Valkyrie of Desire

8. Mistress Knows Best

Cut shallow and often

Never end my torture

Scrape scabs and sprinkle salt

Ignore every answer

Strain limbs and twist fingers

Until I remember

This is a punishment

Not a fresh adventure

—Solaris Sweetwater

Nipples out and hair hanging free, Hildr loses the towel around her waist and sits. Apple's chair creaks under her modest weight, and she spreads her knees like men do.

"Hey." She rocks forward and back. "Old man."

Apple grunts from the bathroom, his portly backside moving in and out of the doorway as he splashes. He has been working for the better part of an hour, washing away the vestiges of bachelor living.

He turns, brushing away soap suds pooling at the top of his belly. "Well?"

Men do not value their appearance like women do, unless it is tied to their pride. Hildr wets a red thread between her lips and passes the stiffened tip through a sewing needle's eye. To break him to her will, she must coax and shame and then repeat with a masturbatory rhythm.

Apple twists about, covering his sagging bits, and blushes.

Hildr picks up her dandelion dress and pokes her pinkie through the hole her vagina burned into the tan fabric. "What a wonder to see a man twice my age, shy as a schoolboy."

"You've peeled away my dignity." He stands up straight, gut round and blue veins crisscrossing. "Relish my humiliation, woman."

"Ah, poor man." With deft jerks, she sews closed the hole in her borrowed dress. "Now, suck in your pride and get presentable for the head druidess's visit."

Grumbling under his breath, he goes to an open closet and grabs the drab tunic and trousers hanging there. "I'm hungry."

"Why do druids and shamans despise each other?" Hildr stands to slip on her dress, and the tips of her tits tingle as the coarse cloth settles.

He sighs and puts on his trousers, grabbing the door frame for balance.

She smooths out a wrinkle at her waist. "Is there some dark treachery from an ancient holy war?"

"Nothing so dramatic, Sweet Peach. We split the skills of Green."

Hildr squints. Healing and enhancing the body, influencing and controlling plants and animals, and viewing the hues of a soul's aura; Green's skill list is impressive and mostly alien to her fire-focused experience.

"So?" she says.

"Uh, well." He clears his throat. "The shamanic and druidic classes come from opposing directions with dabs of Red or White corrupting our aura and healing skills respectively. We also compete for the grace of Gardener. Caster classes of the other colors are much the same. Isn't it so for furies and warlocks pining after your Phoenix—"

"That's it? Your big class rivalry is based on druids mixing some White with their verdant castings instead of the dab of Red that you do?" She shakes her head. "Equally impure, you're a petty bunch of hypocrites."

The old man straightens his collar. "Siblings fight more than strangers."

Hildr fingers the slash of red thread over her crotch, marking where an embroidered dandelion once flowered. Her mother often spoke of other babies she could have had, brothers and sisters aborted before and after Hildr was born. She rubs her cheek. When she dared to demand why, a backhand was the reply.