Patterns.

Cassiopeia. Means she, whose words excel.

The girl’s name is Kate, short for Katherine. Name of a greek origin as well, deriving from Hekaterine, Hecate, or hekateros, which...

She moans his name (Sheldon, valley with steep steps, Old English), and he runs his hands down her back, brushing the birthmark shaped like Cassiopeia (two stars visible to the naked eye). He trails kisses down her neck, her collarbone (clavicula, articulating with acromion of the scapula, fragile, so fragile, and so delicate and so lovely...).

He discovered the birthmark before the dinner, taking her coat off, first contact of his fingertips against her skin. It’s a game, in a way, amour courtois, but instead of jousting and composing poems he told her stories from work (the ones he can tell, anyway, the ones appropriate for a dinner conversation), and followed it with the Cassiopeia myth.

She laughed, and her eyes widened in fascination, and she played with a lock of her hair, emerald ring glistening on her finger (mineral beryl, birthstone for the month of May, Taurus, Cancer and Gemini. Means it fits them both.)

(The ring leaves a pattern on his shoulder when she holds onto him as he pushes her skirt up.)

Hundred of thoughts appear to him in response to what she says, how she moves, feels, smells, tastes (pattern recognition, seemingly random, guided by intrinsic logic). He chooses to share some of them, picking at the pieces like it’s a puzzle.

It is. And the complete picture is... completion.