She was angry this time.  Angrier than she had ever been before.  This was too much, this was it and this was the end.  She clenched her fist as the fire bubbled up through her,  her mind succumbed to the swirling darkness in her stomach.

“This has to stop.  You can’t keep doing this.”

Rederent sat up on the couch and looked at Domoria in silence.  He knew his chances of talking his way out of this one were impossibly slim.  His legs were barely over the edge of the couch before the enraged Domoria was standing over him.  Her hands were on her hips and a snarl was embalzoned on face counterpointed by deep blue eyes, wet with deeper trouble.  Rederent raised his hands defensively, though he knew that Domoria would not try to hit him.

“They turned me down again.  What am I supposed to do?  Nobody wants my book.”

She had heard this too many times already.  She had stood in this exact same spot listening to the exact same words so many times it was starting to wear a pattern in her mind.  She shouldn’t have to get used to this weakness.  She lifted a hand from her hip to her face and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“You are supposed to get out there and try again Rederent.  You are supposed to put your god damn self out there and keep trying until you get what you want.”

Rederent sat back into the soft couch and stared up at the ceiling.

“It’s not that simple Domoria.  It’s just not working for me.  Maybe I was wrong, maybe I was never meant to be a writer.”

Rederent gripped the smooth leather, avoiding Domorias eyes.

“Then do something else.  You don’t know how much I hate seeing you like this.  This is not the us that I want Rederent.  This is not the life I want, do you understand what I’m saying.”

Rederent was still gazing at the blank ceiling.  Not willing to face Domoria head on.  Domoria raised her voice as she repeated herself.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Rederent felt sick inside.  Another fresh wound from rejection still festered in his side, cutting through him like a sliver burst from an errant star.  It seemed like nothing could ease his agony, or draw his mind from his smoldering side.  The incensed Domoria towered above him on the brink of cataclysm and he lacked any way to appease her, any way to cure her of her unhappiness.

“I understand Domoria.  But you have to understand this, despite what I just said, I can’t stop trying to be a writer.  It’s an overwhelming compulsion, but it’s also all I have that gives me purpose.”

“And what about me?  What about us?”

Rederent felt a tear well up in his eye as he lowered his gaze onto the stricken vessel of the divine before him.  Domoria pouted her lips as she turned, moving away from Rederent.  Her expression took on a solid edge as she closed her eyes, the side profile of her soft features became a blade.  She wanted the cure that Rederent had provided before, she wanted to be free of her anger.  But she had asked a dangerous question and Rederent felt that compulsion again.  He felt the truth boil inside of him, and though he knew how Domoria would interpret it, could not hold it back.

“There is no us, Domoria.  There is no us if I’m not the man I was supposed to be.  If I’m not who I want to be how can this ever work, how can anything work for me.”

Domoria’s eyes were glistening now.  His answer had not been what she had expected, not what she had wanted the answer to be.  She bit her lower lip and blinked her eyes purposefully.  A blackness came into bloom inside her, drawing all feeling away into some unreachable singularity.  There was only one way this could end.

“Do you not think I am more important than getting the attention of some stupid publisher.  Don’t you think I, who have been by your side all this time.  I’m important.”

It was killing Rederent to see her like this.  An angel being dragged through dirt before him, on account of his own weakness.  All the joy they had experienced together, he thought with growing anguish, was now being unravelled.

“You are so important to me Domoria.  But I don’t feel.  I don’t feel I can offer you what you need.  I don’t feel whole Domoria.  Each time I am knocked back by the publishers the more I need to be published, each time they take something from me that I can’t get from anyone except for them.  There is no turning back for me now.”

Domoria furrowed her brow as she vainly attempted to reconcile the forces inside her.  A sky line of colours which had swam through for so long, so powerfuly, now devoured by the creeping dark.  Hopeless.

“So is that it?  Is this the end?”

Rederent stood up and held Domoria to him.

“I can’t keep fighting your anger back Domoria.  You have to accept it, this is how it is.”

“I’ll never understand how you do this to yourself.”

Domoria stepped back from Rederent.  This was the end, she thought, this had to be the end.  She turned away from defiantly and, snatching her coat from it’s hook, left the apartment.

Outside a cool breeze made Domoria uncomfortably aware of the tears that had streaked down her face.  She sniffed her nose unhappy and buried herself in her coat.

This was it.  No answers, just this.  She began walking away from Rederents apartment, fighting the urge to turn back.  There had to be more out there.  She looked down the street aead of her, it was a gray evening.  The only movement in the estate came from a cold, lingering breeze making its way through the flailing bare limbs of the trees.

She had been so excited for Rederent.  He had completed his first novel only six months ago after two years of hard work.  She had been so happy to witness his satisfaction, his success.  But now all that had given way to his new obsession with something he couldn’t control.  Rederent was being stupid, allowing it to destroy his life.

She stopped walking and blinked her eyes.  There was one last thing she could try.

Rederent was lying face down on the couch, still inert.  Domoria walked by him, ignoring his puppy dog eyes as she sat at his writing desk and turned on his laptop.

Rederent grimmaced, and grunted as he turned on the couch to face Domoria.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to write a book.”

Rederent gave a weary smile.

“You?   Write a book?”

Domoria turned gave Rederent a loving look.  The cold had done what Rederent couldn’t, she was calm again now.

“Yes.”

She opened a word processing programme and started typing.  She wrote about a sheep called David, she didn’t know why.

“What are you writing about?”

Rederent raised his head slightly from his place on the couch but Domoria did not turn to him but kept typing.

“A sheep called Dave.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he won the nobel prize for literature and now he’s turning his hand to cellular biology.  Reckons he can cure this virus that’s threathening to wipe out the remaining arctic leopards.”

She was writing it all down.  Smiling to herself as she did.

“That actualy sounds kind of interesting.”

She kept typing as she answered.

“Oh, it is.  And just wait until you read at what lengths his rivals will go to to stop him.  This is one blockbuster that hollywood will be over like a rash.”

Rederent was  now over her shoulder looking at the screen.

“Are you serious about this?”

“Oh yes.  I’m going to show you how it’s done.”

“I wouldn’t have written the introduction like that.”

Domoria smiled, she had never written before but was finding that she actualy enjoyed it.  Rederent pulled up a chair beside her.

“Well, how would you have written it?”

“Can I?”

Rederent pulled his chair closer to Domoria and began typing.  Domoria smiled, kissing him on the cheek.