Lamplight shining through the trees, the buds are opening. Moonlight through soft clouds. Candle light on the tables, smoke and hunger in the air. They all want, and their want makes the old heartbeat, that never quite goes away, drum a little faster.
They think they invented the want, they don't know it's built into their blood. Their hands are amazed when they hold it, they wonder how anything could make them so proud and so scared all at the same time. It makes them feel even younger than they are. They don't know it's been there since Stonehenge, since Thebes, since Nineveh. Since Ice Age, since Olduvai. But they feel it in the river of their blood like the breath of a goddess.
They move with slow reverence, with the weight of all the ancestors watching. He takes her hand.
