"Yet you came anyway," I replied, moving toward him across the marble floor. "Something drew you back."
Color flooded his cheeks, a blush like dawn breaking across alabaster. "I couldn't stay away. I tried, but..."
I touched his face, tracing the elegant architecture of his cheekbone. His skin burned beneath my fingers, fevered and alive. "You don't need to explain. I expected you."
The truth I didn't speak: I'd been listening for his return, waiting with an eagerness that surprised me. The space between us hummed with potential, like pigments awaiting the brush.
"Come," I said, taking his hand. His pulse fluttered against my thumb, a rhythm both fragile and insistent. "I was about to prepare dinner."
In the kitchen, I continued the meal I'd begun earlier. The roasted goat's head had blackened beautifully, its skin tightening over the skull beneath, eye sockets hollow but commanding. I moved through the familiar dance of cooking, each gesture flowing into the next.
Micah’s gaze kept returning to the hallway and the heavy wooden door I’d just come through. He hadn't noticed it during previous visits, but tonight his eyes tracked to it repeatedly.
"I tried to focus on coursework after I left," he admitted, fingers worrying the moth's velvet wings. "But everything seems hollow now. Meaningless."
"That's the curse of seeing deeper beauty," I told him, placing the platter between us. The goat's skull faced Micah. He stared at it, transfixed.
"Have you ever eaten goat?" I asked.
Micah shook his head.
"The head is considered a delicacy in certain cultures. It’s traditionally eaten with the fingers. The cheek contains the most delicate flesh," I explained, peeling off a perfect morsel and offering it to him. "What others discard often contains the greatest treasures."
His hand trembled slightly as he accepted my offering. He placed it on his tongue, hesitating at the threshold of taboo. Then his eyes fluttered closed, and he let out a pleasured sigh.
"In many cultures," I continued, gesturing toward the head's intact features, "different parts hold symbolic meaning. The eyes are said to grant visions. The horns and hooves restore virility. Some even believe that eating the brain imparts forbidden knowledge."
“People believe a lot of strange things,” Micah said before eating another bite. “That doesn’t make them true.”
I watched him chew, studying how his jaw worked against the tough meat. The skepticism in his voice didn't match the hungerin his eyes as he tore another piece from the skull. His fingers glistened with fat, smears of it marking his lips like ritual paint.
"Truth and belief occupy the same territory in art," I replied, using my knife to separate a morsel near the eye socket. "What matters isn't objective reality but the power of conviction."
I offered the piece to him directly. After a moment's hesitation, he leaned forward and took it from my fingers with his mouth. His lips brushed against my skin, tongue darting out to catch the juices.
"Many great artists sacrificed for their work," I said as we continued our meal. "Van Gogh surrendered his ear to capture the ecstasy of starlight. Michelangelo's hands twisted into permanent claws from coaxing divinity from marble. True creation demands a blood tribute."
His eyes caught the light, their darkness pooling like rich oil paint on canvas. "Do you think suffering is necessary for true art?"
"Not suffering," I corrected, leaning toward him. "Sacrifice. The willingness to give parts of oneself, literally, to creation. That separates visionaries from mere craftsmen."
"What have you sacrificed?" Micah asked, his question direct, unavoidable. "What parts of yourself have you given?"
The question caught me unprepared. Not because I had no answer, but because so few had ever thought to ask. I set down my knife and studied him, considering what to reveal.
"My first artwork using human material," I said finally, "contained a part of me."
His eyes widened. "What do you mean?"
"When I was nineteen, doctors removed a dermoid cyst from my lower back," I explained, my voice measured. "A growth containing teeth, hair, even partially formed bone. Most people would have been disgusted, but I was fascinated. I convinced the surgeon to let me keep it."
Micah leaned forward, captivated. "And you used it in your art?"
"It became my first true masterpiece. I preserved it, incorporating it into a triptych exploring the boundaries between self and other. That was when I understood the profound truth. Conventional materials could never capture what organic matter contains. The memory of life itself."
"You started with yourself," he said softly.
"I would never ask of others what I haven't first demanded of myself." I touched the small of my back briefly. "There are other sacrifices too, less visible but no less significant. My place in conventional society. Connection with those who cannot understand our vision. The comfort of moral simplicity."
