"You have been holding that position too long," said Titanomachia, undoing ropes one by one. "Get on the table. I need to fix you."

It's too much to move cleanly; she moves you cleanly. Shirt off, face down, back upon the slab - more work to be done. This time without tools - only warm hands to knead your aching muscles, methodically and firmly gripping neck and shoulders. Each touch is a shock against cold sweat, fingers trying to reach through your skin and force your blood to circulate according to her design. Something about the rhythm of it matches with the pounding of hooves - there's a pattern here too...

She pulls you up into a sitting position, still behind you. Takes your hands, closes them around a water bottle, raises it to your mouth. Sits behind you for a beat. Pulls it from your lips. Waits a beat. Lets you/makes you take another sip. Slowly, carefully, arms around you, she makes sure that you move at exactly the speed your body is currently capable of.

Then she takes the bottle again. Pushes you back down, takes your legs and bends them back into a stretching position. "Hold," she says. Then she gets off, walks over to the kitchen, and turns on the stove. Vegetables are laid out already. She starts chopping an onion, then pauses halfway through with the precision of a mental timer. Walks back over to you and rearranges your position, physically lifting and arranging you into a new posture before immediately returning to her cooking. And on it goes; never instructing verbally when she can physically force you into a new position with her hands. And it feels...

Like a [i]relief[/i]. After all the pressure on your ears, the silence and soft sound of sizzling vegetables and boiling water, the kinaesthetic motion of hand and muscle, being treated like wet clay to be sculpted - it deeply centering after the voyage into unreality.