SIT SINE SPINA

he wanted to speak, and oh how his tongue quivered behind the full bow of his lips! he felt his bones shiver beneath his skin; rough, torn, lived in. and yet, how be it that it was the softest lick of her tongue that allowed the prince to unwind? 

his eyes, all the more darkened by such lurid actions, rolled slightly into the black caverns of his sockets; daring to take the darkness in a bid to stop the rise of her affections. yet he looks on — eyes caught, hooked and obsessed as he stares back into such devourable hues. even then, lost in the mix of tension and a dire need for more, he feels the stir within him to pounce and cry out. 

“i am certain that you would delight in the taste,” menelaus quipped, though his pronunciation was slow and lazy, his tongue drawling over the sounds he made as he felt the fat lick of her tongue — small, big, thick, petite… all manner of licks allowed his cheeks to rise with powdered blushes. helen, helen, helen. do you taste like sea salt? do you taste how i believe you to taste, mused on after hours spent thinking off velveteen skin? of your flesh? 

a clearing of his throat was quiet compared to the beat of his heart and the blood that thumped within his ears ( something, otherworldly, tells him to progress. to push forward with stubborn intent to make her his once more — kiss, touch — she already covers your thumb after all ). 

with the flip of his stomach menelaus finds himself pulling his thumb from the tight exhilaration of her mouth, tugging on her lower lip to expose the wet flesh of her inner. such an action ( one he would dream off later in the dead of night, when alone upon straw and cottons ) reminded him of opening fruit, of pressing finger upon a fig’s centre to check its ripeness. a grunt, half licked with his own moans and tongue, expels from his throat — daring him to expose his own need and hunger for her taste ( all of this performed in a murky silence, danger surrounding by nosey eyes or foreign ears ). 

he does not dry his thumb, that shines with her glaze, but rather takes her chin between it and his index finger, holding her before him with her plump lips and catlike eyes. the wetness of his thumb ( almost wrinkled by her ) lays upon her chin, as the blonde from mycenae leans forward to brush his nose against her own. brushed, feathers caressing his heart to the thump upon his ribcage. ah, it is something other that takes him high above the clouds or the cry of angels. 

“it is my turn to taste you,” he whispered, soft and smooth as oiled flesh as he leaned in to kiss her. a kiss, masterful in its movement, pressed with a tenderness that soon develops into hunger as his tongue gingerly presses between her swollen lips to taste her fully. yet his tongue is thicker than her own, fat and ready for any note she may yield for him as he takes the time ( eyes closed, skin alight ) to find what lays underneath.

salt from the sea air ripe flesh of a orange the sweet nectar of a swollen flower

i yearn to kiss you forever, he calls — quietly, from inside, as he shifts his wet thumb to her cheek instead, drawing a line with her saliva against her skin as he feels both uncomfort and ease riddle from within his own skin. a moan, feral and uncontrolled, foaming from his throat and into her own mouth as a bustle of doves fly ahead ( a feather, dropped to one side, loosened from a long journey ). “ — i cannot be apart from you.” 

such ease is felt with him that even in the exploration of indecency she feels no shame, only the riotous curiosity and undetermined cravings of a girl amidst her comfort. her eyes wash from full moons to something lidded and low in the brush of him against her, that innate bodily urge to shut the eyes at such closeness fought off for another moment of gazing at menelaus’ cheek, his nose bridge, but the quarter of one eye. 

it is my turn to kiss you. he speaks it so leniently, as if the words would not ring as command to her despite the soft pitch of his tone, as though even in its thinness it did not push straight through.

— and there is nothing slim about the kiss. it is cuts of meat with all the plump white fat, piles of heavy figs, agoras of golden olive oil spilled over the table. helen revels in it, this exchange of such warmth and wet between them, her lips opened to his at sign of first inquest before she sinks into the pit of it all. everything is warm wet soft warm wet soft and there is nothing else that could matter.

the rope to her more conscious self is three-fold and thrown in quick succession, from the cooling line drawn upon her cheek to the jostling of sentinel breastplate not far beyond, finalized with a sudden and weighty proclamation. helen laughs, and it is not unkind. 

