Maiden chapter seven
Jul. 6th, 2009 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maculategiraffeCrisis-ful day yesterday. Apparently writing is what I do instead of biting my nails.
I also forgot about the urge when building a new story to reply to comments BY WRITING ANOTHER CHAPTER.
"With all respect, magistra," said Judith, in a tone that was not all-respectful, "I think you're making a mistake."
"Your opinion is noted," said Rita mildly. "I'm sorry you had to come all the way here, now that we're going to have to postpone the ritual. I'll call you when we've rescheduled. Bonnie, will you see Judith to her car, please?"
Bonnie stepped forward as Judith pinched her lips together tightly, then nodded and turned, sharply, to go.
"Leah," said Rita when she was gone, "do me a favor and find Carol. Make sure she hasn't set anything on fire."
"Sure," said Leah, glancing surreptitiously at Tanya as she rose. "Uh, magistra-- I'm glad you're giving him another chance. He seems like a sweet kid."
Rita smiled at her as she left, and then sat down on the floor opposite Tanya, who hadn't moved from in front of her silver bowl.
"So," she said.
Tanya looked up at her, pushed her too-long black fringe back from her forehead, and raised her eyebrows. "So?"
"So what went wrong?"
"Now, that's what I like about seeing for you," said Tanya, smiling, her teeth white against her dusky skin. "You don't start telling me what you did, or didn't do, or couldn't have been expected to do, or would have done if I'd just said earlier and it's too late now."
Rita examined the seer, the eyes so dark she could see her own troubled expression. "So?"
"Well, first of all," Tanya said, "you let Carol in here, which right away upped the odds of disaster about seventeen percent. Now that might not seem like a lot, but I try to report anything over ten, and you might recall I have told you in the past that a thirteen-year-old girl's got no business doing rituals with men in them, I don't care whose daughter she is. Rest in peace," she added, perfunctorily.
Rita frowned. "You think it was Carol's fault?"
"I think Carol makes me nervous," said Tanya, "and I'm not the one who gets my eyeballs fried sunny-side-up if she loses control."
"I thought it would be good experience for her, supervised," said Rita. "But he certainly did seem more frightened when she was close to him. All right, Tanya. What else did I do wrong?"
"This I didn't realize, till you'd already cast," said Tanya, "but magistra, how much quality time have you spent with the boy? An hour? Cumulative? And you expected him to trust you when you grabbed his thing with a knife in your hand?"
"I'm his protectrix," said Rita, feeling a hint of indignation, though it never did much good to get indignant with Tanya.
"Gaia give me patience," said Tanya, casting her eyes piously to the floor before she looked back up at Rita, shaking back her fringe again. "That doesn't mean you won't hurt him. Most men will tell you that. Tell me Kyle wasn't scared of you when you first picked him up."
"He was," Rita admitted.
Tanya looked at her keenly, her dark eyes narrowing. "So you took it slow with him."
"Well, yes," said Rita.
"But not with Sean."
"What are you saying, Tanya?" Rita asked, a little impatiently.
"Just that it's not like you, how you acted with Sean," said Tanya. "Some women, sure. And they'd toss him back if he couldn't perform, and get a new one. But that's not you. You're the type to make damn sure he isn't scared before you put him in a circle and come at him with a dagger."
Rita had to agree, but-- "Then why didn't I? Make sure?"
"You want to know?"
It wasn't a rhetorical question-- Tanya didn't ask that particular question rhetorically-- and Rita considered before she answered, "Yes."
"You mixed Sean up with Kyle," said Tanya. "Maybe you want Sean to be Kyle. I don't know that part. They look the same-- anyway, you got the idea they were the same. You've been good to Kyle for two years, so you forgot you'd been good to Sean for less than two days. That's two days in your house, and let's be generous and say two hours of face time. And that's bad news, magistra-- for the boy and for Kyle, too. You can't be mixing those two up."
Rita wanted to protest, but she didn't-- Tanya wouldn't have said it if she didn't know what she was talking about.
"You can't pick up with Sean where you left off with Kyle," said Tanya. "He doesn't know what Kyle knows. He's a whole new boy. And I'll tell you this too, magistra-- after what just happened, he is one hell of a lot more scared than Kyle was when you two started. So if you're keeping Sean, you can't even pick up where you started with Kyle. You've got to start before that, or you'll kill him with a heart attack before you get anywhere near his maidenhead."
"What should I do?" Rita asked, worried.
