Emma Richler

I need to tell you a story, a tale of fate and emergence.

I need to tell you a story.'What

I love your loins, that's all,' Rachel says quietly. 'And now I love the word itself, and how words change, I love that too. And all the parts of you, I love them. That's all. And I'm not sad,' she whispers, gasping a little at the shock of her own tears, hot and extravagant, tears that catch the light in her lashes before they drop and roll across Zach's thighs, sparkling capsules, kaleidoscopic, the flow dynamic.

You know how there are words that never really__hey are never really quite right. You can't quite trust them. Use them. You know. Without p

Zachariah, Zachariah,' whispers Rachel, casting a practised eye over the back of his head and down the length of him, from the shoulder blades where his wings once grew, epochs ago, in some other guise: angel__uardian, avenging__r great vagrant bird__aurian Jackdaw, Chimney Swift, Pacific Loon!

Hopes are so well constructed, so monstrously dashed!

Where his boyhood retreat had been a cave hewn for one, it now accommodated two. He was suddenly two and it amazed and delighted, causing a stir in the pit of him, a kind of fibrillation.

Marry me, Rachel.''Not yet.''Tomorrow, Rachel. Marry me.''Maybe tomorrow.''There is no common blood between us. Say it,' pleads Zachariah.'There is no common blood between us,' murmurs Rachel.'I am not your brother.''I know.'He traces her face with his swollen fingers, across the brow bones and down the zygomatics, and along the jaw from earlobe to chin, sweeping away the brine as he goes.'I am your Wolff,' he says.'And I am your Wolff,' she replies.Let the day begin.