The Rhymer’s Queen

Though later than I thought it would appear, here the story begins (finally). However, I feel I should warn you in advance that I am a compulsive reviser (which you regular readers have probably already figured out). And since I’m basically writing this story as I go (which I don’t usually do) there may be more revision compulsion than usual happening in this case.

In other words, elements of this story may change and shift while you’re not looking - all properly fae-like. Or, to put it another way, objects in mirror may appear closer than they are… or different than they were, or completely unrecognizable compared to what you thought you remembered they might become… or something totally disorienting like that. 

That said, let’s begin.

. . .

Part One: Thomas’s Leavetaking

From the edges of Thomas’s afternoon dream by the river, she speaks as she sings:

My times are many and my voices are sweet and long in your ear. So long have you waited for me, for only me. Hear me singing the river’s length to life, weaving it into your world, in all its tones. I will wash you in that river and suck the water from your skin, the life from your root, only to give it back again. Feel me in the dancing drum of your heart, the spaces between beats where the fear lives, the terror of waiting for the dance to stop. I am there, in that hardening anger, that ache of living. This is where I will rise you from. And deliver you to, dying. And forgive of you, forever. Sleep no more, wake no more, my Thomas. Come and go with me… my Thomas sweet… come, for a kiss complete… come, and go away with me… never again to see…

And from his dream of colors fading, a voice unweaving, its golden threads falling through still water, he awoke.

The sound of hooves. A horse, along the soft river trail? Who would it be, on his land, on horseback, near the river? He sat up from the green bank on which he had been napping. And then he saw her. Or, as one should more properly say: She made herself seen.

To Thomas’s eyes, she was merely light at first; the bright burst of radiant gold that one can only glance toward and sharply away from in fits and starts. Looking dreamladen into that sunset, to his ears came a faint sound of bells.

At first, he heard merely a soft jingling in time with the horse’s hoof falls. As he struggled to listen closer, it became almost a woman’s voice, unintelligible, then suddenly a sickening black roaring in his head and…  she appeared, too fast, before him.

The scent of apple blossoms and new mown grass. A faintness first of vanilla, then amber. Deeper more secret scents, too, befell him, scents which brought a hardening stir, a memory of a want he thought long ago extinguished.

He thought of his wife waiting, making a supper of fresh caught salmon and dark greens. A vague memory of the first girl he had made love to came to him, her long black hair brushing over his chest as she rose from him, his seed still new and swimming hungry within her.

He held out his hand in both greeting and warning to this woman perched above him. “Hello” (he’d meant to say). Instead, as he scrambled to his feet, he called out much too loudly, “Who are you?”

“I am not who you may think I am,” she said from the sky above her horse, “but I am who you wish me to be.” Her voice, a mixture of a jilted lover’s dangerous hatred and a mother’s infinite kindness drifted down to him in small bits, as if sound by sound, the sounds only later making themselves languidly into words, a sentence, meaning.

He took a step back. “This is my land.”

Her horse shifted and the bells tinkled. “In your world, yes.”

He remembered his grandfather’s stories about The Lady of the River’s Bend:

She rides a white horse… her hair of honey gold…

Thomas could hear her breathing, though he was several feet from her. He thought he saw the faint blue color of her breath – like winter breaths emerging and dying, disappearing in cold air. But it was the crest of summer and the air was warm, warm enough to carry her scent to him; fresh ripe fruit now, and green barley grass.

…and when she speaks, the sky opens and a horrible kindness pours down like sun and living rain upon your skin…

Thomas shook his head and wiped his open palms against his thighs. “I’m sorry, but this is my land, private land, and I do not appreciate riders on this trail. Besides, "he added with more apology than he felt, "it’s quite mucky here, your horse could take an injury.”

In answer, she dismounted, weightless as single errant feather falling from a bird in flight. Her dress, an impossible color of wind, flowed around her in an almost sentient drape the likes of which he’d never seen.