"Much as I like you for asking," said Tanya, flashing her lovely smile again, "it's not my expertise, magistra. What you did with Kyle, to make him nuzzle up to you the way he does-- well, you know that better than me. And I don't know if you want Sean to love you like Kyle, or just father your girl. Maybe you don't know that either. But if you're keeping Sean, you better figure it out."
"Do you think I should?" Rita asked. "Keep him?"
"You already told him you were," said Tanya. "You won't break your word, even to a man."
"But do you think I should have told him so?"
"I don't do should have, magistra," said Tanya. "I do was, is, and could be. You want should, you figure it out yourself."
Into the pause that ensued, Bonnie came back in, and dropped down in Rita's desk chair, wiping imaginary sweat from her forehead. Or maybe not imaginary; her face was flushed under her strawberry blond curls.
"Do you want to hear all about how dangerous it is to make pets of men, magistra?" she asked, and Rita grimaced, standing up.
"Not really," she said. "Not until Judith comes back to redo the ritual and I don't have any choice, anyway."
"Oh, I doubt you'll have to wait that long," said Tanya. "How is your sister, anyway?"
Rita squinted at her. "Do you have other appointments today, Tanya?"
"Yes, magistra," said Tanya with a decent imitation of demureness, picking up her bowl and rising, too, with such perfect grace that she didn't spill a drop. "Do you want to keep this water, or should I cleanse it?"
"It won't do me any good," said Rita. "Just don't leave it lying around. I don't want this story to spread any quicker than it has to."
When Rita went back to her bedroom, Sean was dressed again, and curled on the floor, and appeared to be asleep. Kyle was sitting next to him, staring off into space; his eyes refocused quickly on Rita, waiting.
She held her hands to him, and he took them and let her raise him to his feet; then she stepped forward, and kissed him on the lips.
"You won't be sorry, Kyle," she said softly. "For your kindness."
Kyle looked at her, startled, and then gave her a small, pleased smile. She smiled back, kissed the corner of his mouth, and took him in her arms, hugging him close for a long time, then let him go and stepped back.
"You are dismissed," she said, and he left, sneaking a quick, almost shy glance at her over his shoulder.
When the door closed behind him, Rita knelt down on the floor beside Sean, who was still asleep, and put a gentle hand on his head, stroking the cropped hair-- darker than Kyle's, and less curly. She wasn't surprised to see that he'd obviously been crying. He looked exhausted.
At the moment he came awake, though he barely stirred outwardly, his body-- heart, nerves, stomach, muscle tension-- surged with so much surprise and alarm and bewilderment and terror that another woman might have been startled into hurting him. Rita wasn't, though; she might be, per Tanya, dangerously inconsiderate and worryingly muddled when it came to the difference between Sean and Kyle, but she was at least disciplined enough that her power wasn't going to hurt any man by accident.
She kept stroking him in silence for a bit, giving him a chance to calm down a little, before she spoke.
"Don't be afraid," she said, eventually. "I won't hurt you."
He swallowed, his muscles hard as a rock with tension, and didn't move.
Rita reached out for him and urged him gently to a sitting position, then helped him stand. He was trembling violently as she guided him towards the bed and helped him lie down, face down, on top of the covers; she arranged a pillow under his cheek, supporting his neck, and tossed away another pillow before she kicked off her shoes, sat down next to him on the bed with her legs crossed, and began stroking his back through his shirt, rubbing her palm slowly back and forth across his protruding shoulder blades.
"I'm not going to punish you," she said quietly. "I think you've been frightened enough already, as a consequence of your disobedience. There won't be any pain."
He didn't say anything, but he heard her, and she thought he relaxed the tiniest bit.
"I'm going to give you some time, before we try the ritual again," she continued. "At the suggestion of the seer who monitored this attempt. In her opinion, it was unreasonable of me to expect you to undergo a complex ritual before you and I had had a chance to get better acquainted. I don't think it was entirely unreasonable of me to expect your obedience, regardless of the circumstances-- but even if you had managed to stay in the circle, the results of the ritual wouldn't have been-- optimal-- with you so frightened. And that wasn't under your control."
She paused, not sure how much of this he was taking in, and decided that it didn't matter as much as the fact that she was still touching him, without hurting him, and without trying to undress him; his energy was responding to that, like a bristling cat being stroked back to smoothness, slowly settling down, his painfully taut muscles relaxing, his breathing evening out.
