100.jpg)
Had an actual Athenian or Spartan or Arcadian of elder days been transported forward in time, and seen the shrine that had been laid in honour of the gods of their people in the 21st year of the 21st Century, they would have been completely baffled. Not statues: no great monuments of bronze or marbles; no altar. Just twelve high windows in stained glass representing the dodekatheon, and a thirteenth for poor old Hades, gloomily framing the thunderous centerpiece of the shrine with his watery brother. Our theoretical Hellenic would not have known that the windows represented gods, since their images had been de-personalised to complete abstraction. It wasn’t utterly mysterious: swirling water for Poseidon; a pair of wings for Hermes; grapes for Dionysus, and so on. But the brutalist, almost cubist style in which they were wrought was so strange that their symbolism was obscured; mystified; reduced down to the primal simplicity of a Platonic form.
The shrine was underground so the windows had been built into alcoves, behind which were electric lights to give the stained glass the necessary drama. The space looked very pleasant; it was almost beautiful in a quiet sort of way. But if the theoretical Hellenic had been able to work out that this was a shrine, they would not have been pleased to see their gods revered in this manner. It was just as well that there was no word in Ancient Greek for ‘kitsch’.
A woman entered. She was barefoot, in a thin, white cloak. She was a little taller than average, honey-skinned, perhaps twenty-four years old. She wore a hood, concealing green eyes and blonde hair. If you’d looked past the cloak, for the woman was naked underneath it, you’d have found a gymnastically slender body: one that had been deliberately and laboriously conditioned. Her arms were slim, but strong, her legs toned and fast, her stomach hard. Her order demanded that its adherents treat their bodies with the same reverence as their place of worship: not just mens sana in corpore sano but spiritus sanus as well.
She moved to the leftmost of the shrines, to that of Ares. He was represented by an abstract figure of a human body that appeared to be hacking at itself with a sword. There was little to love about what Ares stood for, but he was an important reminder, that hatred and warlike fury were in the souls of all people, and it took effort and maintenance to keep them at bay. The priestess muttered a prayer in Greek, essentially: “Ares, do not trouble yourself to give us your gifts.”
To the other deities the priestess was more grateful: she thanked Apollo for music, thanked Artemis for the wild woods, Hera - represented by an extensively stylised image of the female reproductive organs - for guardianship of the womb, and for the development of safe methods of abortion. She went on in this way through half the number of the Twelve-and-the-One, until finally she reached the shrine of Zeus.
Only this shrine would a time-travelling Greek have been able to recognise instantly for what it was. Clouds and rain and snow and lightning and all the usual trappings of a pagan weather-god, all set against the background of a great, rectangular shield. At this, the priestess said a longer prayer, thanking Zeus for all his gifts - and especially for the gift of rain: the gods might have been Greek, but the shrine and the worshipper were both English.
The priestess had been about to move onto Hades, to thank him for the peaceful repose of the departed, when she noticed that the shrine of the Cloud-Compeller was a little beneath its usual glory: the light behind the window had gone out.
“Bugger,” the priestess muttered, not appearing overly concerned about profaning this sacred space. She was about to continue her ritual, but the fault had broken her concentration. Throwing back her hood, she exposed a fair face, with almond-shaped green eyes, smooth cheeks and vividly red lips. In her white cloak, and with the high, arch way that she carried herself, the priestess put one in mind of Renaissance-classicism.
But she’d twisted her classical features into a thoroughly modern frown. Irritated, she marched back to the entrance of the shrine, opened the thick, wooden door, and stuck her head out.
“Margaret!” she shouted. “The electrics in Zeus’ shrine have given out again!”
There was a long silence. Finally, in a thin voice, someone replied:
“... did you try changing the bulbs?”
“I changed the bulb two days ago!” she shouted. “I’m telling you, something’s wrong with the electrics again! Can you get Charlotte?”
“... Charlotte’s visiting her mother in Kent. We could call an electrician?”
A vein in the priestess’ temple twitched. “Isn’t this supposed to be a secret society?”
“So are the Freemasons,” Margaret replied. “Oh don’t be difficult, Gwen, we had the plumber in last week.”
Gwen’s frown folded into a scowl.
“I am not,” she said, “exposing the secrets of the Order of Mysterion to a beer-bellied halfwit who thinks a toolbox he bought from Argos makes him a master craftsman. I’ll fix it myself!” She left the shrine, closing the door behind her and locking it with a large, iron key. She shot off down the corridor that curled around the shrine, her bare feet slapping against cool granite.
“If you electrocute yourself,” Margaret shouted, “don’t burn the robe! Our only spare’s at the dry cleaner’s.”
If Margaret had been in sight, Gwen would have flipped her off.
The room adjoining the shrine had never been intended as a sacred space in itself. Its purpose was to allow the shrine’s caretakers to clean and repair the stained glass without violating the shrine’s sanctity. But just because the chamber wasn’t sacred didn’t mean it wasn’t important. In fact, Gwen would never have allowed herself to curse in here. The room was small, dark, and cold, and it put Gwen in mind of a sepulchre. Thanks to her, that was what people had started calling it.
Another large key, and a combination lock, were required to give her access, and Gwen made sure to lock the door behind her when she was inside. From this side, the shrines of the Twelve-and-the-One were just featureless, steel cases, each also locked from this side so that no-one could break into the sepulchre by breaking the glass. Yet another key was required to open Zeus’ shrine, and inspect the lights that honoured him.
“Er…” Gwen had hoped it would be obvious what was wrong, but all the wires appeared to be in the right places. She was pleased to see that the bulbs were indeed intact, but vindication didn’t solve her problem. She began to think they were just going to have to wait for Charlotte to get back from Kent, and in the end she turned out to be right. But her concern about the shrine’s electrics was made to take a backseat, for something had happened in the dark sepulchre. Something that, as far as Gwen knew, had not happened for at least two-thousand years.
There was a reason that the sepulchre was so well-armoured. It housed not only access to the shrines’ intimates, but to the Order of Mysterion’s vault. This vault contained only one item: a shield-shaped pendant, or necklace. It was, by an apparent coincidence, exactly ten centimetres in diameter. It was quite thick, and quite heavy, heavier than a pendant even of solid gold looked as if it ought to have been. It, indeed, was the ‘mystery’ from which her order drew its name, and was the mystical centerpiece of their cult. Once every year, they ritually laid it before the shrine of Zeus, and once every year - when the right words were said - it would rise into the air, shine a brilliant green, and then descend.
Like for many of her fellows, it had been this spectacle that had been the final persuasion Gwen had needed to join the Order of Mysterion. In her heart of hearts, she was not absolutely sure that the spectacle was not the result of some kind of special effect, but the possibility that it was real - real magic - excited her too much to ignore. The Order had taught her the history of ‘the Thermachrysos’, the reason for their guardianship of this treasure, of the reason for its being kept utterly secret.
“Do not,” a fellow member had told her, “expect miracles. The Yearly Light is to help us keep the faith, I suppose, but beyond that you will likely live and die without seeing anything else. We are for it, but it is not for us.” At the time this had seemed like wisdom, for neophytes often became disaffected. The only problem was that the Thermachrysos had proved Gwen’s advisor to be dramatically mistaken.
The sound that boomed out of the vault was at once like a mighty voice and like a high, clear bell. The light that poured from the vault’s keyhole and the gaps between its hinges was an incandescent, radiant gold. Gwen was momentarily dumbstruck, but when she gathered her wits she rushed forward to the old, iron door of the vault, unlocked it and heaved it open. For a moment, she was swallowed in its radiance, and could not see, or hear, or think. But the radiance softened, and then faded. Gwen could see the Thermachrysos, hovering slightly above its housing, but it was not the levitation that most stunned the young priestess. It was the sign. In vivid silver against the gold of the pendant itself, a symbol had appeared: like a capital ‘Z’ with the bottom line bisected by a ‘7’: the astrological symbol for Zeus.