Thomas heard the river cascade over the rocks behind them. He heard geese calling though it was late Spring. The warm southern breeze suddenly turned and rose from an ungentle direction and, for the first time ever in his life, Thomas was afraid, fearful of the lay of his own land.

She stepped before him. “Thomas, Thomas, I am not those things you fear.” A tall woman, she stood eye to amber eye with him. In her gaze, just for just a moment, he saw horrible things, familiar things, ancient things. And then they were gone.

He wanted her, right there. He wanted to open her dress, fall on her, lose himself between her legs. He wanted to destroy what he saw in her eyes. He wanted to make her gasp and cry out his name. He wanted to take her… or perhaps to be, mercifully, himself taken…

“Thomas, I come only in this time, in this place.” She reached out to him, to touch his cheek. “I come to ask of you a gift.” Her long fingers brushed over his lips. “And to offer you a favor in return.”

Her voice was like mead wine, going down into him first sharp, then unbearably sweet and heavy. The sound of her loosened all that he had held taut during this day, during the days of all his life. His head began to spin with the relief of it all.

In the distance, his children’s laughter drifted away on currents of air, of river. He heard his wife’s faint voice calling him in for supper. His wife…

He closed his eyes to this strange woman before him, to the too bright sun burning behind her. He tried to remember where he was. He tried to turn away from the question he feared was coming.

…and she will ask of you a simple bond, a fealty fated.  And you will forsake all you know, and gladly, for the sweet sweet yes of it.

“Kiss me, Thomas,” she breathed, her face too quickly close to his, her breath mingling with his, her voice a thousand sudden shades of dark all at once, “kiss me just one sweet kiss.”

And without a thought, and yet, with all his thoughts together, he kissed her. Long and deep, he searched her, took his pleasure of her, found worlds and lifetimes in her. And when he withdrew, he saw his own pleasure in her flushed face, her eyes a brighter color.

She sighed a long sweet sigh and sang his name with a secret sound hummed under the word as only the truest lover is able, “Thomas…”

And the smile she gave him then was one that spoke a truth that both intoxicated and terrified him. He had kissed her alive.

She drew on her gloves and slowly shook back her long honey hair. “Thomas, you will come with me now," her voice again of many shades, but not at all light. "You will ride with me to a place where you may serve me as I bid…”

Thomas was in a spell, he knew. And this… thing before him, he knew, was a fae thing, a woman but not.

She continued, "… and serve others as I bid. For, sealed of that kiss…"

His mind tilted. Her name…what was her name… in the old story… if only he knew her name, he could rend her weaving…

But all he could see was her smile, her full mouth forming words he was unable to stop, “… you have given of your life seven years to me.”

He shook his head violently and tried to spit out the sword of sound that was caught in his chest. But the No! he longed to shout was already swallowed, kissed away forever. The will of her voice was stronger now than any word he would ever be able to conjure. 

She waited with him while he struggled, while he searched his memory, his sanity. She waited, devoid of amusement, with unnatural stillness until he found his voice, until it came labored and difficult: “Lady, I fear you are the one I cannot bear,” he whispered, “the one who comes for me at the end.”

To her understanding smile, he begged, “Am I dying?”

“Ah, no, I am not that One, Thomas.” So gently she spoke, with a knowing of long abiding sorrows it seemed. “Not yet that One.”

With that, she took his hand and suddenly they were astride her horse. His arms went about her like they had always been there, and his face buried itself in her hair.

His wife’s voice gone. His children’s smiles, all gone. His afternoon rest along the safe bank of his own river, the river of his fathers, gone. Her hair, her apple-scented hair was the whole golden world, the only world before him now. Everything else, forgotten, forgiven, swept away.

She clicked her tongue and snapped the reins. They lurched forward and the river’s rushing tumble sang along with the harness bells. The sky around them clouded over with every blue and gray that could be painted.

…and when she takes you, ah, when she takes you… you will be seen no more. Nor will you have the need, any more, to see.

