Dorset Coast –

The dawn saw Frederick Abberline come and go with sleep, consistently. He tried to stay awake at any cost, to be there when Ella returned. But as the blues and violets of early morning rolled across the coast, so too did his exhaustion prove itself. He eventually took to sitting at the small kitchen table, and then to relaxing into the embrace of the chair beneath him.

Somewhere along the way, his eyes closed and he drifted off -

Where he landed was a good place. It was that same English coast in autumn, with leaves tumbling down the beach and a breeze so strong that it blew his clothes in all different directions. He was strolling along the path headed to shore, with the season's last daisy twisting back and forth between his thumb and index finger.

He was smiling, alive and happy. Then he heard her voice above the crash of the waves, and he was at last, content.

"Come here and kiss me, Frederick!"

She was dancing between seashells in the rolling surf, kicking up sand under the hem of her white chemise with her arms spread as wide as the horizon would allow. The sunset oranges and yellows cascaded down her porcelain arms and back, where her thick brown curls laid in a braided twist off her neck. Ella was laughing and calling his name and as innocent as he'd ever seen her before.

Ever.

So he walked a little faster and grinned a little wider on his way down the cliff for the beach. And when he landed barefoot in the breaking waves at her side, he wrapped his arm firmly about her waist, pulled her graceful body hard against his and smothered her with his mouth. He didn't need any more incentive than the smile he felt on her lips when their tongues fought for control.

He was whole, for once in his entire life, unbendable, untouchable. This was something Eloise Mae Rousseau had accomplished, after too many years of his self-loathing misery. She had him, however she wanted him, whenever and wherever. All she had to say to capture him was—

"I love you."

Her words, mumbled breathlessly on his lips were too wonderful to fathom. Frederick moved back slowly, but did not loosen his grip on her body. He held her safely there, against the rush of the ocean and the brewing winds of a harvest moon. He looked down upon her face and the expression it contained, of proper earnestness and elation and worship.

"I love you, dearest Frederick."

Her fingertips brushed over the lips he could not think straight enough to use. She rested her head on his shoulder, locked to the crook of his neck, where she left kisses hidden in his unruly sideburns and the locks of hair that twirled about his ear. Ella sedated his every nerve and reawakened his every last emotion.

The only thing she didn't do was spare him from his own unsuspecting destruction. For where she could not see, to know that he saw, Frederick's eyes were fixed down upon the slope of Ella's neck, where her hair had been pulled to the opposite side and left that nearest to his lips, exposed. It smelled sweeter than anything he had known before. Underneath his hand's caress, it was softer, more susceptible to harm and passion too, given the right avenue.

He tucked his face down against her neck and kissed, deeply. She shivered around him and moaned into his ear.

Then, as he growled 'I love you too' into her fresh pores, Frederick felt something very different than desire overwhelm him. The bones in his body began to react to the touch of his mouth on Ella's skin. The flesh covering his tensing muscles went rigid and sleek with need. His senses were wild and famished.

He bit into his perfect flower, his daisy, and she cried with lust...

The next sound he heard above her whimpering pleasure in his ear, was the sound of his chair tumbling backwards from the table and striking the floor. He went with the force of his own fear, pushing himself from sleep, from that dream tangled with nightmares. He landed in a crumpled mess, sweating with what he assumed was horror, as his eyes shifted nervously around the kitchen floor.

The cottage was faint with light, although dawn was rising somewhere behind the rainclouds. Everything was painted in gray and silver shadows, teasing him with imminent danger. From where he sat looking up at the room around him, he called out Ella's name, hoping for some restoration in her locality. But she did not answer, and he needed no more of a sign than that. Because Abberline too often took everything in his mind as a sign of evil forces looming in the woodwork of his life, he was off the floor, and out the door and running up the hill towards town without a second thought.