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

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

Alas, I’m getting nowhere. My sex drive, she done drove away. But rather than rant on about why (which I’ve kind of already done here and here), I’ll direct you over to this post by Remittance Girl, who has already described the reasons for my own up and gone libido much better than I have the energy to do right now.

Anyway…

Until I find the inspiration to write something even remotely sexy, I invite you to sashay over to any of these recent posts by some of my favorite writers, where sexy is still high in the polls. (heh, she said “pole.”)

Beside you and By a Rushing Stream a Soldier Knelt, by Paul at Gingatao

Sex and Death, by The Provocateur

La Belle Mort, by Zander Vyne

Nobility, by elise at solipsubmissive

The Hard Fuck, by D’jaevle at Blood, Sex, Crimson

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

Now, if I were Sarah Palin, I’d launch into something profound and folksy right about now, something like:

Well, doggone it, now how ’bout that! I’m so proud to be honored myself of the great state of Fleshbot, and I’m just real glad to know we all love Israel, too. But first, let me talk about my energy policy and hopefully this will create jobs and get the economy back on track. Because I’m a maverick, and unlike my opponent, Joe O’Biden, I’m a maverick, like I said. I’m proud of my record and me and Todd and Joe six-pack deserves that, too. And it’s time for Americans to say ‘never again’ to… something. I forget. But I read every newspaper that’s in front of me, so I’ll get back ta ya. *wink*

If I were the Disasta from Alaska, I’d give a shout out to all the perverts over there at Fleshbot and remind them that they’ll all get extra credit for this, you betcha.

But I am NOT, thank whatever powers that be, Sarah Palin. So, like any sane person who is actually operating with an awareness of consensual reality (as fucked as that may be right now), I’ll just say: Hey, AAG, thanks so much for the mention.

Note to anyone who cares: I know that Sarah Palin is not a proper subject for one of my Friday Flashers. And I know this little Palin-bashing post doesn’t qualify as an erotic story by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, talk of politics of any kind veers quite wildly from my "talking points" here at Vespertine Erotica. But hey, if a whole country can lower the bar for her, they can do it for me, doggone it! I’m pretty, tooooo!!! And I wear designer glasses, yes I do. I think I did pretty darn good on this post, don’t you? I think maybe I even won the debate… to nowhere.

…inside the dark of yourself from the sorcery of yourself you will call me with your emerald firevoice it will ring through corridors twisted before our births our secrets burning inside inside it comes and my mouth will let forth the smoke of your charred heart a sooty thick cloud I will make of that fire my breath a sounding blackness to wrap around the root of your voice and when the shroud is woven complete knotted secure around your useless language I will steal it cackling and make of it a shield that will set me free and oh how I will sing to you then and hold your memories and your shame in my fists while you sway inside my sweetest of tunes my many singing spells how your soul will change inside my headful of magic a changeling caught in my cuntful of teeth my cunt come to claim its full feast of skin reshaped you will tear away from yourself and become more than the one I dare call upon a keening man a kenning thing aching to devour a night spun of my making you will be of my breath attached to my scent and mine alone and nothing but my filthy fingers will hang you cockspent tie you like a screaming prayer on the living tree the sprouted cross dug deep into where you can no longer call your home all its pearl eyes plucked out and the blind bones all of them cracking inside the vice of my bite that madness of instinct that drives us to fall prey fall in rapture as prey to the needwitch who will feed us still smoldering back to the root of life burnt inside the dark of yourself from the sorcery of yourself you will call me…

When the moon’s in Scorpio, I often howl at it.

Image: Not able to cite source, found here.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making light of the U.S. (or world, for that matter) situation or trying to claim that’s it not as bad as it seems. I’ll even go so far to say that, as a species, I think we’re probably totally fucked - even if CNN will never broadcast that particular report.

But, Armageddon or not, I have a blog to run here. So, though it won’t bail out Wall Street or stop global warming, here’s my little contribution toward a break in the madness, my little moment of kinky Zen*… and I swear, it’s all true.

So, the other night, there I am, with all this world angst roiling away in the background of my insulated little reality where I’m sitting at my desk trying to get some very detailed and deadline driven work done. And if that’s not enough pressure, I’m trying to get this work done while also trying to manage wave after wave of hot flashes.

And, of course, I can’t be one of those lucky women who experiences mild or even "typical" hot flashes that come and go somewhat manageably, like a simple natural occurrence of New Age-y aging (re: "just think of it as a power surge, honey, proof that you’re becoming a wise crone, blah, blah, blah."). [insert eye roll here]

No. I get to be one of the women who gets to have these seriously debilitating episodes that include vision disturbances, dangerous dizziness (as in, I’ve fallen down because of it), difficulty with swallowing, breathing, putting more than two syllables together correctly, and generally remaining conscious and sane.

My hot flashes are not even hot, for christ’s sake. They’re scary, ice-cold whole-body tsunamis of just plain awfulness. They piss me off in a big way. But they piss me off most of all when I’m trying to work.

And particularly when I’m working under a deadline and dealing with a potentially devastating world financial crisis, these more-than-just-hot flashes make me dangerously, outrageously ENRAGED. They make want to just annihilate something, anything, everything. And God forbid that anyone should actually speak to me right at that point because that poor person would have just unwittingly identified my nearest and most convenient target.

So, the other night, just as I’m cresting the peak of one of these moments of unbearable flashy-ness, my husband decides to walk in the room and begin a general tirade about the economy, Sarah Palin’s laughable interview with Katie Couric, and John McCain’s grandstanding holier-than-thou announcement that’s he’s "suspending" his campaign.**

Then, barely taking another breath, he careens with righteously geeky anger directly into a rant about how his day has been nothing but crucial mp3 files not loading, computer programs crashing, someone stealing his stapler, just one fucking malfunction after another, etc.