Thomas closed his eyes and like a man falling into a smiling drunkenness or a child with no reason to be wary, he lay his cheek against the soft fall of her hair. In his head, he saw lights, green and eerie and flashing like eyes within his own. But as they made their way into the falling twilight, he felt her breathing and warm inside the circle of his arms, he heard the sure steady hoof falls beneath him, the happy song of the bells weaving around them both, and all his fear was gone. All gone.

To be continued…

Image: unknown

Turning

Darkness darkness
hide my yearning
for the things I cannot see
keep my mind from constant turning
to the things I cannot be

I have a string of black jet beads strung on a blackened silk cord.

They were made for only me, and long ago, by the man who taught me how to breathe.

On a cold night, he strung them by firelight as he spoke to me of the slow turning darkness held in the round world of each flat black bead.

He hand-knotted them before my eyes, before my endurance, one by laborious one, as I watched, tightly bound inside the countless knots of his single long rope.

When he was finished, and I was undone, he held them up before me.

"A symbol," he said, "and more than a symbol, for what you have become, for me."

Seven times seven spheres hung from his finger, dangling, slowly turning.

Forty-nine worlds bound by forty-nine knots without a clasp: an Ouroboros of sorcery made of the absence of color.

No hint of the amber of a priestess disturbed the purity of the concentrate, none of her pearl or silver sheen, no sparkle of Inanna’s gold relieved the dark.

After their making, he washed the beads once, in a cold midnight gush of river, and by right of his name, drowned them again and again, a season at a time, in other less transparent currents.

When a year and a day appeared, he made a distillation of the beads.

To that elemental signature of ancient trees and moth-made bindings he added blackened herbs and ink, the gasp of breath in pain and other nameless substances that move between the subtle worlds at night

There was a time when I called it magic, that oily-wet working inside a wet blue vial, that long ago perished liquid.

But, it was not magic, or otherwise sympathetic.

As I have learned since, the elixir is never in the liquid.

It is in the making of a boundary that contains what can never be bound.

As I know now (free of sympathy as I have become), the charge of that collection of string and petrified wood is held inside their empty circle, a compass made complete long before ourselves.

And so it is that I come to this night - this Indian Summer twilight that requires no fire - to reach for the beads at the appointed time.

I empty them from their velvet bag - the one I sewed with an untouched needle, with gleanings of his rough rope for thread, with seams and symbols of the interlocked seasons and their winds.

Poured from their resting place, the black seeds in my hand wait, and I wait with them, for the crest of the Moon.

My mind entertains itself by wondering where he haunts now, away from me, in which dark wood he now feeds.

But that which is not my mind wonders not at all, and I hang the circle around my naked neck so I can feel the warming weight of the jet on my skin, so I can remember how his soul was placed on me, heavy and mute.

And after I dance alone for him once more in the dark, after I mark one more year dead for him, I lay down to sleep (but never to sleep) until the image comes.

As though far away, his fingers slip over the string, drawing it tighter against my throat, and tighter, bead by bead…

slowly, without voice, like he did back then…

like I wanted him to, back then.

My lips mumble memories of words, and all my voices (there are many) pray to what is always turning within this dream between us, even now.

All night the beads remain, wrapped and wrapping like a blackened vine, a creeping thing from that other decaying realm, that ancient knotted forest from which they were made - a place which is always close, but never enough.

And there the great snake rests, neither hungry nor sated, but only warming itself against my heated skin, my steady pulse.

In the morning, after the dance and the dream of hanging, after the remembrance of turning, I am made sure once again of what he wanted me to be but would never, in the end, allow me to truly become.

And yet…

even now, another year alive begins.

Quote: Darkness Darkness, by Jesse Colin Young

Friday Flasher: Initiation

He lit a candle, removed his collar and set it down with care, like the offering it was, before the sputtering flame.

When he finally found the courage to turn and face her, perhaps speak some words of decency to her first, he could only watch mutely as she leaned back and lifted her skirts, the creamy skin of her thighs smooth as any alabaster saint’s in that flickering light.