“   you   would   know   my   lord   better   than   i   ,   nymph   .   “   he   ascends   from   bended   knee   with   a   slow   flex   of   his   legs   ,   rising   to   full   height   with   a   shadow   of   a   smirk   passing   ‘   pon   stubbled   mouth   .   whilst   the   girl   slips   back   to   her   river   ,   he   cuts   distance   and   saunters   closer   to   the   rock   and   halts   at   water’s   edge   .   from   there   ,   eyes   that   are   wild   and   green   and   dark   set   ‘   pon   the   girl   once   more   ,   and   this   time   ,   he   does   not   reign   in   the   power   he   emanates   .   he   lets   her   taste   the   forest   instead   .   “   do   you   not   know   pan   ,   the   horned   prince   ?   “

he advances and she tastes sap and pine, burned cedar and night air, thick and suffocating as honey upon her mortal tongue and cooling her throat. pan, he says, and her body is rolled with the name. the horned prince. he who was god of wilds, shepherds, flocks and musics. companion of nymphs. her heart is a doe in his forest, wild and frantic as she feels upon her sacred flesh a kind of pursuit — but it is more than a hunter with bow. the trees themselves are closing in around her, brushing leaves as feathers against her skin.

it is a strange thing to enter a room and see a shadow-self among the pillars, a reflection that both did not resemble your own body and yet bore characteristics that could not be denied. it was not so dissimilar to gazing into a rippling pond, which distorted as much as it gave, or even the well-polished bronze of a mirror, for even in its returned image one was not cast in their own colours, and was instead shaded in something only not-quite true.

such was the feeling when helen entered the temple of apollo to witness cassandra, princess become priestess of troy.

there had been a time when men had spoken of her beauty, that lone girl of trojan nobility behind their high walls, beloved of her brothers and cousins. but as with all tales men tell, they seemed only capable of carrying one stone of thought upon their tongue at a time, and such talk had been left as they in turn begun to whisper of her madness. and there had been a time yet, before the curse befell her, that the god apollo must have shone kindly upon the princess in turn — as the opposite side of love was not a kind of vitriol, helen knew, but rather a stark indifference. and it took a great deal more than indifference to siege a girl’s body with such plague.

Like the memories before this, the details develop in bursts.

A man and woman are swirling like dust motes in a shaft of light, both tiny flames in the belly of a lighthouse. Her presence is a fine wound, agile and elusive as a reverb on glass making sound for the sake of science.

Has Man ever controlled water? He’d asked. Before anyone had answered: The answer lies at the heels of Poseidon.

Lining the sea’s deep-seated belly remains Man’s attempts; shipwrecks splintered into halves. Drowned men that have died, barnacles that grow between skeletal scaffolding and bottom feeder fish that make homes inside skulls. Lawless seas stake claim to Man’s treasure, devours their pearls, rusts their gold, decomposes their silver, all pulled out by hook and line centuries later. These are the remains of Man’s control. But it is Man’s lines of defenses (hosts of cavalry, infantry, ships) that lent recognition of a different sort of expression in Paris. It was the gaudiness of one’s precision, calculation, flawlessness, power. It turned the first will from the domination of other men (as prince) to the domination of nature. Having always been moved and spoken to by wind, seawater has become an eager playmate behind each a gust of wind that shifts the sails and rides over currents. Paris is at once master of sky and sea.

Paris is not so quick to note her departure; but when he does, he takes decisive steps to not trail so close behind her voice hardly audible over the rolling tides crashing over the walls of the lighthouse. Rather, it is from the top of the stairs that he watches her tremors at the edge of the parapet. She is sustained upright by the will of a silver wind chime.

“Helen,” He’s quick to note weakness, especially when weakness makes itself known. “No.”

