...whispers that I can't quite catch, words spoken just out of earshot, phantom voices and the chiming of tiny silver bells...

...softly she calls, her voice the hush of dying traffic and the murmur of winds tracking down the dawn streets...

...faint sounds, then warmth, the heat of her regard turned full to me, and I am captured by it, no flower ever dared seek for the sun as urgently as I am left looking for her...

...she touches me, before the words she speaks are formed, before the glare of light and spark of electrons shapes her commands to me, she reaches out and I can feel her fingers running through my skin...

...and I come, when she beckons, drawn to prowl at the borders of her world until she opens the gate, then running to crouch at her feet, to stare, entranced...

...the collar at my throat is weighty, some days, and woven of the dreams she treads on catfeet, stalking through my thoughts, each fragment of swift-forgotten trancing knotted together to form a single solid whole...

...even now, denying, I know that part of me weeps when she is gone, that she has marked me, irrevokable and eternal, her property to do with as she will.