This would never have started if you hadn't stripped naked at the pub.” I'm listening. One impertinent finger lifts my chin so we have eye contact. ...��In future, don't ever shout at me. I hate shouting.”“You wouldn't listen/”And you silence me with a kiss. A searing, heated, nasty-hot, grazing kiss that makes me want to clutch you and devour your head. Your five o'clock shadow burns me. You lash my softness with the intensity of your viper-tongue. It's the same tool that less than two hours ago. The smell of smoke was in the air, but it seemed that it was from the heating fires of domiciles using plentiful wood from the endless forests.I noticed that the settled areas had paid special attention to removing the unwanted brush from the areas around a structured building. I thought that to be most beneficial to preventing danger from wind-driven wild fires started by spontaneous combustion in a random act of God.The city in the distance appeared to be laid out in an orderly fashion and it. I was tired of dealing with people, who couldn't find it in themselves to tell the simple truth. Hell, deep down I knew that they had not even told themselves the truth. When it came right down to it, they wanted their brother to disappear, before he brought chaos to their well ordered lives. As a machine I could appreciate their need for order. I would not have a hard time admitting that I would happily scrap any other machine, which threatened the order of things.My god, I thought as I stood. The world stands still, held by a bright moon crescent. The smile of a massive Moor in the sky over you. The man is ancient, with skin of black, hard-boiled leather softened by an immaculate djellaba. He wears the face of an old titan, who has seen wars big and small, who has lost things and felt the times go by. Scarred, sculpted by nature and men.How beautiful was he once, in the embrace of a princess entranced. When the sun would rise, she was to belong to another. But this one night was.