"So we'll wait," she said, wanting to be sure he was clear on this part at least. "We'll try the ritual again in two weeks." Rita had settled on the amount of time they'd have to wait for any other man to get out of quarantine, so Judith couldn't complain over the delay, although she didn't plan on mentioning that part to Sean. "We'll take that time to get to know each other better, you and I. I hope that by the end of it, you'll consider that you know me well enough to believe me when I promise you have nothing to fear."
He was trembling again, but not the hard, spasmodic twitching he'd been doing earlier; this was a looser, subtler quiver, that felt less worrying. She crooked her fingers and drew them lightly along his back, something Kyle loved her to do through his T-shirt; it could put him in something close to a trance of pleasure and relaxation.
Surely that didn't count as confusing Sean with Kyle.
"Does this feel good?" she asked, to make sure, and after a moment, Sean nodded his head on the pillow.
"Good," said Rita. "I want it to feel good when I touch you. I want you to learn to expect that. That unless you're being punished-- and I'll never punish you without warning-- my touch will always mean pleasure for you. Or at least-- comfort. Not pain."
She moved her hand back to his head, stroking his hair again, and then lightly touching his cheek.
"I understand that may take time," she said. "You've been hurt by women before, haven't you?"
He hesitated, then nodded again.
"And by men," she said. "At the center."
He nodded, sudden tears bright in his eyes. Rita's heart contracted sharply, unexpectedly, at the sight. She leaned down and kissed him, lightly, on the jaw, freshly clean-shaven before the start of the disastrous ritual; he drew in his breath and shivered, and then lay still.
"I intend to protect you," she said, and reached to stroke the nape of his neck, something else Kyle loved. "In return for your obedience. And I hope that-- as we learn more about each other-- you won't find obedience to me so-- difficult."
He opened his mouth as if to speak, and then closed it, darting a frightened glance up at her.
"When we're alone," she said, "you may always speak to me, unless I tell you otherwise. With respect, of course."
"I'll obey," he said hoarsely. "I'll be good, magistra."
She smiled down at him. "Good. Then you have nothing to be afraid of."
"Thank you," he said, and his voice cracked. "I'm sorry, thank you, I'm so so sorry--"
"Shhhh," said Rita gently, before he started to babble. "It's all right. It was my fault too. So I'll forgive you if you'll forgive me."
He stared up at her, uncomprehending, and she laughed a little.
"Let's just start over," she said. "And in two weeks, we'll try again."
I also forgot about the urge when building a new story to reply to comments BY WRITING ANOTHER CHAPTER.
"With all respect, magistra," said Judith, in a tone that was not all-respectful, "I think you're making a mistake."
"Your opinion is noted," said Rita mildly. "I'm sorry you had to come all the way here, now that we're going to have to postpone the ritual. I'll call you when we've rescheduled. Bonnie, will you see Judith to her car, please?"
Bonnie stepped forward as Judith pinched her lips together tightly, then nodded and turned, sharply, to go.
"Leah," said Rita when she was gone, "do me a favor and find Carol. Make sure she hasn't set anything on fire."
"Sure," said Leah, glancing surreptitiously at Tanya as she rose. "Uh, magistra-- I'm glad you're giving him another chance. He seems like a sweet kid."
Rita smiled at her as she left, and then sat down on the floor opposite Tanya, who hadn't moved from in front of her silver bowl.
"So," she said.
Tanya looked up at her, pushed her too-long black fringe back from her forehead, and raised her eyebrows. "So?"
"So what went wrong?"
"Now, that's what I like about seeing for you," said Tanya, smiling, her teeth white against her dusky skin. "You don't start telling me what you did, or didn't do, or couldn't have been expected to do, or would have done if I'd just said earlier and it's too late now."
Rita examined the seer, the eyes so dark she could see her own troubled expression. "So?"
"Well, first of all," Tanya said, "you let Carol in here, which right away upped the odds of disaster about seventeen percent. Now that might not seem like a lot, but I try to report anything over ten, and you might recall I have told you in the past that a thirteen-year-old girl's got no business doing rituals with men in them, I don't care whose daughter she is. Rest in peace," she added, perfunctorily.
Rita frowned. "You think it was Carol's fault?"
"I think Carol makes me nervous," said Tanya, "and I'm not the one who gets my eyeballs fried sunny-side-up if she loses control."
"I thought it would be good experience for her, supervised," said Rita. "But he certainly did seem more frightened when she was close to him. All right, Tanya. What else did I do wrong?"
"This I didn't realize, till you'd already cast," said Tanya, "but magistra, how much quality time have you spent with the boy? An hour? Cumulative? And you expected him to trust you when you grabbed his thing with a knife in your hand?"