When Gwen burst into the Order’s prayer room, not only violating its meditative peace by raising a terrible hue and cry, but holding in her hands the Order’s most sacred and significant treasure, there were those who had a mind to excommunicate her on the spot. Certainly she was angrily hushed, and a couple of the other women present demanded to know what the hell she thought she was doing.
“Shut up,” she explained, “and look!” She held the Thermachrysos aloft, and the entire room fell silent.
“The sign!” one of the others gasped.
“It’s awake!” another cried.
“You mean it’s real?” another exclaimed, voicing a sentiment that almost all the members of the order shared.
“Of course it’s real!” Gwen replied, forgetting in a blissful moment of revelation every ounce of doubt she’d had before. “The Thermachrysos has chosen a bearer!” she said, laughing with glee that this should have been happening in her time. And then, spontaneously, though she herself did not understand the words’ significance, and had never heard them before, she declared with rapturous joy:
“The Aegis is forged!”
The Power of Aegis, Part 1: "The Aegis is Forged!"
-
Damselbinder
We’ve all lost the instructions.
The words were graffitied on the side of a pedestrian footbridge. Dimanche had walked across it several times, but this was the first time she’d seen the graffiti. Whoever had written it either had extraordinarily long arms, or had had a friend hold them by the legs as they’d sprayed it. Taking that into account, it was extraordinarily legible.
Dimanche had been to the South Kilburn estate about five times in the past two years, but this was the first time she’d paid a visit to a flat on the top floor. She looked out of a small window, the view partly obscured by the condensation that had gathered on the grimy panes, spewed out by an electric kettle working its way through a crescendo of bubbling. That Dimanche had been able to see the graffiti, large and bright though it was, was testament to the impressive acuity of her hooded, dark eyes. Not many would have resented the obscurance, however. There were parts of London that were very handsome: Brent was not one of them.
Still, Dimanche appreciated the moment of peace. The day was not yet half over, but it had already been very trying. She’d made two home visits before this one: the first to a severely disabled man whom the local jobcentre had insisted was capable of full-time work, and who was therefore in a state of humiliating penury; the second to the home of a persistent school-refuser who had called Dimanche a bitch and tried to spit at her, for which the child’s mother had slapped her daughter in the face.
Dimanche had understood this for what it was: a moment of shock and desperation from an exhausted and impotent-feeling parent. It was perfectly obvious from the child’s reaction, too, that her mother had never struck her before. But Dimanche’’s fellow case-worker had responded in the worst possible way, had all but threatened the child’s mother with imprisonment. It would be astonishing, Dimanche thought, if this woman ever willingly admitted them into her home again.
She hoped this visit would be less fraught. She prepared four mugs of tea, two with semi-skimmed, one with no milk at all, and soy for herself, poured out of one of those little pods of milk you get at hotels, at least one of which Dimanche made sure to keep in her handbag when she was doing her rounds. Skilfully she carried them all, and a glass of water, in a balancing act that wouldn’t have been absolutely unimpressive at a circus.
“Here we are,” she said, going into the family’s living room. As she entered, two out of the three sets of male eyes in the room snapped to her. One of the owners of those sets of eyes was married, and the other was Dimanche’s colleague, so neither stared - but they had both looked, for Dimanche was a really strikingly attractive woman. There was a kind of solid, firm femininity to her: she had a feminine, but strong jawline, a marble foundation on which the softness of the rest of her features rested. She had high cheekbones, a nose that tapered elegantly from the geometry of her large, soft eyes. Her lips were pouting, pillowy, and even with the modest sheen of Dimanche’s lip gloss they looked inviting.
Dimanche’s hair was long, thick, and dark, contrasting and highlighting the warmly pale shade of her skin, and flowing down past her shoulders, shoulders which were attractively wide, sloping in a gentle gradient from her long, white neck. Much like Dimanche’s jaw was the strong ground for her softer features, so too did her shoulders set the stage for her bosoms: firm, high, and so sumptuously generous in proportion that they strained even against her relatively loose, white blouse.
Her waist was hardly waspish, but it was pleasingly trim, curving outward to a pair of curvy, womanly hips, hugged tight by a form-fitting, just-above-knee-length skirt, which clung happily not only to her hips, but to her bouncy, heart-shaped rear. Protruding from the skirt, a pair of long, graceful legs in a pair of translucent, black stockings. Her calves were smooth, slender; her thighs exhibiting more of that eye-catching, feminine solidity that was the trademark of her beauty.
Aware of, but not embarrassed by, the furtive glances, Dimanche placed two of the mugs and the glass of water on a low table, sat down next to her colleague. “Careful, Homer,” she said to him, “the handle’s still a little hot.”
“Thanks,” Homer replied. He still sounded a little sullen, and as well he might after his dreadful error at their last appointment.
The visitors had mismatched chairs, and the family - a man, a woman, and a ten year old boy - were bunched together on a sofa opposite them, a sofa which had obviously not been designed to seat three. This was a home unused to receiving guests - even when those guests were social workers.
“I’m sorry for making you wait,” Dimanche said. Her voice was soft, but not meek. It had a smooth, slightly husky quality, and more than one friend had told her they found it soothing. She had the accent of someone who had lived in the nicer - but not nicest - parts of London most of her life. Only those who knew her intimately, or who had the ears of a basset hound, could perceive the slight Welsh note in how she tripped over certain consonants. “You forget how long it takes to boil a kettle sometimes, don’t you?” she added. It was painfully inane, but Dimanche knew the value of small-talk. It always set people at ease. But in this case Dimanche appeared not to have pitched it quite small enough, for the boy sitting across from her - small for a ten year old - suddenly pricked his ears up.
“Specifeatcapssity,” he blurted out before, becoming aware that he had intruded into the acutely adult world that a social worker represented, he shrank back in embarrassment.
“I’m sorry, Damian?” Homer said. He had an irritating habit of speaking very loudly to children, and since he was also pretty large this sometimes made him come across a bit intimidating. “What did you say?”
The boy looked up again, but he probably would have kept silent if he hadn’t caught sight of Dimanche.
She was smiling at him, regarding him with soft, curious eyes. Her smile was only slight, but there was a little humour in it: humour which Damian felt was a kind of private joke between the two of them. He felt brave enough to speak
“Sp-specific… water has a high specific heat capacity,” he said, speaking so quickly that it was hard to understand him. “That’s why it - took - um…” Conscious that his scientific enthusiasm might be mistaken for him being a show-off, he fell silent again.
“That’s why it took a long time to boil,” Dimanche finished for him. “That’s very interesting, Damian. You know, I don’t think I’ve heard the words ‘specific heat capacity’ since I was in school. Do you like science? I was always pants at it.”
Damian nodded. His father patted him on the arm.
“Gonna be a doctor one day, right?”
“R-right.”
The father’s gesture had been very self-conscious: he was trying to project the image of a loving father. The stigma of social work, the idea that they were part of an insidious conspiracy to rob the nation’s parents of their beloved children, was pervasive, and frequently Dimanche found parents whom she visited were either outright hostile, or - like Damian’s father - obsequious. She did not blame them, but it was unpleasant to be feared.
“How have you been settling in, Simon?” Homer asked. His chair was a little too small for him, so he kept shifting around uncomfortably, which didn’t help the already awkward mood.
“Yeah, it’s been good,” Simon replied. “It’s like, every day I was away, you know I just, I wanted to get back to my family, you know? It’s like a dream come true, innit?” He was still trying much too hard. In his eyes, Dimanche saw an intense version of the fear she saw so often in those on whom she attended. For Simon this fear was more rational than for most, for though his child had never been taken from him, he had been taken from his son. For the last three years, less a fortnight or so, he’d been in prison.
“How do you feel about having your dad back, Damian?” Homer asked.