At the sight of her shimmering like that, a vision in the candlelight, Father Daniel murmured one last prayer for forgiveness and the God inside his mind sighed and turned away. Whether in disgust or anger, or perhaps shame or modesty, he would never know.  And it would never matter.

As she ran the fingers of a graceful hand through the silk of her chestnut hair, he felt his entire life of words and judgements of words coil back on itself, a ravenous circle made full.

But before he could consider that thought, before he could approach the assumptive evil of it with a weapon of learned philosophy or grim belief, she smiled at him.  Within the mirror of  her smile, he saw not a hissing wanton serpent or a temptress made of wretched flesh, but simply a reflection of his own need:  just a man, fallen, back to himself.

Then with neither modesty nor shame, she spread her naked legs open before his gaze. And when she reached out her hand to him, she said his name, just once, in the voice of a lover. He thrilled to the beautiful music of it, the sound of his own name, rightfully returned.

In the wake of her voice, all temptation disappeared, each prayer for deliverance fell away and he knew it was time to begin the long journey, the single step that would take him to where she waited, where she had always waited, for him.

And when he reached her, when at last he touched his shaking hand to the heaven of her skin, all his despot vows flew raucously to the rafters like so many frantic doves set free, finally, to God.

Image: Hungry For Your Touch, Jan Saudek

Friday Flasher: Stealing Soul

The camera sat on the dresser where Jon had left it. Beth carefully moved her arm from under his head and held her breath until he settled back into his dreams.

She rolled away from him, onto her back, to stare at the ceiling and consider the images now locked inside that camera… her most private faces, exposed, the longing inside her eyes that she had never seen.

She wondered at how her body would look as it arched and struggled at his command, how her wetness would glisten in black and white, how the light would play with the flexing muscles of her inner thighs when he demanded that she spread herself open for him.

She wondered if he would hold up his end of the bargain and give her copies of all the prints as he’d promised to. She wondered what it was about him that convinced her to do it.

She glanced at the clock then back at Jon and finally at the shadowy form that was the camera. Even in the dark, she could feel that lens still staring at her.

. . .

The next morning, after Beth had left, Jon mixed himself a gin and tonic and locked himself in his darkroom to develop the film. Memories of the night before made him catch his breath in anticipation.

Soon those scenes would begin to appear in his magic trays, but first, he took a long, slow swallow of his drink, savoring the wait. He loved this part almost more than he loved convincing women to do things like this. But Beth, he never thought he’d ever get her to do it. As soon as he clicked the camera door open, his cock began to harden.

Under his careful attention, one by one, each frame began its grainy reveal. He could see each scene in his memory’s eye, even before it appeared: her beautiful ass spread just for him, the way she looked away from the camera at the last moment, her creamy skin in that perfect light, her graceful fingers opening herself for him…

But instead of all those pieces of her he thought he had captured forever, he saw something else entirely, something even his own expert eye could not have imagined though any lens: twenty-four perfectly framed squares of himself, sleeping, in ghostly clouds of long-exposure blank and white.

Friday Flasher: In five acts

If you are longing, stop.

If you are sorrowing, stop.

If you are regretting, stop.

If you are lost, stop.

Touch yourself.

Image: Unknown

Friday Flasher: Lick

I watch while, with each long lick, his closed eyes flutter and his long lashes become wet with thankful tears.

I watch while the taut muscles of his neck struggle to reach, how he opens his mouth and uses his shoulders to push himself toward his own taking of this sacrament.

I watch the innocent cock that hangs down beneath his bound and kneeling form become achingly full with its need to release, its trembling longing to be of use.

I watch in rapt adoration while the dirt of the street that he takes into his mouth, onto his tongue, transforms before my eyes into something so clean, so holy that only a man such as mine could be worthy of it.

I watch while, in his servitude, he becomes not humiliated or unmanned, but set free, lifted far beyond the gritty filth of this man’s world he so lovingly cleans from my shoes.

