Arris lays above me, subsuming my eye line like burnt caramel spooled into the red sea. ‘if I stick out my tongue,’ she says, ‘I can taste the electricity between your atoms. It’s like irradiated snowflakes.’ As I shiver and shake, something deep beneath the lizard brain wakes, extending tendrils through neuron and nerve ending, subdermal first but rending tissue so quickly, burning through me, yearning to be free. I submit and let its rough light permeate my pores and core, a bodily blitzkrieg that finds me fuller, occupied rather than conquered, activating cellular citizenry now primed with purpose.