The heat came in the third spring.
I had noted the antler regrowth. The velvet phase. The filing that lasted longer than any schedule could justify. I did not expect what occurred after the velvet hardened.
The first sign was the eyes.
Not brighter.
Hotter.
The distinction is visible: brightness is the rubies catching external light, the crystalline structure doing what crystalline structures do.
Heat is the rubies producing their own light.
Not reflected.
Generated.
The irises glowed in the dim cellar with a luminosity that had no external origin. The color of banked coals. The orange at the iron’s core that means ready.
The second sign was the scent.
She has always carried a musk. Warm. Specific. Filed under ambient by the second month.
The heat-scent was not ambient.
The heat-scent was assertive.
A thickening. A sweetening. A low note becoming a chord. The scent climbed the cellar stairs. It seeped through the floorboards. It entered the rectory. The study. The church.
Into the confessional.