"I'm his protectrix," said Rita, feeling a hint of indignation, though it never did much good to get indignant with Tanya.
"Gaia give me patience," said Tanya, casting her eyes piously to the floor before she looked back up at Rita, shaking back her fringe again. "That doesn't mean you won't hurt him. Most men will tell you that. Tell me Kyle wasn't scared of you when you first picked him up."
"He was," Rita admitted.
Tanya looked at her keenly, her dark eyes narrowing. "So you took it slow with him."
"Well, yes," said Rita.
"But not with Sean."
"What are you saying, Tanya?" Rita asked, a little impatiently.
"Just that it's not like you, how you acted with Sean," said Tanya. "Some women, sure. And they'd toss him back if he couldn't perform, and get a new one. But that's not you. You're the type to make damn sure he isn't scared before you put him in a circle and come at him with a dagger."
Rita had to agree, but-- "Then why didn't I? Make sure?"
"You want to know?"
It wasn't a rhetorical question-- Tanya didn't ask that particular question rhetorically-- and Rita considered before she answered, "Yes."
"You mixed Sean up with Kyle," said Tanya. "Maybe you want Sean to be Kyle. I don't know that part. They look the same-- anyway, you got the idea they were the same. You've been good to Kyle for two years, so you forgot you'd been good to Sean for less than two days. That's two days in your house, and let's be generous and say two hours of face time. And that's bad news, magistra-- for the boy and for Kyle, too. You can't be mixing those two up."
Rita wanted to protest, but she didn't-- Tanya wouldn't have said it if she didn't know what she was talking about.
"You can't pick up with Sean where you left off with Kyle," said Tanya. "He doesn't know what Kyle knows. He's a whole new boy. And I'll tell you this too, magistra-- after what just happened, he is one hell of a lot more scared than Kyle was when you two started. So if you're keeping Sean, you can't even pick up where you started with Kyle. You've got to start before that, or you'll kill him with a heart attack before you get anywhere near his maidenhead."
"What should I do?" Rita asked, worried.
"Much as I like you for asking," said Tanya, flashing her lovely smile again, "it's not my expertise, magistra. What you did with Kyle, to make him nuzzle up to you the way he does-- well, you know that better than me. And I don't know if you want Sean to love you like Kyle, or just father your girl. Maybe you don't know that either. But if you're keeping Sean, you better figure it out."
"Do you think I should?" Rita asked. "Keep him?"
"You already told him you were," said Tanya. "You won't break your word, even to a man."
"But do you think I should have told him so?"
"I don't do should have, magistra," said Tanya. "I do was, is, and could be. You want should, you figure it out yourself."
Into the pause that ensued, Bonnie came back in, and dropped down in Rita's desk chair, wiping imaginary sweat from her forehead. Or maybe not imaginary; her face was flushed under her strawberry blond curls.
"Do you want to hear all about how dangerous it is to make pets of men, magistra?" she asked, and Rita grimaced, standing up.
"Not really," she said. "Not until Judith comes back to redo the ritual and I don't have any choice, anyway."
"Oh, I doubt you'll have to wait that long," said Tanya. "How is your sister, anyway?"
Rita squinted at her. "Do you have other appointments today, Tanya?"
"Yes, magistra," said Tanya with a decent imitation of demureness, picking up her bowl and rising, too, with such perfect grace that she didn't spill a drop. "Do you want to keep this water, or should I cleanse it?"
"It won't do me any good," said Rita. "Just don't leave it lying around. I don't want this story to spread any quicker than it has to."
When Rita went back to her bedroom, Sean was dressed again, and curled on the floor, and appeared to be asleep. Kyle was sitting next to him, staring off into space; his eyes refocused quickly on Rita, waiting.
She held her hands to him, and he took them and let her raise him to his feet; then she stepped forward, and kissed him on the lips.
"You won't be sorry, Kyle," she said softly. "For your kindness."
Kyle looked at her, startled, and then gave her a small, pleased smile. She smiled back, kissed the corner of his mouth, and took him in her arms, hugging him close for a long time, then let him go and stepped back.
"You are dismissed," she said, and he left, sneaking a quick, almost shy glance at her over his shoulder.
When the door closed behind him, Rita knelt down on the floor beside Sean, who was still asleep, and put a gentle hand on his head, stroking the cropped hair-- darker than Kyle's, and less curly. She wasn't surprised to see that he'd obviously been crying. He looked exhausted.