Seeing her disappear didn’t struck his eyelids, but the point in the middle of his body that opened up like a fan, leaving an agitation, a trepidation, like wings beating in his chest. “HELEN—”

So deep and dark the breeze does blow, and so sweet the blossoms torn with it. He has thrown himself down there too, with the bottom feeder fish, with the midnight nightmares, where an echo is nothingness and nothingness is an echo. He descends into the far edge of the rocks from where he had hit his head, scrambling to the surface in a haze with blood spooling over his brow like a hemorrhage.

That silhouette, like patient moonlight, casts out to him from darkness. Paris claws at it, tightening his fingers around its soft glow, holding her to his chest when he’s pulled her to the surface.

Like a pinwheel startled into oscillation, he was reduced to the exact distance between the outside of the wheel and the eye of motion, doing everything in his power to stay out of reach of quiet. Better to be breathless, better not to breathe, he knew, than to have the them settle into silence — anything but silence, anything but alone, anything to keep the chorus roaring, louder and louder. He wraps his hand over her jaw in an effort to draw out all the seawater from within her, anything to hear a sputter, a cough, a cry, anything.

“Helen, please, wake up!“

with the crash of her body to the sea, the world seems to be made anew.

the same is said of aphrodite.

the princess is given to the waves and the world above is robbed of its order, sentinels and kings and laymen of the spartan shore swarmed to the edge of the limestone bluff with no concession to the standings that keep them apart. before the rotten-dark silhouette of helen in the water, all are razed of their use. 

the rocks, the rocks, it’s a miracle she missed them.

the great beasts of the sea would be nothing compared to the water itself, who outlived even the waves, whose hunger had swallowed more men and faultless children than cetus and all his kraken brothers and sisters in all their lifetimes. that which welcomed the one final soul that cleaved its way through the foam, the tide a tongue over his taste too.

dragged upon the sand she comes back to the living as though by way of a string tied to helios’ chariot, golden rope fastened to her waist as she is dragged from the darkness into the light, closer, closer, until it is finally laid down upon her with such weight —

helen can now tell you what the stars know: it is painful to become.

seawater sputters from her heavenly mouth, coughing up on gold-cut chin and throat as she attempts to turn from the hold that keeps her to retch the salt onto the sand. the sun is mercy and violence, shining down upon her with a brutality that robs her of sight. there is a voice waterlogged by the tide between her ears, but she feels the surely of body around her and so she reaches, clung to the flesh her hands can take. 

the face that comes to her is crowned by sun.

the words she speaks leave an ashen taste on his mouth. in some twisted, dark part of him, he wishes to be her first in everything, even in the little things.  (  or perhaps more especially the little things: the first thing she sees in the morning, the first who will see her still covered in silken sheets awash in the golden rays of the dawn, the first who will sweep away the stray strands of hair from her face when she’s still slowly rousing herself from the grips of Hypnos’ charm.  )  the fact that this action, this making of an offer, is not the first to have met her wounds him in some way; but he supposes beauty becomes her to the point of making her an altar, and all the world a believer. he cannot fault her for being herself. in a way, perhaps he should consider it a blessing, that she would so consort with him still so very readily even after his purported transgression on her.

yet what wounds him still, cuts him deeper than her first words, is her accusation of half-measures. he has flayed himself alive in front of her, made himself a spectacle, turning out skin and bone to offer every atom that he has for her—for her alone—and she has deemed this display of most gratuitous violence not enough. for theseus, whose main language has mostly been in the steel of swords, the slaying of beasts, comfort and softness are two aspects that are unfamiliar to him as the thought of mediocrity. still, there is a thought that gives him pause:  ❛  do you think there will be no peace with me ?  ❜  he asks, his voice sounding almost like a patient begging a healer for some sort of balm, some sort of remedy.  ❛  do you not think that i, who has offered you the world, will not try to offer you all those things as well ?  even if it were not within my power, do you think i would not, with all my resourcefulness, i would not contrive some sort of way to give you all that you ask ?  ❜ 

he does not say: i have offered you the whole of me, is that not enough ?

