porcelain & steel

“And thankfully it will be over soon.”

“What do you exactly mean by delicately? don’t you treat your baby like a baby? I mean! I know that they’re tiny and some of them look like ugly little frogs for the first couple of months, but come on.”

She laughed softly, head giving a shake.

“Of course not! I’m not a savage. After one-hundred and seven kids, I know what and what not to do, ok? I know more than you, so….”

“Well… we do start with a wooden sword, and once the baby is a little bit older.. six years or seven years, we give them one that looks more real.”

“Liberated? I guess you have a point, but I personally miss taking care of a little baby, and making faces at them, scaring them, fighting them with a sword. It was fun.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that you didn’t have a kid with him, he probably would have been ugly like his father.” Just an assumption, not like he had ever met this man. “You want a handsome man, like me, because yes, you’re a pretty girl and everything but sometimes things go wrong and it’s not like you can give the baby back.”

“No offense, but your husband was kind of perv. Who marries someone this…” He signaled to her. “This young, especially at his age.”

It earned from him another fleeting round of laughter, the sound low and hungry in his throat.  ❝And if I had thought of it?❞  ‘Twould not be him if it were untrue; he was, in the end, a creature most foul in sins and vices alike.  ❝I will be looking forward to it if you do.❞  A loose gesture of his hand and the maid from earlier disappears from behind a door.  ❝A room will be prepared for you irregardless.❞

“Never? well, that’s a bit sad, but your husband didn’t last you that long, did he? didn’t he die in like three months or was it one?”

❝Oh? And where did you expect me to be, hm?❞  Brow quirked, amusement a bright sheen in the violets of his eyes. Even if inquiring, he did not wait long for an answer.  ❝Why not stay here, lest you are worried that my bullying would not have me making a meal of you while you slept?❞  His own jest.

“Well, no. I was a very loving and attentive husband… most of the time, of course, if you were to ask my wives some of them would disagree, but some of them were just mean. Listen, I really try to make them happy, but with thirty-seven wives and a kids everywhere, sometimes that shit is hard.” 

❝Even I am not so cruel as to torture whatever poor nursing staff would be assigned to her,❞  responded he.  ❝But enough of such silly things—how long will you be in France, chérie? Where it is you are staying?❞

“I didn’t!?” He was not sure how to feel about that. “Then what type of husband did you think I was? I loved all my wives, well.. except for two, but even to them I wrote and every time that I came back from one of my campaigns, I brought something for each one of them.”

As though summoned by means of telepathy, a maid soon came and presented to Evangeline a fresh glass of wine ‘fore doing the same for her Lord. With polite curtsy given to both parties she moved, then, to stand idle in some corner of the room with eyes alight.  ❝Even such things are not worth my scheming,❞  he chirped with low laughter,  ❝merely matters of our Mother, and what one could hope to do with her.❞