Thin morning fog whispered a promise of afternoon sunshine, glistening whitely outside the windows, pressing at the glass. Shadows of the night lingered in the corners of the bedrooms, at the foot of the beds, inside her head, inside his heart.

She rolled over and tucked her hands beneath her chin, childlike, and looked across Ginny's bed to the window. She hadn't wanted that bed bathed now in soft morning light, she had wanted to stay in the darker part of the room, beneath the heavy, musty coverlet, against the wall, cocooned inside her secret thoughts, waiting, waiting, waiting for the metamorphosis that teased with sighs and murmurs and heat and longing. Waiting for something and she had no idea what it was, what it would want from her, but, and at this she closed her eyes slowly, it had something to do with the man who was sleeping on the floor above her. She knew that, had known it since the day after she arrived. Behind her closed eyes she pictured him, there in his bed, she had never seen his bedroom…wondered for a moment how to arrange such a thing…but none of that mattered, it was the physicality of him, naked beneath his own sheets, his long legs thrown wide, a hand on his chest, his face turned to the light, breathing lightly, shoulders sloping back into the mattress. She thought of his feet and she thought of the arching smooth flesh where his neck bent away from his shoulder. She thought of his long-fingered hands, she had made of them a personal study and if she had had any skill with a bit of charcoal and parchment could have rendered an amazing likeness, and the heavy bones in his wrist. She thought, and trembled inside, of his hands on her and realized that she only vaguely knew where she wanted him to touch her. Her mouth ached.

He lay on his stomach, one knee bent off the mattress, his foot swirling circles in the cool morning air, looking over at the small window tucked beneath the roof eave.