he does not say: you are a cruel mistress; you ask me for more even as i give you everything.

instead he says: having offered you all that i am and the world entire, what more do you want from me ?  ask, and i shall give it—or i shall try to give it; because i cannot say no to you.

except he doesn’t say it in his words. he says it in his eyes, in his hands, in his breathing, in his being. she leans back against him and presents her slender neck, her pulse showing to him, open and vulnerable. in this angle, with the silver sliver of moonlight shining on her like this, it is as if he sees her in a new light: clearer and brighter. he hazards his hand to touch the small of her neck, that hollow where pulse is felt easiest, where his fingertips touch against physical evidence of the presence of divinity in this world. 

❛  i think about them every day,  ❜  he says, voice soft and faint, a whisper of nostalgia creeping in. he hazards another hand to snake around her waist, almost as if to trap her where she stands, but his grip on her is loose and lax. his touch is but a reminder of him, as if to envelop her in his wholeness, as if there is some sort of invisible mark that comes from being held, and as if this will mark her thusly.  ❛  why else did you think i came here ?  ❜  he asks, and he leans his cheek on the top of her head, whispering hotly into her ear. there is the barest hint of lip meeting flesh, so close were they to each other that they seem entangled, with no end to either of them, just a soft beginning to their shared being.  ❛  i did not forget, my fair helen: i have told you i will make you queen, and i am here to fulfil that promise at long last—even if two years too late, because i will always come back for you.  ❜  then, a softer voice:  ❛  just think !  the underworld did not stop my wanting for you. do you think i am so easily deterred after all that ?  ❜

“can you promise as much?”

perhaps, this time, it is a doubt as much as an inquisition — is it possible? as well as would you swear it now? and how unfair to them both that helen should be resorted to such a two-handed  open-fisted question, but she feels left to no choice, his continued questions drawing out a cry from within her — the sound of a culling from within. he does not understand, and it is snapping the neck of small beasts within her even with his dulcet tone, an offense to helen’s being to be construed as some piggish girl who would devour his sacrifice before commanding more, as though she was his witching step-mother medea demanding bull flesh before he be allowed home.

“peace is not some beast you may chase to the ends of the earth, no feat to be demanded of you as hero — it either is or is not.” i can be cruel but it is borne of comfort, don’t you see? i would not have a man whose very nature could not grow in my orchards. “i do not want such things crafted for me as supplication. i would share in my peace with my husband; bread is no good left at the altar if i cannot break it with him. — but can you know satisfaction, theseus? or must there always be another?”

how strange, how full of humour that the young one should return with a question that he has been asking all along: am i enough?

yet there can be nothing else when they are tightly wound, for she closes her eyes and he grows in his size around her till he is all that an extended hand might reach, till she is softly ingested, until she is just a slender marble figurine wrapped and hidden in a garden.

“queen... yes. so it has been sworn.” 

she who was patron at the altar of sensation, who ran her hands through bolts of silk for the feel, stripping from clothes and mortal constraint to lie naked among tall grass, could not help the touch she gave to him then. so simple and true a thing rounded above his elbow, slight hand curved as it could around such a hero-arm that fenced her to him, stroking slowly at the skin there. it cannot be overstated how gentle and simple such a thing was, bound not to an imploring or sensual nature but instead something willfully tender. how that might have been the touch of a sweetheart-love if they were others, their timeline pulled apart at the core and laid out in a shape of kinder arrangement.

( i could be sweet to you, i was sweet, i could be, it all says. i could be unfurled like nectar from the palm of the hyacinth for you to lap from as you please, till tongue and jaw is sore with use, till my stores empty and your chin sticky with me. marrow is not the only thing to feast on, boy. )

“yet it is not your resolution in question, sir hunter, but what it is you seek.” 

