Temptation

After the nineteenth day, the cellar became a country with a shrinking border.

I kept track of the distance between us; the border being the only discipline I had left following the oiling, stirring, touch, and the hum that vibrated through me.

Three feet in the first week.

Two feet in the second.

Eighteen inches by the third, close enough to see that each of her spots was not circles but ovals; slightly elongated along the axis of her body, the distribution following a pattern I was mapping in the margins of the bestiary.