#scarsdale

"others can strike my body, only you can strike my heart, but i would not change that for all the world. I am thine, and I will love you in rage and placate. I will love you in joy and dance at the sound of your chuffing laughter, and I will love you in sorrow and seek to dry your tears with my breast. I will love thee when your brow is knit in thoughts to profound they track tiny wrinkles above the nose and smile as if each wrinkle were a story you shared with me. You can cut me my love, sometimes, but oh, how sweet the tending after. I am well, and I am happy, for each harm you think you have done, you do not see the hundred wings you place upon my soul to give it flight"

A sigh. "My poet."

"my muse" he says back "Now, sleep. Where was I?" Ahem "I love thee as I love the tone
Of some soft-breathing flute
Whose soul is wak'd for me alone,
When all beside is mute." And he quotes more, softly, gently. Usually getting it right, or close to it. SNippets of all sorts

Zara may find herself falling sleepy, drifting... to his voice and the words, love like a sweet spear tip in each verse

The difference between awake and asleep is subtle and swift - a breath, the last heavy blink.... but yes, she sleeps.

And her troll, her knight, continues to recite for at least another fifteen minutes. He will stay up much longer than that. Nothing else will hurt her this night. If pain had a face and came for her incarnate, he would spit in it's eye and challenge it. He is, after all, a troll, and they can be terribly silly creatures

(end scene)