— o, but the sky was purple yet. the world was warm. could it not be sweet even now, could it not be considered the touch of a beloved? she longs to ask theseus of his age in the dark-world, to turn over and show him softness for the fact of his plight alone, kiss the backs of his eyes for what they had seen and the pipe of his throat for the blackness he had swallowed. it is in her nature to bring the honey, but now there is no place for the slathering of it, and she is not so far removed from her indignation yet. so instead she continues in the saintly caress of his arm, holding her silence well to say: i am sorry for that dark-time. you are here, i am within. it is alright. 

“and who it is you have come for: the girl on the dais,” the one with all the light inside her, who you claimed without a single glance. the daughter, proprietor of something holy. “or the one in the glade, found illicit in your crooked sea-bed?” she who was held tight till all wonders came spilling out, mouth on mouth. the girl, beneath you in the dawn hours, sainted.

( girl of the scroll-mouth, baring so many unheard words within it, so easily opened up and left to rip. begging for an unfolding, to have the seams smoothed out, to have read the lines that had been waiting for someone, anyone. and how you did, hero. )

she looks out now over sparta, eyes open and full-sighted as her hand leaves the crook of his arm to ghost up the trunk of it, holding tight to the muscle there. her heart is as betrayer inside her, throbbing longingly to meet the pad of his fingers. perhaps, now, the healer supplicates in return, fist-deep in the open wound, searching through the blood and splints for the thing lodged within, and helen will not look up till she has found it.

“tell me now what returns you to me, and i shall go.”

Warily, she stands back, accepting gracious greetings with a well rehearsed dip of her head. Formalities pass her by without comment, for they mean next to nothing to her. It is, of course, a pleasure to be recognised, and such familiarity is returned in the warmth of the amazon’s smile. But that is all. Queen has been said too many times both in reverence and revulsion for it to hold much meaning at all, yet these Greeks dote upon their formalities like they were speaking always to Gods. 

“Helen of Troy,” she bid in kind. 

For the sake of amusement, she returns the bow, dipping only a little at the waist as she lowers her head. At the other’s stumble, reflex ignites, and a hand flashes out with the intent of steadying her. It proves blessedly necessary, and the action dies half a foot from its host. Still half in a bow, she meets Helen’s gaze as they both right themselves and joins with a trickle of laughter. 

“Such philosophy,” she continues, her own amusement not yet dead. “That is for you to decide. You had better do so in haste, before others make your choices for you. All the same, it is a delight to see you let your hair down. Are these festivals not for you, after all?”

The princesses’ gaze soon passes her by, apparently finding better entertainment in her father’s brickwork. Pentheselia does not glance behind, but keeps her gaze on her prize, lips always upturned in half a smile. 

“is it, amazonian? why, what great relief, to know that if only i act fast enough, i might make my selection before it is done in my name!” helen laughs, and it is a full, round sound, edgeless in its ability to spin in both mirth and grudge. the rest does not need to be said, for it hangs on the ornament of her laughter: such is the only choice i might make in these days.

lashes skirt low over cheeks as the sun does over sea-line at dusk, and she waves her hand dismissively at the notion that these festivities are built in the name of the daughter’s own enjoyment. “yes, yes, it is for me.” she repeats, clicking her tongue as her gaze brushes over the hall behind. “for me in the way that the fishmonger’s spear is for the sturgeon, or the hunter’s bow is for the stag.”

now her browse rolls back to penthesilea, and in the mist of wine something sharp protrudes on her fine features. you are huntress too.

“for embracing the autonomy with which you are born? certainly not. i don’t fault men for the same.”

he is tempted to ask if such a notion is a novelty - but it is a moot question. he has seen it enough with his own relatives, how his poor cousin cassandra is silenced and shunned for how fervently she rejects claims of falsehood over her own words and prophecies. the woman before him claims dominion over herself too, her silence a refusal, a beat of rebellion that easily goes unnoticed amid free-flowing mead and unending feasts, but not to those looking for it. 