Image: Morguefile

Until October’s wane

I’ve long had an obsession with the tale of True Thomas and the Fairy Queen, elements of which are also found in stories such as Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin.

This story, in whatever form it’s told, contains a whole collection of worlds for me. It’s one of those proto-stories that has informed my entire life, captured me in the way that some stories can. And as such, it will not let me be until I claim it… or let it claim me. When it comes to stories such as these, one can never be quite sure which is which.

For a long time, I’ve been working in fits and starts on writing my own version of this story. Or perhaps this story, in fits and starts, has been working on living a version of me. Again, one can never be quite sure. Either way, my efforts have always ended up leading me down wandering pathways, none of which have brought me to a tale I could actually form with words.

But, this Fall, seven years will have come and gone since I first put a tentative draft to paper. And now, my time of meandering mutely through the strange halls of this story is over. It’s time for me to finally pay my tithe to this tale. And methinks a dark night in late October might just be the perfect time to make the offering.

So, for those of you who think you might enjoy a scary erotic tale of other selves who live in worlds which spiral around and through this one, well… it’s coming. But you must wait until the veil thins a bit more.

However, because I’m not a completely cruel tease, I offer this little mood-setter of a song to tuck away in your mind for now. And if you’re a real glutton for spooky-ish fae sorts of things, you’ll take my advice to listen to it at night, with eyes closed, inside the privacy of a good set of headphones.

But when you do, know that you won’t be alone.

Thomas, The Fairy Queen and I… we’ll all be there with you… foreshadows of voices you already know, moving through the dark forest of sounds in your head.

Until October’s wane then, my pretties…

Song: Tam Lin by The Mediaeval Baebes
Image: Out of the Dark by Mosredna at Deviant Art

Don’t leave me here

Did you paint your smile on, well I said I knew
That my reason for living was for loving you*

.

He rose from the bed like a man going to war, or to a life of unending peace – resigned, afraid. He intended to walk away, from her, from that town and all those people who needed him to be… something.

But he had just filled her with more love than he thought he possessed. He had just surrendered to her the promise of everything he was. The only thing she ever asked of him, he had given.

A sigh later, he found himself hunched in the chair next to the bed, turned away from the sight of her, of the holy thing he had made of her. With his face in his hands, he waited for the courage to leave. But instead, a cool breeze from the river disturbed the curtains; a bird outside the window called.

He rubbed his eyes and blinked and there, suspended before him within the frame of the mirror above the dresser, was her sleeping form, like a painting, arranged within an artful drape of linen and silk and chestnut hair; a vision, a floating world.

All thoughts of leaving gone, he couldn’t help but linger in a kind of detached amazement to watch her breathing there, safely curled inside his scent, in that bed, that room that had become his confessional, his sanctuary.

But, when he looked to the reflection of her face, searching for the smile of contentment he longed to see there, he saw only a blur of sunwashed light in the glass. Her lashes, the curve of her ear, the generousness of her mouth, all obscured, but brightly.

And in that terrible light, he suddenly understood that there would never come a moment in which to tell her that he could not be of use to her in this life. Not in this life. She had asked too much. And he had missed his chance to refuse the giving of it.

There was nothing else to do but walk away. But there came a great paralyzing beauty into that room just then, a beauty that struck at his heart and tore at his dream of her. The light on her face had come to its zenith, making her into something else; something ascendant, something already gone.

It was too late for him not to see the truth of what had passed between them, so he did what all receivers of visions do - he closed his eyes.

And, in that temporary reprieve of darkness, he indulged himself, comforted himself, by imagining her lying there alone in the cold mirror, a sleeping beauty, dreaming of his voice singing to her, “don’t leave me here… don’t leave me here all alone… tangled in the vines… lost in the light…”

From the far away country of her sleep, behind the light in the mirror, she smiled. But, in the way of dreams, in a glance it was gone.