Internally, Dimanche winced.
“It’s great,” Damian replied. “It feels like the family is complete again.” It sounded like the sort of thing he might have written in a five-paragraph essay: awkwardly rehearsed. But then, what the hell was he supposed to say to a question like that?
But Dimanche couldn’t be too displeased with her colleague. Homer’s question had been unintelligent, but it had revealed something important. Before answering, Damian had glanced nervously at his mother.
For the next few minutes, the two social workers talked with Simon about how he was acclimatising to life outside, what his fortunes had been looking for work, how and if Kilburn was different from when he’d first gone inside, whether or not he felt it was a good idea to try to reconnect with old friends. At no point did Simon’s wife, Thandie, say more than two words at a time. After twenty minutes of this, she excused herself, ostensibly to go to the toilet. But as Dimanche and Homer began to fall into more straightforwardly official talk, Dimanche caught sight of Thandie slipping past the door to the living room. Sensing that something was amiss, Dimanche rose, and followed.
She found Thandie in the kitchen, standing with her back to the grimy window. She had her arms folded across her chest, and she was gritting her teeth.
“Oh,” she said, seeing Dimanche come in. “Do you need something?”
“No, thank you,” Dimanche said. “Are you okay?”
Thandie opened her mouth to say ‘of course’, but Dimanche’s hooded eyes were so searching that it wasn’t possible to fob her off with a platitude. She opened her mouth again to say ‘that’s none of your business’, but Dimanche’s soft voice had expressed such genuine concern that it wasn’t possible to be rude to her. She opened her mouth again to say something, but nothing came out, and she turned away, supporting herself against the kitchen counter with both hands.
“No,” she said at last. “I’m not fucking okay.”
Dimanche sat down at the kitchen table. She didn’t say anything, leaving a space for Thandie to fill.
“I know what I’m supposed to do,” Thandie said. “I’m supposed to support him. I’m supposed to help him get back on his feet. I’m supposed to make you people think that he’ll be a good dad.”
“Do you think that?”
Thandie turned around, angry, like Dimanche had tricked her into saying what she’d said.
“Yes. Yes! He’s - he’s always been good to Damian. He’s always made an effort. I mean - he’s been a dad, and not every little boy who grows up around here gets that.” She pursed her lips. “Damian needs that. It’s why I -” She was almost crying.
“It’s why you didn’t leave him,” Dimanche said. “Is that right?”
“Yeah,” Thandie replied. “But Damian isn’t the only one who has to live with him, is he? I have to as well. I have to be his wife again. It was easy being faithful when Simon was still inside, but now he’s here…” She clenched a trembling fist. “You know what he did, yeah? You know why I don’t want him sleeping in my bed?”
It was all in Dimanche’s case notes, of course. Simon had been in a fight in a pub, a fight which had been broken up by the police. He had only been charged with affray at first, but one of the men Simon had been fighting wound up with brain damage, and a witness had accused Simon of stamping repeatedly on the head of the man he’d fought with. In fact it wasn’t true - the unlucky man had simply slipped and cracked his head on the kerb, but Simon had panicked. He’d found out who his accuser was, and had tried to persuade them to retract. When they’d refused, Simon had got angry. Then he’d got violent. His victim - a fifty-two year old man - had been in hospital for a week, and left permanently blind in one eye. Simon had been charged with GBH. He was very lucky that his sentence had been so short.
“I know he served his time,” Thandie said. “I know that’s the way it’s supposed to work. You do something bad, you pay for it, and he has paid. And I’ve forgiven him, you know? I’ve forgiven him for being so bloody thick. I’ve forgiven him for fucking up our marriage. I’ve forgiven him for scarring his son - because you know Damian’s gonna carry this weight all his life. But - but it’s not about forgiveness. I don’t want to live with a bad man!”
Dimanche nodded, tenting her fingers. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then she looked at her watch.
“Oh I’m sorry, am I boring you?” Thandie snapped.
“No, Mrs. Butler,” Dimanche replied, calmly. “I was just checking that it had passed 12.30. Officially that means it’s my lunch break. So, officially, I’m not a social worker for the next half an hour.” In reality, this was nonsense, but it was a tactic she used often when she needed her clients to take her seriously.
“Mrs. Butler,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a position like yours. I don’t envy it, and I don’t have a word of advice that would be anything close to helpful. The only thing I’ll say is that I don’t think there’s such a thing as a ‘bad man’.”
“That’s a hell of a thing for a social worker to say,” Thandie replied, with defensive sarcasm.
“I don’t mean I think all people are good,” Dimanche explained. “I just don’t think it’s ever that simple. I get the impression that Mr. Butler does love his son, and you said that he’d been a good father before he was sent to prison. Some people would say that doesn’t matter: he’s a criminal. Some people would say it’s the other way around, that being a good father means that his crime doesn’t matter.”
“What do you think?”
“I think the first way of thinking is fascist and the second way of thinking is sentimental, and cowardly. I think you’re going to weigh up what’s best for your son, and yourself, and then you’ll make the right decision, whatever that turns out to be.” With a warm, sympathetic countenance, she looked Thandie in the eye. “The only advice I’ll give,” she said, “is that you should trust your own judgement.”
In Dimanche’s experience, when people were stuck in a dilemma, they often already knew what decision they wanted to make. ‘Trust your own judgement’ was a piece of advice she gave frequently, because a lot of the time what people needed was permission to decide. And indeed she could already see something approaching resolve in Thandie’s expression, one way or the other.
“What are you going to put in your report?” Thandie asked.
“I wouldn’t call it a report,” Dimanche replied. “But nothing I’ve heard today gives me any serious concerns.”
“Even what I said about Simon?”
“All that tells me,” Dimanche said, “is that Damian is being raised by a woman of conscience.”
From what it had been when the two social workers had arrived, Thandie’s opinion of their profession had been quite radically transformed.
The words were graffitied on the side of a pedestrian footbridge. Dimanche had walked across it several times, but this was the first time she’d seen the graffiti. Whoever had written it either had extraordinarily long arms, or had had a friend hold them by the legs as they’d sprayed it. Taking that into account, it was extraordinarily legible.
Dimanche had been to the South Kilburn estate about five times in the past two years, but this was the first time she’d paid a visit to a flat on the top floor. She looked out of a small window, the view partly obscured by the condensation that had gathered on the grimy panes, spewed out by an electric kettle working its way through a crescendo of bubbling. That Dimanche had been able to see the graffiti, large and bright though it was, was testament to the impressive acuity of her hooded, dark eyes. Not many would have resented the obscurance, however. There were parts of London that were very handsome: Brent was not one of them.
Still, Dimanche appreciated the moment of peace. The day was not yet half over, but it had already been very trying. She’d made two home visits before this one: the first to a severely disabled man whom the local jobcentre had insisted was capable of full-time work, and who was therefore in a state of humiliating penury; the second to the home of a persistent school-refuser who had called Dimanche a bitch and tried to spit at her, for which the child’s mother had slapped her daughter in the face.
Dimanche had understood this for what it was: a moment of shock and desperation from an exhausted and impotent-feeling parent. It was perfectly obvious from the child’s reaction, too, that her mother had never struck her before. But Dimanche’’s fellow case-worker had responded in the worst possible way, had all but threatened the child’s mother with imprisonment. It would be astonishing, Dimanche thought, if this woman ever willingly admitted them into her home again.
She hoped this visit would be less fraught. She prepared four mugs of tea, two with semi-skimmed, one with no milk at all, and soy for herself, poured out of one of those little pods of milk you get at hotels, at least one of which Dimanche made sure to keep in her handbag when she was doing her rounds. Skilfully she carried them all, and a glass of water, in a balancing act that wouldn’t have been absolutely unimpressive at a circus.