“i’m afraid not, princess. there is not enough wine in ilia to make my singing tolerable, lest i be chased out of sparta with all the king’s guards upon my heels for my offense. i couldn’t bear the shame.” his gaze follows her movements, even-keeled as that of a beast in wait, patient, sated, but curious. his words drawl with knowing, brokered between pointed irony and half-jest. he lifts a brow. “do you oft play ignorant with your suitors, my lady? do they prefer a farce?”

“then you are as novel as they say.”

if the prince had asked, he would know that it was not the notion alone that was novelty, but the man himself. at the crossroads of worship and submission helen was meant to lay, a lynchpin of womanhood that dictated she be both holy figure and hollowed out body for he who would have her — no doubt, meant to hold two such opposing notions together with the tight clenching of her thighs.

“a true shame, then,” her voice drags as stick in the sand, leaving patterns behind her, slow and careful and drawing something one edge at a time. “for now i shall never know what it is we have spoken of tonight.” helen knows now that the trojan prince will understand her, this man with face as fair as the notions he dealt. clever, clever boy.

“   will   i   ?   “   he   graces   the   maiden   with   lightest   of   grins   as   if   hopeful   of   such   a   prospect   ,   forested   hues   flicking   heavenward   in   an   act   both   sacrilegious   and   brazen   ,   tongue   running   ‘   cross   the   lesser   petal   of   his   lip   .   his   gaze   falls   ,   lingers   ‘   pon   the   girl   for   an   extended   second   and   naught   more   ,   then   falls   lower   still   toward   the   ground   ,   where   he   reaches   his   hand   to   caress   the   verdant   growth   ,   rolling   straws   of   grass   between   his   digits   .   “   that   neither   frightens   nor   worries   me   ,   for   i   have   my   own   lord   to   keep   me   from   the   sun   god’s   anger   .   “

he had not anticipated his moment alone with her to become a sense of advertisement. he was not that kind of man. but he knew that there was no such thing to fate, all that lay ahead were vessels — this was what life had taught him. to seize, catch and dominate with greedy fingers and ambitious tongues. he knew that helen would hear more of the same talk about how strangers were to be the grand suitor of her choice. that she, on the eve of the first competition, would be both the envy of every maiden and the disgust of every matron. 

his palm was warm before, the sun was hot and dared every visitor to the spartan city to drink in its rays of light. but it seemed all the more intense as she kissed his palm with the gentle waves of the tide itself. 

o’helen, o’love.. i pray you to seek the right choice. 

it was perhaps advantageous that menelaus only had his brother to tell him what and what not to do. it was perhaps by chance that the two younglings had been left without a family to shepherd, prompt and rebuke them of stupid things like falling in love with zeus’ daughter

( but then, menelaus only knew little about his parents who died all too long ago by the hand of the doomed line they had been born into, but what he did know was that his father was an awful man… )

who kills their brother, menelaus? father killed his brother. 

so he falls folly to helen, who controls him with every flick of her tongue or the flutter of an eyelash. the dove would only have to whisper and the prince would jump to her command. oh, how foolish it was. he was sure that agamemnon would tell him off, that his men who he fought beside would tease him when drinking wine in the evening post-battle. but it was this temperament, inherited from his grandmother, that could win him everything he had ever wanted. at least, he hoped.

but he did not think of any of that, as she pressed closer. as his thumb sat prettily upon the rich petal of her lower lip, how the wet core of her mouth teased upon his skin in a way that sent a shiver down his frame. he felt it ripple from the back of his neck to the low of his back — her name all the more echoing in his ears as he offered her a slow, intense nod. for it was not some divinity like aphrodite who fuelled him with desire; it was her. “yes, helen,” he breathed, the shimmering tincture of lucid azure eyes swaying between the pink flesh of her lip to the shine of her eyes. alone they were, in the drapings of petals and flora. the smell itself engulfing him as he slowly parted her lips to press his thumb closer. 

he seemed to sink as he felt the wet ring of her mouth consume his thumb, tenderly placed upon her ivories as his own lips shifted into a small, indulgent smirk. “you may devour me, and i would feel ecstasy,” menelaus mused, his thumb yet to drag against her lower lip gently, pulling the flesh downwards to softly reveal the white of her teeth and the wet crimson of her tongue that only revealed itself in sparse moments. 

