The power is off, but she is still here. Wind and wet snow drive at my windows. The miniature crystals still melt from my hair. My hands feel a slight burning from the sudden shift of cold to warm.

The fire burns merrily in the dark. She sits beside me and her presence gently encompasses my being. I feel that all too familiar gentle pressure against my temples. I know she is smiling.

“More time for us?” She presses me, eager anticipation in her words. I wouldn’t accept this sort of attention from anyone else. The human touch is too empty, too smothering, too much a shadow of that skillful contact from demon-kind.

Unlike her namesake would suggest, she waits for me patiently, gently holding on until I acknowledge her.

“Soon, darling. Soon.” I promise, but my words only cause her to swoon more deeply than before.

“I need you.” The most beautiful, enrapturing words a man can hear escapes her innermost thoughts. I find myself flooded with desire. I burn for her and I feel it deep in my chest.

The wind howls against the house. The eaves shudder while a fresh blanket of snow covers my shoveling from before. I feel her hold on me tighten as the din from the world outside carries on. She might fall asleep this way, as she often does; though not before nuzzling against me and leaving her goodnight kiss.

For seven years she has not slackened or waned. Her touch only grows deeper. In the darkness, and the silence, her concern over me is impossibly greater still. What lies beyond? What happens when our two worlds finally converge?

I do know this: The very foundations of the earth will be shaken as the truth of things is revealed. My world has already been rocked aplenty.