With a sigh of resignation, a renewal of purpose, he finished the song in his mind and opened his eyes. He rose to dress silently to the rhythm of her soft breathing. His own clothes felt unfamiliar and, from somewhere far inside his mind, he suspected the ghosts were already gathering in the hollow of his chest. But still, he fastened the buttons slowly and carefully.

Then, without daring to glance her way lest he be lost again, he crossed the room and closed the door quietly behind him, leaving her there to dream forever of the left-over light of him; the memory of his voice.

Only later, after all his songs had been written for her, did he remember that he never bent to gently kiss her warm naked shoulder before he left that day, though he had meant to. He had truly meant to.

.

.

* This quote is from a song called, I Need You To Turn To , written by Bernie Taupin, sung by Elton John. Ok, yes, I was a teenager in the 70’s and I listened to (and totally loved ) Elton John back in the day. Wanna make something of it?

Anyway, I Need You To Turn To is a waltz, played in this version on a Clavichord no less! And the lyrics are delightfully Gothic-like. Right up my ally. (There’s also this version , recorded years later, with a full orchestra. Just pay no attention to the wig… I mean, you know, it’s Elton John). The 70’s produced some surprisingly odd and wonderful music. Really, the decade wasn’t all Farrah Faucet hair and disco and The Brady Bunch, you know. Wait a minute, yes it was.

But never mind that. This little lullaby-ish song has always haunted me, not because of the sappy story it seems to tell, but because of the kind of frightening story I think it hides. So, in an attempt to exorcise the haunting, I created a little riddle-y snippet of a story that may or may not live inside this song. It’s too early to tell if the exorcism worked, but I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, if any of you would like to share if you feel something Gothic-ly delicious lurking inside this song, I’d be very interested in hearing your take on it. This song haunts me… haunts me, I tell ya!

Jane’s Guide Review

Vespertine Erotica has been reviewed by Jane’s Guide! This was the first thing I read in my email this morning… and what a lovely way it was to begin the day:

I absolutely loved my visit to this site - part blog, part erotic poetry and stories. Elizavetta Mora writes beautifully, whether it’s a haunting story of a path not taken (Rioja) or a steamy pain/pleasure interlude during the most boring of household tasks (Ironing Sutra). The poems and stories are indexed along one column, then there is an ongoing blog as well. Again with the blog, I appreciate the introspection when it comes to power exchange - it’s always refreshing to see someone write honestly about bdsm, instead of yet another caricature. Well done.
~ Jane

Thank you, Jane!

Whether you’re brand new to the world of adult sites or a veteran who thinks you’ve seen it all, pay a visit to Jane’s Guide… THE traveler’s guide to the Naughty Net.

Cinéma Vérité: A Mind Fuck in Four Parts (part one)

A cold bare room.

Silence.

I am alone, sitting before a dark video screen, waiting for my Master to return.

I am tied to a simple wooden chair in the very middle of the room. My knees are held open by the same strand of rope that binds my ankles to the legs of the chair.

My wrists are bound behind me, and the long rope of my hair as well. Hands and hair, both lashed to the straight unforgiving spindles cutting into my back.

My mouth is filled with a rubber penis gag, my tongue compulsively trying to accommodate the constant invasion.

Headphones cover my ears, but they are silent. I hear no commands, no familiar Master’s voice, so I study the long thin cord that runs from the headphones to the place where it plugs into the blank video screen in front of me.

I meditate on the meaning of silence, the cultivation of an empty mind. I try to connect with the quiet beyond consciousness. I try, as always, to anticipate nothing but as the minutes tick by I only descend into a slow dread of peace.

He enters and closes the door softly. His sharp clicking footfalls stop directly behind me. Every downy hair on my body rises up. I wait for the heavy blow of His voice, the sharp sting of His hand, His whip, His demand.

I wait. I breathe. I wait. Until…

A magnified whoosh of white noise bursts into my ears followed quickly by the blue-gray static of the video screen flashing on.