiful eyes, the lips that curl up so readily into a smile and when needed a snarl, those strong foreclaws, that expressive tail that isn't still even when you sleep, your perked and twitching ears, the flexion of your muscles beneath your fur, the contradiction between your drive and your laziness, the scent of you in the morning, how you can say one thing and do another, when you listen to vicious hard rock instead of languid classical, the way you snarl when you come --- I don't know you at all. Will I ever know you? Do I want to? Do I want to know if I shall? or even if I can?

In my stomach the butterflies are dancing a split polka in double time. I can feel the inside of my throat and it is dry, dry as the desert which swallowed Ozymandias' grand city. My breath comes in a rasp. There is all the time in the world. There is no time. There is no thing except your eyes, your smile, your scent, your words ringing in my ear. Words I didn't expect to hear from you. Words I didn't expect to hear, at all, but rather say. Words I didn't expect to use, ever.

From the beach below us comes the resumption of time in the crash of a breaker, the one I watched begin to curl in the corner of my eye before you spoke. A deep breath fills my lungs; life, life, life. Womb-coughed into reality once again am I and the world picks up with the roar of eternity.

My face is wet and I don't care. My lips lift in a smile and my heart leaps into my throat. Those butterflies have linked legs and are doing a triumphant kick-line. In my loins my sheath aches with desire and clenches with anxiety. I throw myself at you and holds you close. "Yes," I whisper, for a whisper is all I can manage, all I can find, and then the joyous sobs begin moments after I kiss you. "Yes... oh my darling, yes." And again, and again, through the night, each of us in turn, until morning pales the sky and we are sated in deep purple unconsciousness of Lethe: "Yes.", "Yes!", " YES!"