At the moment he came awake, though he barely stirred outwardly, his body-- heart, nerves, stomach, muscle tension-- surged with so much surprise and alarm and bewilderment and terror that another woman might have been startled into hurting him. Rita wasn't, though; she might be, per Tanya, dangerously inconsiderate and worryingly muddled when it came to the difference between Sean and Kyle, but she was at least disciplined enough that her power wasn't going to hurt any man by accident.
She kept stroking him in silence for a bit, giving him a chance to calm down a little, before she spoke.
"Don't be afraid," she said, eventually. "I won't hurt you."
He swallowed, his muscles hard as a rock with tension, and didn't move.
Rita reached out for him and urged him gently to a sitting position, then helped him stand. He was trembling violently as she guided him towards the bed and helped him lie down, face down, on top of the covers; she arranged a pillow under his cheek, supporting his neck, and tossed away another pillow before she kicked off her shoes, sat down next to him on the bed with her legs crossed, and began stroking his back through his shirt, rubbing her palm slowly back and forth across his protruding shoulder blades.
"I'm not going to punish you," she said quietly. "I think you've been frightened enough already, as a consequence of your disobedience. There won't be any pain."
He didn't say anything, but he heard her, and she thought he relaxed the tiniest bit.
"I'm going to give you some time, before we try the ritual again," she continued. "At the suggestion of the seer who monitored this attempt. In her opinion, it was unreasonable of me to expect you to undergo a complex ritual before you and I had had a chance to get better acquainted. I don't think it was entirely unreasonable of me to expect your obedience, regardless of the circumstances-- but even if you had managed to stay in the circle, the results of the ritual wouldn't have been-- optimal-- with you so frightened. And that wasn't under your control."
She paused, not sure how much of this he was taking in, and decided that it didn't matter as much as the fact that she was still touching him, without hurting him, and without trying to undress him; his energy was responding to that, like a bristling cat being stroked back to smoothness, slowly settling down, his painfully taut muscles relaxing, his breathing evening out.
"So we'll wait," she said, wanting to be sure he was clear on this part at least. "We'll try the ritual again in two weeks." Rita had settled on the amount of time they'd have to wait for any other man to get out of quarantine, so Judith couldn't complain over the delay, although she didn't plan on mentioning that part to Sean. "We'll take that time to get to know each other better, you and I. I hope that by the end of it, you'll consider that you know me well enough to believe me when I promise you have nothing to fear."
He was trembling again, but not the hard, spasmodic twitching he'd been doing earlier; this was a looser, subtler quiver, that felt less worrying. She crooked her fingers and drew them lightly along his back, something Kyle loved her to do through his T-shirt; it could put him in something close to a trance of pleasure and relaxation.
Surely that didn't count as confusing Sean with Kyle.
"Does this feel good?" she asked, to make sure, and after a moment, Sean nodded his head on the pillow.
"Good," said Rita. "I want it to feel good when I touch you. I want you to learn to expect that. That unless you're being punished-- and I'll never punish you without warning-- my touch will always mean pleasure for you. Or at least-- comfort. Not pain."
She moved her hand back to his head, stroking his hair again, and then lightly touching his cheek.
"I understand that may take time," she said. "You've been hurt by women before, haven't you?"
He hesitated, then nodded again.
"And by men," she said. "At the center."
He nodded, sudden tears bright in his eyes. Rita's heart contracted sharply, unexpectedly, at the sight. She leaned down and kissed him, lightly, on the jaw, freshly clean-shaven before the start of the disastrous ritual; he drew in his breath and shivered, and then lay still.
"I intend to protect you," she said, and reached to stroke the nape of his neck, something else Kyle loved. "In return for your obedience. And I hope that-- as we learn more about each other-- you won't find obedience to me so-- difficult."
He opened his mouth as if to speak, and then closed it, darting a frightened glance up at her.
"When we're alone," she said, "you may always speak to me, unless I tell you otherwise. With respect, of course."
"I'll obey," he said hoarsely. "I'll be good, magistra."
She smiled down at him. "Good. Then you have nothing to be afraid of."
"Thank you," he said, and his voice cracked. "I'm sorry, thank you, I'm so so sorry--"
"Shhhh," said Rita gently, before he started to babble. "It's all right. It was my fault too. So I'll forgive you if you'll forgive me."
He stared up at her, uncomprehending, and she laughed a little.
"Let's just start over," she said. "And in two weeks, we'll try again."
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Date: 2009-07-06 09:23 pm (UTC)