My Fool, My Leash, My Afternoon - a Fantasy for a Future slave
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The morning of the faire I lay his costume out on the bed with the particular satisfaction of a woman who has planned something she intends to enjoy thoroughly. The motley is excellent, deep jewel tones, the bells on the collar catching the light, the cut of it deliberately absurd in the way that only works on a man with genuine physical presence. Foolishness on an unimpressive man reads as foolishness. Foolishness on a man like him reads as theater, as choice, as the most interesting thing in any room he enters. He understands this. He puts it on without comment, with the quiet dignity he brings to everything I ask of him, which is itself part of what makes it so delicious.
The leash attaches to his collar with a sound I find unreasonably satisfying.
I am wearing the corset, deep burgundy with black lacing, the kind of construction that does what good corsetry always does: makes the architecture of a woman into an argument that cannot be refuted. My skirts are full, my shoulders bare, and I carry myself the way I carry myself everywhere, which is to say as though the ground has been expecting me specifically. We make, I think, an extraordinary pair. The Goddess and her Fool. The implicit story of us readable to anyone with eyes and the wit to use them.
He walks two steps behind me and slightly to my left, the leash held loosely in my right hand, and I feel the particular pleasure of his presence the way you feel good weather: as a condition of the atmosphere, something that improves everything around it simply by existing.
The faire opens around us in all its chaotic, fragrant, anachronistic glory and I move through it with the unhurried ease of a woman who has nowhere to be except exactly here.
It is the stocks that I have been thinking about since I planned this outing.
They are positioned in the center of the square, heavy oak weathered to silver, historically accurate in their construction and entirely available for use by willing participants. I steer us toward them with the gentle but unambiguous redirection of the leash, and he feels the change in direction and does not ask where we are going. He has learned not to ask where we are going.
"In you go," I say pleasantly, nodding to the attendant, who opens the upper board with the cheerful efficiency of someone who has done this many times and finds it no less entertaining for the repetition.
He folds himself into position. The board comes down. His wrists and neck are held, his posture suddenly and completely at the mercy of the construction, and I step around to face him with my hands clasped lightly in front of me and look at him with the full and unhurried attention I reserve for things I am enjoying very much.
He looks up at me from his locked position with that expression. The one I have catalogued. The one that contains too many things to name.
I lean down until we are level, my face close to his, close enough that the bells on his collar would brush my cheek if either of us moved. Around us the faire continues its noise and color, children running, merchants calling, the distant sound of a lute being played with more enthusiasm than skill. No one stops. Several people look. Some smile. I do not acknowledge any of them.
"Comfortable?" I ask.
"No, Goddess."
"Good."
I straighten and produce from the small bag at my wrist a piece of the honeyed pastry I purchased at the last stall, and I eat it slowly, with evident pleasure, directly in front of him. He watches. The bells are very still.
"You look," I say thoughtfully, tilting my head, "exactly right."
A small crowd has gathered at a comfortable distance, the way people gather around anything that has the quality of performance, and I am aware of them the way I am aware of weather, peripherally, without concern. I reach out and adjust the bells on his collar with one finger, a gesture so proprietary and so casual that I hear the quality of his exhale change completely.
"We will stay here," I inform him, "until I finish my pastry and decide I want to see the falconers. Which gives you approximately," I pause, taking another unhurried bite, "as long as it takes me to eat this."
He says nothing. His eyes do not leave my face.
The afternoon light falls across the faire in long gold bars and my corset is exactly right and my fool is exactly where I put him and I am, in this moment, precisely as content as a woman who has arranged her Saturday exactly to her specifications has every right to be.
I take a very small bite.
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I am in no hurry at all.?