“Here we are,” she said, going into the family’s living room. As she entered, two out of the three sets of male eyes in the room snapped to her. One of the owners of those sets of eyes was married, and the other was Dimanche’s colleague, so neither stared - but they had both looked, for Dimanche was a really strikingly attractive woman. There was a kind of solid, firm femininity to her: she had a feminine, but strong jawline, a marble foundation on which the softness of the rest of her features rested. She had high cheekbones, a nose that tapered elegantly from the geometry of her large, soft eyes. Her lips were pouting, pillowy, and even with the modest sheen of Dimanche’s lip gloss they looked inviting.
Dimanche’s hair was long, thick, and dark, contrasting and highlighting the warmly pale shade of her skin, and flowing down past her shoulders, shoulders which were attractively wide, sloping in a gentle gradient from her long, white neck. Much like Dimanche’s jaw was the strong ground for her softer features, so too did her shoulders set the stage for her bosoms: firm, high, and so sumptuously generous in proportion that they strained even against her relatively loose, white blouse.
Her waist was hardly waspish, but it was pleasingly trim, curving outward to a pair of curvy, womanly hips, hugged tight by a form-fitting, just-above-knee-length skirt, which clung happily not only to her hips, but to her bouncy, heart-shaped rear. Protruding from the skirt, a pair of long, graceful legs in a pair of translucent, black stockings. Her calves were smooth, slender; her thighs exhibiting more of that eye-catching, feminine solidity that was the trademark of her beauty.
Aware of, but not embarrassed by, the furtive glances, Dimanche placed two of the mugs and the glass of water on a low table, sat down next to her colleague. “Careful, Homer,” she said to him, “the handle’s still a little hot.”
“Thanks,” Homer replied. He still sounded a little sullen, and as well he might after his dreadful error at their last appointment.
The visitors had mismatched chairs, and the family - a man, a woman, and a ten year old boy - were bunched together on a sofa opposite them, a sofa which had obviously not been designed to seat three. This was a home unused to receiving guests - even when those guests were social workers.
“I’m sorry for making you wait,” Dimanche said. Her voice was soft, but not meek. It had a smooth, slightly husky quality, and more than one friend had told her they found it soothing. She had the accent of someone who had lived in the nicer - but not nicest - parts of London most of her life. Only those who knew her intimately, or who had the ears of a basset hound, could perceive the slight Welsh note in how she tripped over certain consonants. “You forget how long it takes to boil a kettle sometimes, don’t you?” she added. It was painfully inane, but Dimanche knew the value of small-talk. It always set people at ease. But in this case Dimanche appeared not to have pitched it quite small enough, for the boy sitting across from her - small for a ten year old - suddenly pricked his ears up.
“Specifeatcapssity,” he blurted out before, becoming aware that he had intruded into the acutely adult world that a social worker represented, he shrank back in embarrassment.
“I’m sorry, Damian?” Homer said. He had an irritating habit of speaking very loudly to children, and since he was also pretty large this sometimes made him come across a bit intimidating. “What did you say?”
The boy looked up again, but he probably would have kept silent if he hadn’t caught sight of Dimanche.
She was smiling at him, regarding him with soft, curious eyes. Her smile was only slight, but there was a little humour in it: humour which Damian felt was a kind of private joke between the two of them. He felt brave enough to speak
“Sp-specific… water has a high specific heat capacity,” he said, speaking so quickly that it was hard to understand him. “That’s why it - took - um…” Conscious that his scientific enthusiasm might be mistaken for him being a show-off, he fell silent again.
“That’s why it took a long time to boil,” Dimanche finished for him. “That’s very interesting, Damian. You know, I don’t think I’ve heard the words ‘specific heat capacity’ since I was in school. Do you like science? I was always pants at it.”
Damian nodded. His father patted him on the arm.
“Gonna be a doctor one day, right?”
“R-right.”
The father’s gesture had been very self-conscious: he was trying to project the image of a loving father. The stigma of social work, the idea that they were part of an insidious conspiracy to rob the nation’s parents of their beloved children, was pervasive, and frequently Dimanche found parents whom she visited were either outright hostile, or - like Damian’s father - obsequious. She did not blame them, but it was unpleasant to be feared.
“How have you been settling in, Simon?” Homer asked. His chair was a little too small for him, so he kept shifting around uncomfortably, which didn’t help the already awkward mood.
“Yeah, it’s been good,” Simon replied. “It’s like, every day I was away, you know I just, I wanted to get back to my family, you know? It’s like a dream come true, innit?” He was still trying much too hard. In his eyes, Dimanche saw an intense version of the fear she saw so often in those on whom she attended. For Simon this fear was more rational than for most, for though his child had never been taken from him, he had been taken from his son. For the last three years, less a fortnight or so, he’d been in prison.
“How do you feel about having your dad back, Damian?” Homer asked.
Internally, Dimanche winced.
“It’s great,” Damian replied. “It feels like the family is complete again.” It sounded like the sort of thing he might have written in a five-paragraph essay: awkwardly rehearsed. But then, what the hell was he supposed to say to a question like that?
But Dimanche couldn’t be too displeased with her colleague. Homer’s question had been unintelligent, but it had revealed something important. Before answering, Damian had glanced nervously at his mother.
For the next few minutes, the two social workers talked with Simon about how he was acclimatising to life outside, what his fortunes had been looking for work, how and if Kilburn was different from when he’d first gone inside, whether or not he felt it was a good idea to try to reconnect with old friends. At no point did Simon’s wife, Thandie, say more than two words at a time. After twenty minutes of this, she excused herself, ostensibly to go to the toilet. But as Dimanche and Homer began to fall into more straightforwardly official talk, Dimanche caught sight of Thandie slipping past the door to the living room. Sensing that something was amiss, Dimanche rose, and followed.
She found Thandie in the kitchen, standing with her back to the grimy window. She had her arms folded across her chest, and she was gritting her teeth.
“Oh,” she said, seeing Dimanche come in. “Do you need something?”
“No, thank you,” Dimanche said. “Are you okay?”
Thandie opened her mouth to say ‘of course’, but Dimanche’s hooded eyes were so searching that it wasn’t possible to fob her off with a platitude. She opened her mouth again to say ‘that’s none of your business’, but Dimanche’s soft voice had expressed such genuine concern that it wasn’t possible to be rude to her. She opened her mouth again to say something, but nothing came out, and she turned away, supporting herself against the kitchen counter with both hands.
“No,” she said at last. “I’m not fucking okay.”
Dimanche sat down at the kitchen table. She didn’t say anything, leaving a space for Thandie to fill.
“I know what I’m supposed to do,” Thandie said. “I’m supposed to support him. I’m supposed to help him get back on his feet. I’m supposed to make you people think that he’ll be a good dad.”
“Do you think that?”
Thandie turned around, angry, like Dimanche had tricked her into saying what she’d said.
“Yes. Yes! He’s - he’s always been good to Damian. He’s always made an effort. I mean - he’s been a dad, and not every little boy who grows up around here gets that.” She pursed her lips. “Damian needs that. It’s why I -” She was almost crying.
“It’s why you didn’t leave him,” Dimanche said. “Is that right?”
“Yeah,” Thandie replied. “But Damian isn’t the only one who has to live with him, is he? I have to as well. I have to be his wife again. It was easy being faithful when Simon was still inside, but now he’s here…” She clenched a trembling fist. “You know what he did, yeah? You know why I don’t want him sleeping in my bed?”
It was all in Dimanche’s case notes, of course. Simon had been in a fight in a pub, a fight which had been broken up by the police. He had only been charged with affray at first, but one of the men Simon had been fighting wound up with brain damage, and a witness had accused Simon of stamping repeatedly on the head of the man he’d fought with. In fact it wasn’t true - the unlucky man had simply slipped and cracked his head on the kerb, but Simon had panicked. He’d found out who his accuser was, and had tried to persuade them to retract. When they’d refused, Simon had got angry. Then he’d got violent. His victim - a fifty-two year old man - had been in hospital for a week, and left permanently blind in one eye. Simon had been charged with GBH. He was very lucky that his sentence had been so short.