Finally, he notices my eerie silence, my flushed face and wild she-bitch eyes, and he stops ranting. Abruptly. He knows what’s going on with my vascular system right then. He knows I am being remotely-controlled by renegade hormones. And, even more deadly, is the fact that I know he knows.

For what seems like an eternity, we stare at each other like that, like the US and Russia during the cold war, across the ocean of our stubbornness, both of us daring the other to prove who’s situation is more worthy of screaming about, silently placing our bets on which of us is going to spit first, on which of us is goin’ down.

And then, totally, deviously straight faced, he says it: "Niagara Falls."

Niagara Falls!***

The whole situation snaps. And the scene jerks into slow motion, for just one perfectly timed moment, like in a good action movie.

Slowly, I turn… inch by inch… step by step…

And BAM, just like that, we jerk out of slow motion again and I spin in my chair and reach out to deftly hook the fingers of one hand into the waistband of his jeans while I make a vicious grab for his cock with the other. But he’s too fast for me (but only because, remember, I’m at a menopausally-induced disadvantage).

So, before I can fully execute my famous grab-the-man-by-the-pants maneuver, he gets a too secure grasp in my hair and pulls me to the floor where I end up on all fours, at which point he immediately yanks my pants down over my ass and throws one leg over me so he can straddle me and hold me there.

Both of us are laughing stupidly now as I’m bucking up under him to try and get him off of me before he can get in that first ringing-loud smack on the plumpest part of my ass cheek. But alas [insert tone of fake disappointment here], he’s too strong for me.

So, while I’m laughingyellingmoaning and scratching at the hardwood floor under my desk, he begins… slap, smack, THWACK, with his bare hand. One ass cheek then the other… slap, smack, THWACK… and repeat, and repeat, and repeat…

until he hits that perfectly spankalicious rhythm that makes the whole room go languidly warm,

and I begin to give in and arch my back so I’m no longer trying to get my ass away from his hand, but closer toward it,

and his hand begins to sting and his thighs begin to shake from holding my wriggling body captive between them,

and the hot flashes stop,

and the lost stapler no longer matters,

and the failing world economy and out of control media and grandstanding puppet politicians have been put back in their rightful place in the larger scheme of things.

Eventually, there is much falling upon on each other and several and varied forms of pleasurable groping and giggling, groaning and sighing.

And though it will never appear on CNN, the story here is just as important as any other - that two people have found a way to live through one more day without having to resort to killing each other over shit they can’t do anything about.

Also never to be reported on CNN is the truth that no matter how dire the circumstance, comedy and kink will always save the day… and incidentally, that spanking is a highly protected secret cure for "atypical" hot flashes.

Hey, maybe the McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden teams should have an Ultimate Smack Down Spank Match! It wouldn’t solve the financial crisis, but it would certainly be an atypical cure for what ails this presidential race, and definitely more interesting to watch than any debate. However, in all fairness, the question-asking, time-keeping, rule-enforcing, Muthafuckin’ Dungeon Master of this event should be, could only be, the provocatively leather pantsuited HRC2012.

So there it is, kids. Your moment of kinky Zen. Or, the no-cost way to manage menopause, personal stress, and global mayhem right from the safety and privacy of your own home.

Carry on.

*In homage to Your Moment of Zen, from the Daily Show and Jon Stewart, who has my vote for president, by the way.
** And David Letterman, who has my other vote (since I write under a pseudonym, I get two).
***And Larry, Moe, and Curly, who also have three more of my votes for president, posthumously, of course (ok, the truth is that I get to vote as many times as I want because I’m from Chicago).

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.

The result of this experiment? Social networking media, kink-based or otherwise, is not for me. Period.

Here’s why:

• I cannot participate in nor support the sound-bite-y way that social media acts to further dumb down and decimate human communication.
• Most social media platforms are either stupidly laid out or just plain butt-fuck-ugly… or both. They give me an aesthetic  headache. (Fetlife* is an exception).
• Every profile I create is just one more thing I have to maintain. I’m not so much into investing my efforts and time into anything I have to babysit in the way social media requires - and especially for so little pleasurable or meaningful return.
• Since I’m no longer in my previous line of work, I’m no longer interested in fielding deleting such scintillating conversation openers such as: “@elizavetta how r u” or “Do you do ashtray calls?” or, “You’re really Ms [insert any popular Domme name] from [insert any phone sex or online escort site], aren’t you?” or my personal favorite, “Misstrees, may I suck your toos and worhsip U forever.”
• I don’t really care what people are eating, where they’re getting ready to go, what their turd looked like this morning, or what they’re being bored by at the moment - all said in less than 140 characters. Call me callous if you must, but I’ve done more than my share of listening to stream-of-consciousness chatter… during the several years when my children were pre-schoolers.

Basically, this experiment has only served to further confirm something I’ve always known about myself - that I’m actually quite social, but very impatient with the rules of vapid social interaction that are meant to ensure a fanatical clinging to the shiny mirror-like surface of things forever.

So, as of tonight, I’m canceling the profiles I’ve put out there and calling it quits on my experiments with 2.0 social networking.

If you want to truly engage in actual conversation with me, you know how to find me.

.

*In my opinion, Fetlife is a 2.0 social networking exception in several ways. If you’re looking for a specifically kink-centric platform where actual conversation has some chance, you might find that it’s at least worth checking out.

If you are sorrowing, stop.

If you are regretting, stop.

If you are lost, stop.

Touch yourself.

Image: Unknown