Head off the desk again he lit across her eyes – her face - which was a grievous error.

Beauty - you could get used to.

It was a sad fact of human nature, perhaps, that you did. You inevitably did. And always more quickly; in fact almost instantly. He knew queens. He also had known queens: these thoughts, but not merely, to make him feel human again.

But beauty that was that; just that; just beauty; he wasn't even talking about youth: that was nothing.

Beauty.

Even beauty... you got used to it. It couldn't touch you, finally - it certainly couldn't wound.

That was, of course, in the instance - not in this instance - when that non-abstract beauty was... but not even in terms of age, your eyes, maybe even other parts, consumed it.

But a combination Cyclops was a supernatural reality, and so therefore this combination whose face confronted him... therefore her beauty - obviously was... therefore... exactly... exactly...

Supernatural:

Untethered to any kind of human reality. Any kind of material. It could never, certainly not by age; by eyes, be consumed. And that was why... 24 hours a day for the rest of your life; glaring in it. Like the monks of Antac; forcing you into this thing/situations, a kind of cure, anything you hated/feared... on Theust they called it aversion therapy, but that was a society in which poetry, it wasn't even illegal, it was impossible - it was also illegal... those monks got you used to anything you hated/feared, so that you didn't. It was a cure. To anything.

He laughed. He laughed out loud. The cynical laugh of a broken man. He laughed.

- Try that with Clua-Sryh's face.

“Relax. It's your humours. Rather a lot of fluids were drained; your material being; it's not just a case of the normal processes of intercourse between beings.

“Be happy; you're not dead; and your inflated sense of your talent - it's central importance and in fact its relationship with Total Human Reality. Don't worry.” she was mocking him, cruelly, “Has actually been confirmed here. That talent.” He couldn't look at her. “Break your fast - that means eat breakfast on Shensh; have a couple caff leaves; you'll be fine – and do not, Pheel, inflict the end of humanity on the rest of us.”

“- But you are?”

“Certainly I am.”

“You now this, because, of course, you are a supernatural entity?”

“A woman is a supernatural entity.”

“Your jokes don't make me laugh.”