“I know he served his time,” Thandie said. “I know that’s the way it’s supposed to work. You do something bad, you pay for it, and he has paid. And I’ve forgiven him, you know? I’ve forgiven him for being so bloody thick. I’ve forgiven him for fucking up our marriage. I’ve forgiven him for scarring his son - because you know Damian’s gonna carry this weight all his life. But - but it’s not about forgiveness. I don’t want to live with a bad man!”
Dimanche nodded, tenting her fingers. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then she looked at her watch.
“Oh I’m sorry, am I boring you?” Thandie snapped.
“No, Mrs. Butler,” Dimanche replied, calmly. “I was just checking that it had passed 12.30. Officially that means it’s my lunch break. So, officially, I’m not a social worker for the next half an hour.” In reality, this was nonsense, but it was a tactic she used often when she needed her clients to take her seriously.
“Mrs. Butler,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a position like yours. I don’t envy it, and I don’t have a word of advice that would be anything close to helpful. The only thing I’ll say is that I don’t think there’s such a thing as a ‘bad man’.”
“That’s a hell of a thing for a social worker to say,” Thandie replied, with defensive sarcasm.
“I don’t mean I think all people are good,” Dimanche explained. “I just don’t think it’s ever that simple. I get the impression that Mr. Butler does love his son, and you said that he’d been a good father before he was sent to prison. Some people would say that doesn’t matter: he’s a criminal. Some people would say it’s the other way around, that being a good father means that his crime doesn’t matter.”
“What do you think?”
“I think the first way of thinking is fascist and the second way of thinking is sentimental, and cowardly. I think you’re going to weigh up what’s best for your son, and yourself, and then you’ll make the right decision, whatever that turns out to be.” With a warm, sympathetic countenance, she looked Thandie in the eye. “The only advice I’ll give,” she said, “is that you should trust your own judgement.”
In Dimanche’s experience, when people were stuck in a dilemma, they often already knew what decision they wanted to make. ‘Trust your own judgement’ was a piece of advice she gave frequently, because a lot of the time what people needed was permission to decide. And indeed she could already see something approaching resolve in Thandie’s expression, one way or the other.
“What are you going to put in your report?” Thandie asked.
“I wouldn’t call it a report,” Dimanche replied. “But nothing I’ve heard today gives me any serious concerns.”
“Even what I said about Simon?”
“All that tells me,” Dimanche said, “is that Damian is being raised by a woman of conscience.”
From what it had been when the two social workers had arrived, Thandie’s opinion of their profession had been quite radically transformed.
-
Damselbinder
There were plenty of doubters in the hall of prayer of the Order of Mysterion. In fact it was probably fairer to say that they were all doubters, to varying degrees. But when all their number - about twenty-five - were assembled, less one or two absentees, there was a churchlike hush.
The prayer hall was perhaps three times the size of the shrine room, with low chairs and prayer mats arranged in a circle around three stools where the heads of the order sat. At the moment the three were engaged in serious, hushed conversation, poring over a great tome, muttering prayers and disagreements in equal measure. All the sisters of the order were dressed in the same white robes, save for these three, who wore blue - their only badge of rank. Before them, on a small sconce, was the Thermachrysos. It gave no light anymore, but its symbol appeared to have grown more pronounced in the hours since Gwen’s discovery. More insistent.
Finally, one of the blue sisters rose. She was a short woman, but had dramatic features - thick eyebrows, wide eyes, a shock of dyed red hair - that gave her a great deal of presence. Her name was Selene, and she was - as well as being one of the high priestesses of the Order of Mysterion - the order’s accountant.
“I’m afraid you all may be waiting a while longer,” she said, giving a wry smile. “We know the theory of what’s supposed to happen now, but… well, the Order’s two-thousand years out of practice, so… uh…” She paused to consider. “Cope.”
One of the white sisters raised her hand.
“Really, Deirdre?” Selene said. “You don’t need to put your hand up, for God’s sake. You’re not in school. If you want to talk, talk.”
“Well,” Deirdre said, pouting slightly, “I just - I’ve seen the Yearly Light. I pray along with the others. But…”
“But you’re having a hard time believing it.”
It hadn’t been Selene who’d replied, but another of the blue sisters: Dido. She stood, and she all but towered over the others, for she was close to 6’3”. She had long, thick hair that trailed almost to her knees, dyed a dark, forest green. She was statuesque in a way that few others were, with distantly wise features that, though very fine, looked etched in stone. Looking at her she could have been anything between 20 and 40. Sometimes the adherents of the Order felt a little silly praying in Ancient Greek in their classical costume, but when Dido joined them, it all felt much more real. In theory, the blue sisters had no internal hierarchy, but Dido was universally acknowledged as the most important of the three: without her, one felt the order would have descended into kitsch parody.
“I do not blame anyone for skepticism,” she said, in a smooth contralto. “Our order and our ways mean different things to different characters. I know that for some of you - perhaps for most of you, our beliefs are metaphor merely. When you venerate the gods, you venerate the natural world, the sanctity of all life, and the better parts of the human soul. Do we really ask you to believe that a bearded white man rules the world from the top of a big mountain?”
That it was felt to be appropriate for the sisters of the order to laugh in response answered Dido’s question neatly.
“However,” Dido said, letting the authority of her voice hold court for a few moments. “However, our founders did believe in those gods. They believed that our treasure was a gift from them. They believed - as do I - that the Thermarchyros is divine, and that its purpose is divine. As is ours. I am not asking you to accept the literality of the Twelve-and-the-One. I am asking you to accept the reality of our mission. I am asking you to accept that our purpose is the Restoration of the World.” She left a longer silence, to let the gravity of what she was saying sink in. She was about to ask them something, and she could see already who would say yes and who would say no.
“The Thermarchyros,” she said, “has chosen a bearer. As before, that bearer will not be one of us. We are i syntómefsi tou trópou: the Shortening of the Way. It will be our duty to help her, to guide her, to teach her, and finally to serve her. But let me be clear: when we taught you that the Thermarchyros’ bearer would be granted great powers, we meant that quite literally. There are no two ways about it: I’m asking you to believe in magic. If, as modern, enlightened women, this stretches your credulity too far, we will respect that. But if that is the case, I would ask you to leave us. Now.”
Confusion rippled through the rest of the sisterhood.
“We are about to embark on a sacred undertaking. Doubt is inevitable. Confusion is inevitable. Hesitance is forgivable - but anathema to what we must do. Search inside yourself. If this is… not what you signed up for, if what I am saying sounds foolish, or cultish, then please go. You will have the love of us all, and the blessings of the gods - whatever you take the gods to be.”
Two or three minutes passed in silence, save for the quiet murmuring of Selene and the third of the blue sisters, as they continued to parse through page after page of ancient, sacred volumes. But then one person had the courage to demur: one of their newest members. She stood, she bowed, she thanked her sisters, and she left them. With the moral inertia overcome, two more stood, and they too left. Then two more. The sixth and last of their number to leave seemed almost angry. She might have spoken, but if that had been her intention, a disarming, hard stare from Dido put the idea out of her head. She, too, left in silence.
“To those who are staying,” Dido said, “I thank you. I ask you to prepare yourself, however, for a difficult path. There is much for us to do. Gwen,” she said.
The blonde was so startled to hear her name that she leapt up to her feet like she’d sat on a thumbtack.
“What? Yes. What? Uh, ma’am?”
“I have a task for you.”
“A… task?”
The third of the blue sisters rose. Her hair too was dyed, the same blue as her robes. She, the loremaster, was seen only rarely participating in worship with the others, spending most of her time in study and research of the order’s texts.
