Caroline reclined with the many strokes of midnight. Claimed her languor against the headboard. Leather, rough. Smelling of pasture and peat despite the time passed since its arrival in her home. Tanned and turned to a backdrop to witness humanity's prolific expressions of lust. Her expressions of lust. Love, if it suited her.

Satisfied completely. Filled and fulfilled.

Stage right. Mahogany hair cascaded over royal amber vellum, stretched taupe over muscle.

Caroline's stage. The silent mattress a plane to suffer her passions. Blistering footlights illuminating her demands. The play-act and pretend. Not the pretend. The unrevealed. She could be, do, say, live her mind here and find compliance. Speak her truth during the performance. Any evocation she could conjure to cavort under lips and fingertips.

Stage left. Silken sheer strawberry tossed over winter wheat skin. Lids over syrupy eyes.

The three goddesses. Was Paris ready? They'd be less without the voyeur. The joy of her performance banal, sans pleasure of seeing while being seen. Stealing back the stolen. The frisson denied the watcher for the denial of the forbidden in the viewing of the tableau.

The prohibition was just. The mortal, instead of offered reward, ought to be punished for daring to witness them and agree to weigh their radiance. Caroline's radiance. The composer, bard, architect. She was the war itself. The incarnation of destruction not the object. To be claimed by no man.

Not by no one. The goddesses might abdicate. Creep under veiled night like quick ivy from Olympus to covet and be coveted only by each other. Another play for another day to be ingrained in the fingerling cracks of the worn hide of her fourth wall. Or - now?

Perhaps not satisfied.

Caroline rolled to her right. Slid cell by cell over her newest partner. Membranes meeting. Walls ripped. Beneath the vivid, below the cellular, quantum worlds burst forth to thrive and disappear. Pockets of space time made, destroyed. By her. Her greed creating infinite universes inside organic reactions to die like cold stars between millimeters of thawing flesh.

Firm bold hand. Waiting warm breast. Caroline stiffened and relaxed. Clutched and yielded. A kiss now on the shoulder. Not her mouth. She turned to her left. Smiled. Pickets of white teeth shining. Ravenous as the next woman pulled her hand from one body to be welcomed by another, and Caroline –

Awoke.

Alone. But not alone. John. No elements in him, on him, sweet as the skin of the fruit she'd tasted in her dreams.