Fyodor had taken to tracking the time–composed, unshaking, barely anticipating at all–between your frequent visits. Moonlight dripped like pearls over his gaunt, handsome face, his pale hands; the hiss of a boiling kettle filled the office instead of his usual classical record.

A soft exhale left his lips as he pinched the top of his vialled cyanide. Perhaps this was all his fault. He understood that his own ambition was what led him to develop a tender, ragged obsession with you and your haloed grace. Indeed, the first time the Demon Dostoevsky found himself at a loss for words in your presence, he had sworn to cauterize the tumor that bore your name.

Yet every time he dared to cast his thoughts over your soft, benevolent smile, he could not bring himself to raise the knife. Because the first time you had spread your wings for him, everything wicked in his mind melted away like fresh snow. You were his light: he could not stop himself from getting close. Closer. And then closer still, asphyxiating, pitiful, just like a moth to flame, burning his flesh on your laughter– engendering something he thought was once impossible for a man like himself.

Fyodor’s slim fingers shook; one by one fragrant almond dewdrops ran–wretched, sensual, evoking the drag of his hands and yours–over the rim of the teacup he had prepared. How weak he was. How shamefully human he was, watching sheer filigrees of steam dance as he baptized his poison in sickly sweet lavender.

The white powder dissolved. He would never hear your voice again, yet you were right there. Silhouetted by the slant of midnight effulgence– his apricity. His angel.

For the first time in his life, Fyodor hesitated.

Then raised the china to his lips.

“Zvezda moya. You have arrived.” His vision blurred. He caught himself on the edge of his desk, and your incandescence shone brighter than ever.

A trickle of tea stained the corner of his lips, glistening dark tangent to the pulse of his monitors. Scythelike, quick– a slant of a smile curved Fyodor’s bloodless lips, voice rasping gently amidst the last cries of his kettle.

“You have brought me… great joy, dearest one. So much so that I have realized– even after all these lifetimes, trying to quell my humanity was a futile endeavor.”

The air pressed thick onto him, lavender and almonds binding cottony incoherency into the crevices of his skeleton.

“Then, tell me, angel: is salvation truly attainable for a soul such as I?”