“It was you,” she said to Gwen, in a voice barely above a whisper, “to whom the Thermarchyros revealed itself. It is to you that this task falls. It will not be easy. It will not, I fear, be wholly safe. It is not just to glorify the sanctity of the body that we’ve trained you, Gwen.”
“What’s the task?” Gwen said, perhaps a little more shortly than was appropriate.
“Before we can serve the bearer,” the loremaster said, “we must first find her. That is, you must find her.”
Outside the headquarters of the Order, which to all the uninitiated looked merely like a small, Lutheran church, the six apostates were quietly dispersing. Or rather, five of them were. One lingered, the last one who had left. She had a phone pressed tightly to her ear.
“Charlotte,” she hissed into the receiver, “they know…. Wh - what do you mean ‘they know what?’? They know there’s a new bearer!... Because the Thermarchyros lit up like a bloody Christmas tree, that’s how! You need to capture her. Now.”
The prayer hall was perhaps three times the size of the shrine room, with low chairs and prayer mats arranged in a circle around three stools where the heads of the order sat. At the moment the three were engaged in serious, hushed conversation, poring over a great tome, muttering prayers and disagreements in equal measure. All the sisters of the order were dressed in the same white robes, save for these three, who wore blue - their only badge of rank. Before them, on a small sconce, was the Thermachrysos. It gave no light anymore, but its symbol appeared to have grown more pronounced in the hours since Gwen’s discovery. More insistent.
Finally, one of the blue sisters rose. She was a short woman, but had dramatic features - thick eyebrows, wide eyes, a shock of dyed red hair - that gave her a great deal of presence. Her name was Selene, and she was - as well as being one of the high priestesses of the Order of Mysterion - the order’s accountant.
“I’m afraid you all may be waiting a while longer,” she said, giving a wry smile. “We know the theory of what’s supposed to happen now, but… well, the Order’s two-thousand years out of practice, so… uh…” She paused to consider. “Cope.”
One of the white sisters raised her hand.
“Really, Deirdre?” Selene said. “You don’t need to put your hand up, for God’s sake. You’re not in school. If you want to talk, talk.”
“Well,” Deirdre said, pouting slightly, “I just - I’ve seen the Yearly Light. I pray along with the others. But…”
“But you’re having a hard time believing it.”
It hadn’t been Selene who’d replied, but another of the blue sisters: Dido. She stood, and she all but towered over the others, for she was close to 6’3”. She had long, thick hair that trailed almost to her knees, dyed a dark, forest green. She was statuesque in a way that few others were, with distantly wise features that, though very fine, looked etched in stone. Looking at her she could have been anything between 20 and 40. Sometimes the adherents of the Order felt a little silly praying in Ancient Greek in their classical costume, but when Dido joined them, it all felt much more real. In theory, the blue sisters had no internal hierarchy, but Dido was universally acknowledged as the most important of the three: without her, one felt the order would have descended into kitsch parody.
“I do not blame anyone for skepticism,” she said, in a smooth contralto. “Our order and our ways mean different things to different characters. I know that for some of you - perhaps for most of you, our beliefs are metaphor merely. When you venerate the gods, you venerate the natural world, the sanctity of all life, and the better parts of the human soul. Do we really ask you to believe that a bearded white man rules the world from the top of a big mountain?”
That it was felt to be appropriate for the sisters of the order to laugh in response answered Dido’s question neatly.
“However,” Dido said, letting the authority of her voice hold court for a few moments. “However, our founders did believe in those gods. They believed that our treasure was a gift from them. They believed - as do I - that the Thermarchyros is divine, and that its purpose is divine. As is ours. I am not asking you to accept the literality of the Twelve-and-the-One. I am asking you to accept the reality of our mission. I am asking you to accept that our purpose is the Restoration of the World.” She left a longer silence, to let the gravity of what she was saying sink in. She was about to ask them something, and she could see already who would say yes and who would say no.
“The Thermarchyros,” she said, “has chosen a bearer. As before, that bearer will not be one of us. We are i syntómefsi tou trópou: the Shortening of the Way. It will be our duty to help her, to guide her, to teach her, and finally to serve her. But let me be clear: when we taught you that the Thermarchyros’ bearer would be granted great powers, we meant that quite literally. There are no two ways about it: I’m asking you to believe in magic. If, as modern, enlightened women, this stretches your credulity too far, we will respect that. But if that is the case, I would ask you to leave us. Now.”
Confusion rippled through the rest of the sisterhood.
“We are about to embark on a sacred undertaking. Doubt is inevitable. Confusion is inevitable. Hesitance is forgivable - but anathema to what we must do. Search inside yourself. If this is… not what you signed up for, if what I am saying sounds foolish, or cultish, then please go. You will have the love of us all, and the blessings of the gods - whatever you take the gods to be.”
Two or three minutes passed in silence, save for the quiet murmuring of Selene and the third of the blue sisters, as they continued to parse through page after page of ancient, sacred volumes. But then one person had the courage to demur: one of their newest members. She stood, she bowed, she thanked her sisters, and she left them. With the moral inertia overcome, two more stood, and they too left. Then two more. The sixth and last of their number to leave seemed almost angry. She might have spoken, but if that had been her intention, a disarming, hard stare from Dido put the idea out of her head. She, too, left in silence.
“To those who are staying,” Dido said, “I thank you. I ask you to prepare yourself, however, for a difficult path. There is much for us to do. Gwen,” she said.
The blonde was so startled to hear her name that she leapt up to her feet like she’d sat on a thumbtack.
“What? Yes. What? Uh, ma’am?”
“I have a task for you.”
“A… task?”
The third of the blue sisters rose. Her hair too was dyed, the same blue as her robes. She, the loremaster, was seen only rarely participating in worship with the others, spending most of her time in study and research of the order’s texts.
“It was you,” she said to Gwen, in a voice barely above a whisper, “to whom the Thermarchyros revealed itself. It is to you that this task falls. It will not be easy. It will not, I fear, be wholly safe. It is not just to glorify the sanctity of the body that we’ve trained you, Gwen.”
“What’s the task?” Gwen said, perhaps a little more shortly than was appropriate.
“Before we can serve the bearer,” the loremaster said, “we must first find her. That is, you must find her.”
Outside the headquarters of the Order, which to all the uninitiated looked merely like a small, Lutheran church, the six apostates were quietly dispersing. Or rather, five of them were. One lingered, the last one who had left. She had a phone pressed tightly to her ear.
“Charlotte,” she hissed into the receiver, “they know…. Wh - what do you mean ‘they know what?’? They know there’s a new bearer!... Because the Thermarchyros lit up like a bloody Christmas tree, that’s how! You need to capture her. Now.”
-
Damselbinder
The visit to the Butlers ended up being the highlight of a very trying day. Making house calls was difficult, but engaging, and Dimanche’s talents had somewhat less room to thrive when she was stuck in the tiny, dingy, criminally underfunded office in which the Brent Adult Social Care Services were based.
It was strange what stuck with you. Of all the things she’d seen and done that day, it was that bit of graffiti which had most fixed itself in her mind.
“We’ve all lost the instructions,” she muttered to herself. Dimanche had no idea what the person who’d sprayed it had had in mind, but it echoed with her. She believed what she had said to Mrs. Butler, that there was no such thing as a ‘bad person’, that everyone was grey to a varying extent; but her work brought her into contact with the darker shades of grey more and more often. In a way, her sense that things were gradually getting worse was perfectly rational, for it was no great secret that the caring arm of the state had become shorter and shorter over the previous ten years. The most vulnerable had been gradually, but ruthlessly abandoned, allowed to sink into a level of poverty and depravity that Dimanche, though she saw it almost every day, still found hard to believe.
