He felt dazed, thoughtless, but also, for the first time in his life that he could remember, full of an odd, sleepy contentment. He thought he liked it-- or he would have thought he liked it, if he had a thought in his head. All he really had the energy or attention for was sitting beside Her chair, Her miniature throne, watching the faint breeze stir the tapestries and picking out patterns in the marble of the wall.

This is so damned strange!

Peculiar, indeed, but I must say, understandable.

Understandable, my ass! I don't like it!

Go fuck yourself, Araski, you don't like anything.

Stuff it, you don't like it all that much, either!

And how would you know? Not all of us are complete aesthetics; some of us like a good fuck.

That was more than a "good fuck"... by Her claws, it was....

The shadows were not nearly so empty-headed, but they had yet to try and take advantage of that fact. If he'd had the presence of mind to wonder why, he would have. As it was, he didn't really care what they did, so he let them bicker and muse and chatter at each other. They seemed to realize he wouldn't make very good conversation-- or wouldn't rise to whatever insult or bait they offered him-- because they ignored him entirely. He was vaguely aware they were talking about him, but, after all, he didn't care, so he let them. Even if he did care, there was certainly nothing he could do about it.

Certainly was... different.

Not even before, not anything She ever did, was like that.

Well, of course not. She never had to worry about keeping him before, now, did She?

What are you saying??

What do you mean by that??

Are you saying--

What--

Of course I am. She never tried anything for his sake before, because She never needed to win him over before. Any pleasure She gave, then, was accidental, nothing more than a byproduct of Her own enjoyment. This--

--was most definitely not accidental.

Claws and blood, I want more of it, whatever it was....

It hadn't been long since She left him, promising She would return soon. He didn't know why She'd left, but then, he never did. Her comings and goings were a constant in his life, or they had been, and now they would be again. Night and day were what they used to be, though night was not, right now, quite so dark as it used to be, nor was he shunted off to a tiny cell to wait for Her return. This time, She had left him sitting on Her marble floor, leaning against Her gold and ebony throne, surrounded by an opulence that put Her former room to shame.

You always want more, disgusting thing.

So? I've got a good, healthy sex drive! Heh heh.

You're just gross.

But what are we going to do about it?

He's just ignoring us, he never just ignores us.

This feels so... so... wrong.

What? Wrong to let the mutt be happy for a while? Come on, now!

This isn't happy. I don't know what this is, but it's not happy.

How do you know? You wouldn't know happy if it came up and bit you in the ass.

Whatever happy was, this was at least the closest he'd come to it in a long time. Sighing faintly and resting his cheek against the smooth wood and warm metal of Her chair, he half-shut his eyes, letting the woven image of mountains, stars, and demons with their teeth locked on each others throats on the opposite wall blur into a senseless pattern. It almost looked familiar, that way, but he couldn't quite remember where it was familiar from.

Hey! You! Fluff-for-brains! Wake up in there!

Come off it, he's not listening.

It's fucking disturbing, is what it is.

You're tellin' me. He never ignored me.

That's just because you're too fucking loud to ignore.

Shut up.

Nobody answered my question.

What question?

About what the fuck to do about all this!

Nobody said we had to do anything.

I don't think there's anything we can do, anyway.

He had a thought. It wasn't much of a thought, but it was a thought. He knew where the blurred tapestry seemed familiar from. There was a house, a very, very large house, with a tapestry so old, hanging forgotten in one of its unused rooms, that the image had faded into indistinct blurs. Where was that house? He couldn't remember, and that disturbed him a little. Just a little.

There, see? He's not totally brain-dead.

I would be, if She'd done all that to me. It's a wonder he's even awake. By all rights he should be passed out unconscious.

Yeah, like you would be, fucking wimp.

Maybe he'll come out of it on his own.

Not if She comes back, he won't. She'll just throw him right back into it again.

So what? At least now he's not arguing with us.

No, but we're arguing with each other, instead.

Fuck it all.

Yes, please!

Oh, shut up! We're trying to be serious, here!

So was I?

The room seemed oddly colored, its red glow brightening to an odd sort of violet. For a moment, he didn't notice, his scant attention taken up with the problem of why his memory wasn't working. Then, as it drifted into a blue quite unlike what She had left behind, he finally twitched in acknowledgement, distracted from his spare thoughts by the one that meant quite a bit more to him: She must have returned!

But, somehow, it was not Her.