Absent stars. Crescent moon. Caroline sees shadows of a cool foreign forest through eyes that are not hers. Irregular murmurs of thoughts not her own, nomenclatures not native, brush against her consciousness. A droplet of water from a silhouetted cypress branch above gleams as it hangs in the thin light. She does not recognize herself in the convex distortion. She smells wet loam and feels the night breeze caress her.

Clutched silence. Then, a rustle in the near distance. A snap of twig and stem and she is no longer stuporous. Mind thrust into acute concert with thoughts she does not understand but instincts she does.

Stage left, paired eyes glitter. Ghostly one-dimensional discs. Flick of the cotton tail from the spotted doe and Caroline leaps. Splits the night like a shot.

Like a shot. Not a shot. She is here to hunt, but not to extinguish. She is here to find blessed bliss in the act of creation. She mounts and –

Wakes.

Behind her, her shoulders pressed to leather. The amber of peat, pasture, fill her nose. Before her, center stage, naked Diana in repose fills her arms. Caroline turns her spent lips to licorice locks.

"You're glorious."

Diana's rumble vibrates through flesh, skin, bones and breast against her chest. "Only in your narcissism. It's wonderful to bask in while the sun shines. I'm illuminated perfection to you now. Worthy. It's stunning, your admiration."

"You're insulting my devotion?" She bristles at Diana's talent, incising praise. The slip of the knife under the caress.

"Yes. Because it's ephemeral. Available only until my inevitable mortality shines through. When it does, the betrayal you conjure on my behalf will be very bitter. You'll resent it and brush me off like a biting mosquito."

Left out in the cold. Blue-eyed Caroline knows the feel of the fall, and frostbite. Tumbling from Olympus. As it felt – feels - with Kate.

Wait. Kate was, is, absolute perfection. She would never?

No matter. Caroline saves her pleading for Kate.

"We had something lovely. I know I leave a lot to be desired. I decided it was worth one more time, asking. I would - I will, try harder."

"No. Thank you."

The open question, her final attempt at reconciliation, resolved. But Caroline is not resolved. Not unified.

"I'm not judging you, Caroline. Today you're my universe."

"Is this nonsense why you won't have a real relationship with me?"

"Real relationship? How would you define us? You and I act and react in relation to each other. I move, you move." Diana's teeth shine like the chaste moon and in illustration, she moves. Caroline gasps. A visceral reaction to recent memory more than direct response to stimulus. Still, she lends corporal agreement to their relativity. Proof proven.

"It's not up to me to decide if this constitutes reality for you."

"Fine." Caroline's body stales and stiffens and she sulks.

Diana laughs. "Is this about your mother's wedding next month?"

"No." She had asked for mercy without hope. Her liaisons with her new lover are defined by starlight.

"Sorry. I won't tag along at your skirt as an illustration or a buttress." Over the past few months she has come to accept and reject wandering Diana's commitment to find a woman worthy of her love whom she does not love.

Precious, reflective, conducive, and weakly bonded. Diana is silver.

Yet Caroline does not want to go alone to the December nativity of the matrimony. All variables predicted that Celia would eventually come around when it came to Kate and her musical charity. No darkness immune to the charms of her lyre. Thus, the Queen of Sheba would strut the aisle hailed and revered accompanied by delicate brown fingers played over keys. Celebrated, as she ought to be, as love ought to be, when wise and well-earned. Well-tempered by balance, by Alan. Caroline would be joyous, muted witness to her mother's joining and Kate's continued beautiful burgeoning.

"Will you meet me when it's over?" Easier to endure the night if Diana waits on the other side, idling in her bed offering sweet oblivion. Caroline would toast the nuptials, then abscond with her lust as soon as polite. Reception revelers none the wiser.

"Are you hungry? Should we go out for Italian? I know a place. The rigatoni pajata - it's like you're in Rome. It will make you sweat and scowl."

"Are you changing the subject?" This time Caroline moves. Creating space. Hands to olive shoulders. Kisses to follow between the blades. With her eyes, nose, then tip of her tongue she traces the multiple salty tableaus that orbit the nucleus and coalesce to form the tattooed stag.

"Yes I am. You can carry the weight of your love for Kate alone. And I – "

"You need a smoke."

"Two."

Everything between them, nothing between them. 'Love with the window open.'

Though, Caroline is less ravenous. Her thirst slaking. In Kate's absence – from Caroline's life, not her mind - Diana is bleeding her fury and swallowing whole her hunger. As Caroline loves and lusts it alters that around her, her reality, just as it alters her. But is she bound to Kate? Are her alterations felt instantly across the distance?

Outside the bedroom window chimes ring and memory juts random and ragged as a hidden variable.

A tempest.

Caroline has craved this combination before. May to September - almost.

More like Sartre and DeBeauvoir. More – seductive.

She is under Diana, now. Is she over Kate?

Moving swiftly toward the conclusion of their three fates, time would tell. Would it run classically, absent free will? Or would it run with the quantum, multiple and subject to chance and change?