Yet there was something else to it, as well, a feeling that the whole world was becoming like that estate in which the Butler family lived: grey, cold, and brutalist. Hopeless. The planet was boiling, but no-one with any power to alter it could be bothered to. The only ideologies which could arouse common passion were little more than hateful screeching. Right-thinking people retreated into their own lives in despair. It was seeing this helpless cynicism in so many of her friends that had pushed Dimanche into her work in the first place, and she did still believe in her work. But it wasn’t enough anymore. In the past few days, she had felt that very strongly, though she didn’t know why. Yet it wasn’t a depressing feeling. It was… strange.
Even when she left the office, always a happy moment, Dimanche felt unsettled. Something in the back of her mind was - it was like it was yelling at her, but Dimanche couldn’t understand it. She felt itchy, almost, like she needed to do something or, more accurately, needed to begin something.
The sensation followed her all the way home, to her flat in Finchley. It was a studio flat, but it was hers, and she had decorated it with sufficient care that it was always a real pleasure getting back home. The walls of her sitting room were decked with pictures, curios, and on the largest wall a beautiful hanging carpet in rich golds and purples, a gift from Dimanche’s wanderlustful older brother. Every surface that could fit one had some kind of plant on it, for Dimanche had always taken pleasure from being surrounded by greenery.
She fell upon her sofa with a heavy grunt, kicked off her shoes, and lay back for a moment, closing her eyes. She almost fell asleep on the spot. But she felt something pressing on her stomach, and opened her eyes to find a sand coloured, persian cat kneading her midriff with its paws.
“Buckwheat,” Dimanche said, addressing the creature, “if you’re trying to say something mean about my stomach... I will pout.”
“Hrrrhhhhp,” Buckwheat replied, before jumping off and walking in a significant sort of way to its food bowl.
“What a mysterious creature!” Dimanche exclaimed. “What could she possibly be trying to tell me?”
She went to feed the demanding animal, who brushed briefly against her left leg in a perfunctory attempt to endear itself to her. Before fetching its food, however, Dimanche bent over, and looked down, accusingly, at her pet.
“You can’t fool me, you little villain. I’ve found you out, see? You,” she said, putting the tip of her index finger on Buckwheat’s small, wet nose, “are a cat.”
“Ghhrrrrmmp,” it assented.
Having attended to her house-guest, Dimanche began to wind down more assiduously. She undressed, freeing her hefty bosom from the confines of her blouse and her bra, letting her tight, grey skirt fall to her feet. She unpeeled her stockings, draping them over the side of her clothes horse, and let herself feel the pleasure of being naked in the safety and comfort of her own company. She liked her body, and she liked letting it be itself, so to speak.
She didn’t revel in herself for too long. She slipped on a short, soft, figure-hugging, mauve nightdress. A mixture of cotton and spandex, it held tightly and closely to her womanly figure; and it was gently warm against Dimanche’s ivory skin. The same boyfriend who had bought Buckwheat for her had bought her the nightdress, with decidedly carnal intentions, but it felt so nice she’d taken to wearing it as pyjamas, albeit rather sultry ones.
In her favourite nightdress, on her comfortable sofa, with her cat purring at her side, with a book in one hand and a glass of nutmeg-flavoured cocoa in the other, Dimanche ought to have felt somewhere between a sloth and a buddha on the cosiness scale. But still that unease kept hold of her, that feeling that something was not right, and that something was about to happen. She couldn’t concentrate on her book, and even the taste of her hot chocolate was strangely unpleasant. She put them both down, closed her eyes, folded her hands across her stomach. She crossed her legs, uncrossed them, recrossed them. She unfolded and refolded her hands. Ever since she was a child, Dimanche had fidgeted when she was nervous or agitated. She just didn’t know why she felt like that now. She opened her eyes, giving up on trying to do any meditative soul-searching.
There was another woman sitting next to her.
Dimanche did not scream. She was overcome with so much fear and confusion and absolute incomprehension in such a short space of time that she literally could not move. Long before she had the presence of mind to call for help, then, such a call was stifled by a strong hand in a black, leather glove.
“Nice to meet you, Dimanche,” the intruder said. “I’ve been looking forward to making your acquaintance for a long time.”
She was a little shorter than Dimanche, lithe and spry, with close-cropped blonde hair and sharp, brown eyes. She was dressed entirely in black, in a material Dimanche could not have identified even if she’d been able to pay attention to such things. What she did see was the knife in a belt around her waist.
“What - what’s happening? How did she get in? How did she get so close to me without me noticing her? Wh-what does she want? Oh my… oh my god, what does she want?!”
“You’re a clever girl, aren’t you?” the intruder said. “Clever enough not to try to fight me, anyway. That’s good. That’ll make all of this much easier.”
“Mh...mh…!” Dimanche mewed, shocked by the strength of the grip over her mouth. Her lips were held totally shut, the woman’s fingers and the heel of her palm pressing like a vice against her jaw. She could not find it in herself to raise her hands to wrestle with her assailant, but as far as she could tell, there was no way she could have dislodged her grip.
“You know what’s weird to me?” the blonde said. “I don’t get why people are so fucking cynical about the human condition.” She had a Chelsea accent, so strong and so horseishly arch that she had to be putting it on. “It’s not that hard to break into people’s homes. It’s really not, babe. People could be sneaking around murdering their neighbours all the time? But I bet you felt so safe in your four walls, didn’t you? Even though you’re such a sweet lady. Such a soft lady…” She brushed Dimanche’s cheek with the back of her hand, apparently feeling confident enough to release her grip on her victim’s mouth.
“Wh… who are you?” Dimanche said, barely able to make herself audible.
“Well my name is Charlotte, if that’s what you mean,” Dimanche’s assailant said, “but I don’t think that information’s going to be very helpful.”
“Why… have you broken into my flat?” A tear dropped from one of her eyes.
“Dimanche, Dimanche, Dimanche,” Charlotte laughed. “I’m here to kidnap you.”
Before Dimanche could so much as gasp, Charlotte had shot forward so that the two were only an inch apart. Then with deadly, precise ease, she had covered Dimanche’s mouth and nose with a thick, white, sweet-smelling cloth.
“MMMPHHH!!” Dimanche cried, her dark, hooded eyes shooting wide open. “Mh! Mh-nhhh….!” she moaned, shaking her head in a pleading, bewildered denial. “Wh… what’s happening?” she thought, still in a state of incredulous, powerless shock. “I don’t.... I - is she… drugging me?”
The dizziness that began to take hold of her answered the question. She was finding it hard to think, finding it hard to focus. She couldn’t quite bring herself to feel that this was real. That she was being - chloroformed, like a girl-detective in a cheap novel. It was so bizarrely frightening that it jerked her into trying to fight, and she raised her hands to try to pull the cloth away. But, just as she’d feared, she couldn’t move her attacker’s hand. And she was only getting weaker.
“Mmmmhhhhh-mmmhhhpphhhhh!!” Dimanche cried, hoping that perhaps a neighbour would hear her scream, but the cloth was thick and stifling, and her voice didn’t carry.
“No-one’s going to hear you, Dimanche,” Charlotte said. “No-one’s going to help you.”
“Mh… mhhhh…” Dimanche whimpered, knowing that Charlotte was completely right. Her body felt heavy, and sort of disconnected from itself. When she saw her hands slip from Charlotte’s wrist, and fall limply onto her lap, they almost felt like someone else’s hands. When she felt Charlotte begin to caress her naked legs, they almost felt like someone else’s legs. When her eyelids began to flutter, they almost felt like someone else’s. But they were hers.
“I’m… sinking…” she thought, the only words her hazy mind could find to articulate it all.