“tear me apart piece by piece, and i should find myself triumphant.” 

this would not be the only man that would entreat helen to make meal on him, yet it was the first the girl had ever heard, and the intensity of such an oath makes her hot behind the ears. the heat spreads (as all warmth is ought to when shown land to take) as he plies her lips with his thumb to sink it into her mouth in true, her eyes widening. he tastes of salt on her tongue and, like sea-water, helen thinks it must spell poorly to swallow the taste — yet the urge, just as with gulps of the ocean, is there.

she is a girl lost in the simple move for this bore not the ease of their flirtation in youth, when they had been as much children as they had lovers. she had known and memorized menelaus as the boy that chased her through clearings with arms outstretched, ever laughing, ever willing to lay shoulder-to-shoulder with her by riverside — but she is recalled by his action to the fact he had always been a man, even then, and that this conduct could then not be called newly made but rather only just earned. it should not have been a surprise to her that he could feel and elicit more than spry-boned affection, yet still she was caught off guard.

this was not the same as then, no, that could not be said; but it was still built on the spine of the self-same arrow that helen had followed even back in youth - desire - which is not always a call to flesh, but life itself. so she hums sweetly around the finger with eyes held fast on his face, which is not so unfamiliar to her as the play.

“such talk,” it is mumbled, loose at the joints, lacking firm body. yet even as she speaks, she brings her teeth together upon the thumb, teasing a nip at the hard shell of his nail and its soft underbelly. helen looks at him and narrows her eyes with a scrunch of her delicate nose, a childish and sweet imitation of feral nature. in this there is confidence gained yet, and her features lax  “what if i should find i do not like the taste, prince?”

her mouth bites higher, this time around the first knuckle, as if again to make false-meal of his offering and test theorem. helen tries, then, what she believes is meant to be done in times like this, when the air is thick and you are alone: her lips close soft and tight as circlet around his flesh, tongue lashing kitten-like and curious against the salty skin, genuine exploration for the taste of him outweighing — or perhaps abetting — sensuality for its own sake. when helen decides the sample is to her liking she swallows the second knuckle, slow and tender in the swallowing, until his full thumb is trapped in the wet cove of her mouth and her tongue lavishes as guest.

III. what did they study / what are they studying?

international relations with a minor in women’s and gensex studies, but this was suspended to pursue her modeling and/or acting career.

VII. one example of a significant change in their backstory now that the world’s changed.

no marriage contest! the babie is free to date as she likes, let alone chose a life partner.

IX. how do they like to travel in the 21st century—both day to day life, and possible international travel?

there was a phase where she rode a cute little vespa everywhere (thank her teen summers in milan for that), but with that era over it’s largely walking, bicycling, or driving. she loves to be outside and craves physical exertion, so when she’s able it’s the former two. i picture her as an nyc girl, so like everyone she takes the subway with frequency. not huge into cars, but she appreciates the aesthetically pleasing ones, and driving down empty roads at night with the top down is among her longtime habits.

XV. how does their diet look like?

POINT COUNT 200420

replies  +60

starters  +40

tasks  +0

development posts  +20

she holds tight to the horned one, palms to inner elbow, breasts to forearm, all his godly flesh against her as stone draped by velvet. the glade is alight with dark revel, crashing cymbal keeping beat to bodies that whir so quickly their features melt to one side, and helen keeps flush hold on her purveyor. to think him safer than what lies before is the folly of a maiden; he is the madness she knows, but only by what she has scraped under her fingernails.

“and yet — have i not been taught to sit astride such realms?” wicked, sweet, girlish; there is nothing more depraved than the woman loosed, finally, upon the world. it is in proof to them both when she releases pan’s arm, makes a play-game of chastity by extending upon her delicate toes to kiss a cold, carved cheek. “by your instruction, no less.”

she takes from him then, bird set to the field.