The previous night when I invited you you came fat. Immensely, obesely, gorgeously fat. Rolls and rolls of you, and I knew I was destined for those depths. You were gentle and overpowering and I felt so much… care? Until your guts started to have their way with me, your every move was like a lover. Last night you came emaciated. I’ve never seen you so thin. You looked so small, so slight.

My fingers are so light on your back that they are hard to pick out from the warm rain your shower casts down over you. Let us try. Feel how my fingers glide up from your hip bones, buried as they are. The skin they touch is firmer than anywhere else on your whole torso, only a little fat laid underneath. Up, down, up down, the contract drawing little shivers up and down your spine.

You see shock on her face. The other stations are occupied by the faintest after-echoes of heavenly puissance. And now she is faced with an invocation so potent she could almost reach out and touch you. In flesh and spirit she raises a hand to shield her eyes from the glow behind your head, which catches liquid highlights on your flowing black hair, and on the great wings which brush opposing walls of her bedroom.

You’re walking on the side of the street. Autumn has burned the leaves yellow. With a gust they shiver and fall, lazy arcs seesawing down to the ground. The woman across the street brushes a leaf from her hair in irritation. So does a man standing at a bus shelter. Danger. You side-step a leaf that would have touched you. It lands limply on the ground, teased this way and that by the breeze.

The collar is leather-lined, but when you move, sometimes the metal edges touch your skin and flash cold. You don’t move much: The criss-cross pattern of rope that snakes up your forearms cuts slightly into your skin, binding them to leather-padded arm rests. You can feel the smooth heads of brass tacks where they cross under your wrists. Your calves bear the same treatment, affixing your legs to the chair legs; and an elaborate hip harness I tied before having you sit in the chair serves, with the aid of simple but rigorous ropework, to absolutely nail you into the seat.

My meditation seldom goes so well but my visualisation is concrete today. I hold steady the image of the rabbit in front of me, crystalline and perfect, a sense of motion captured in amber. “El-ahrairah,” I murmur, the name of a mythological figure meaningful to me. Each strand of fur. I hold it perfectly present in my mind’s eye. Unshakeable: even my fast-beating heart doesn’t cause the image to waver.

There is a phenomenon that occurs whenever I leave the house and enter nature, or sometimes just the company of lots of people. It is called Walkies. You’ve seen it before, and in fact you’re the one who pointed it out. You smile indulgently now as I veer from the path to inspect the berries on an unusual bush. We left your car more than five minutes ago so I have begun growing more excitable.

The first thing you notice when you wake, even before you open your eyes, is vanilla. There’s something comforting about waking to the aroma of home cooking. Swaddled in what smells like it might be pancakes, you decide not to even open your eyes. The sheets are rumpled beneath your body but the duvet is warm and snuggly on a morning that has turned down the temperature of the air to “cool”.

You know I’m carrying a shedton of food and you could lighten my load but you don’t, out of a sense of mischief. We could be climbing this fell together and you could be eating snacks and pastries and cheeses and sweets and by the time we reach the top I’d have a light load and you’d be carrying the weight in your stomach. But no. I see the way you smirk at my oversized backpack containing its oversized picnic.

You hear your door open at about six, swiftly followed by my jovial call, “Hel-lo!” as is my habit. Ceramics are set down while I take off my shoes or something. When you don’t come downstairs I find you. There’s a gentle knock on the door. When you grunt, “mmmn,” I open it to find you at your desk in darkness with your head in your hands. “Are you okay, Rey?