The feeling of the fabric of Charlotte’s trousers against her ivory skin was strangely pleasant, and she found herself looking down. She saw her womanly legs completely exposed by her nightdress, so pale and silky and supple. She saw her own breasts heaving against her dress’ fabric, the garment’s plunging neckline exposing their gorgeous, ripe swell. She felt Charlotte’s foot stroking her legs - and she could do nothing. She felt a hand stroking her pale, swanlike neck, so smooth and so slender - and she could do nothing. She felt a sudden, desperate awareness of her own appearance. She was a gorgeous, voluptuous young woman; dark-eyed, ivory-skinned, buxom, long-legged - she was intensely desirable, and she was terribly beautiful. It was not vanity for her to think that there were a thousand reasons why this woman would want to capture her.
Charlotte drew Dimanche closer, and the raven-haired maiden flopped against her, her legs slipping clumsily uncrossed. The chloroform had defeated what little strength she had.
“That’s it,” Charlotte said, pulling Dimanche onto her lap, “down you go, babe. So sleepy, aren’t you? So sleepy, and weak, and pretty…”
“Mh…” Dimanche was helpless but to obey, drawing in heavy lungfuls of chloroform with each rise and fall of her ample bosom. Her white shoulders sank, her body narcotised into limp passivity.
“You have no idea,” Charlotte whispered into her captive’s ear, “how important you are, Dimanche. You have no idea how long we’ve all waited for you. No idea how many people would kill to be where I am. Well,” she giggled, nuzzling Dimanche’s neck, “maybe you have some idea.”
“Mh…?” Dimanche felt herself being shifted around, felt Charlotte’s legs wrapping around hers, like two powerful serpents capturing and squeezing her calves and her yielding, creamy thighs. At the same time, she felt a hand invading the luxurious perfection of her bosoms, cupping them from beneath, so that Dimanche felt the soft, springy fabric of her nightdress caressing the undersides of her breasts. She looked, or was allowed to look, downwards, and she saw Charlotte’s fingers slipping past her nightdress’ borders, and she moaned as she felt cool leather against her warm skin.
“I know some people,” Charlotte said, “who think you’re supposed to be a warrior, or even saviour. That you’ve got some heroic destiny. But I know better, Dimanche. And you know better. You’re so warm… so soft… your only destiny is to be used. Oh, we are going to use you…!”
She intensified her molestations, vigorously fondling Dimanche’s breasts, kneading them like a baker with dough, toying with them, cupping and jostling them, slipping her hand into the narrow channel between them to watch how they parted and reunited when she took her hand away.
“Mh… mhh… mhhh…” Dimanche moaned, her sweet sighs in time with the rhythm of Charlotte’s lascivious massaging. The material of her nightdress rubbed against her hardening buds, and a deep blush reddened her cheeks. “Plhhs…” she mewed, “s...sthhp… hhh… hlp… mhh…” She shifted her creamy shoulders with sensuous weakness, but all she achieved was dislodging one of the thin straps of her nightdress. Her right shoulder was bared, and her captor took immediate advantage, stroking and then kissing her decolletage, and then in one moment of sensual cruelty, running her tongue over Dimanche’s naked shoulder, her collar, and finally her neck, all while still fondling her bosom and rubbing her silky, moist legs.
“You sound so sad,” Charlotte crowed. “Poor thing. I mean, I can see you blushing, so I guess you’re having a little fun… but maybe it’s just better if you… go… to sleep.” She pressed the cloth tighter, and she felt Dimanche go a little more limp. She started stroking Dimanche’s luxuriously thick hair, letting its dark tresses wind lightly around her fingers. “Just sleep,” she whispered. “Just sleep…”
“Mhh…” The temptation was irresistible. The rhythmic massaging, the overpowering sensual humiliation, and the heady scent of the drug draining away all her strength, all her will and capacity to fight. “I… I can’t… can’t move… I… oh… oh no… no… nhh…” Her eyelids were so heavy. Her body was so powerless. Her eyes fell shut with a sweet, fetching flutter, and with a long, low lament, a moaned confession of the totality of her helplessness, she passed out.
For a few seconds Charlotte left the cloth over Dimanche’s mouth, until she was sure the maiden was utterly subdued. Even when she did take it away, she pushed Dimanche’s head, let it flop onto her shoulder. She lifted one of Dimanche’s hands as high as she could, then let it fall onto her thigh with a satisfying ‘slap.’ She stood up, letting Dimanche sink back against the sofa cushions. Her head remained fallen on one shoulder, so her neck was a little stretched, only highlighting the elegance of its form. One hand lay where Charlotte had left it, on Dimanche’s thigh, and the other by her side. Her thighs were close together, her calves slightly askew, and her lovely face bore an expression not quite of totally peaceful repose, the crinkle of her eyebrows a subtle testament to her captive state.
“Oh yeah,” Charlotte laughed. “You’re absolutely fucking out, aren’t you?”
Alone with this ravishing, helpless beauty, Charlotte elected she had a little time in which to indulge herself. She sat by Dimanche, lifting one of her hands, and kissing her wrist, feeling the thrum of Dimanche’s pulse against her lips. She let Dimanche’s hand fall again, taking pleasure in its complete limpness. She put both her hands on Dimanche’s thighs, tucking her fingers underneath them, feeling them sink against her hands. She lifted one of Dimanche’s long, milky-white legs and folded it over the other, watching with pleasure as her thigh muscles tensed and hardened as they were pushed against by the thigh beneath them. Charlotte removed her glove, and shivered as she felt the flawless silkiness of Dimanche’s skin, her hands dancing all over both of the fainted damsel’s legs, then shooting back up over the curves of her hips, her stomach, and her heavy, supple bosoms.
Charlotte slid her hand up her captive’s slender arm, until she had a hand on both of Dimanche’s soft, gently sloping shoulders. She spread her fingers out like spiders, tracing the lines of Dimanche’s clavicles with her thumbs, and working Dimanche’s trapezius muscles with her fingers.
“...hnh…” Dimanche breathed, her slumber only slightly disturbed by being so mercilessly taking advantage of.
Raising her hands to Dimanche’s face, Charlotte took pleasure in the firm, feminine structure of her features. She kissed Dimanche’s elegant jawline on either side, before softly tracing her lips with her thumb. They were plump, and pillowy; shiny with gloss and wet with chloroform. Charlotte even, partly to give herself a thrill of power and partly to check that Dimanche really was firmly unconscious, carefully opened one of Dimanche’s eyes, though she hardly saw more than the white, for it was rolled back about as far as it could go. Laughing, Charlotte pushed Dimanche’s head to her other shoulder, before - with a wicked grin - putting her hands on Dimanche’s hips and sliding her tongue up the channel that ran between her captive’s breasts.
But Charlotte couldn’t have her way with her sleeping beauty forever. She had a mission - a quest, even, and she needed to get on with it. She eased Dimanche off the sofa and onto the floor, laying her down onto her front, the damsel’s body limply surrendering to her captor’s commands. She took a moment to admire her prone form, the way the stretchy material of her nightdress clung to the swell of her behind, and then set about binding her. Fortunately it was all prepared already. She had a kind of large tarpaulin, inlaid with clear, thin plastic. All she had to do was shift Dimanche until she was on top of it - and then just roll her.
All in all it took only ten revolutions to wrap Dimanche up completely. The plastic clung easily to her body, damp with sweat from her sleepy struggles. Her arms were pressed hard against her sides, her hands pushing against her hips. Her long, satin-soft legs were pushed together, sealed and subsumed in tight, plastic wrap. It hemmed in Dimanche’s voluptuous breasts, trapping them, forcing them to strain against the transparent confines whenever Dimanche breathed.
It was brutally efficient. From her ankles to just below her naked, white shoulders Dimanche was completely bound, each layer gossamer thin, but collectively more than strong enough to bind her up tight. She was completely covered, but still completely visible beneath her bindings, giving Charlotte a perfect view of the way Dimanche’s bondage promoted and highlighted her feminine curves: concealed and revealed at one and the same time.
All that remained was to gag her, just in case she came to while someone could hear her. Charlotte was to have used a roll of duct tape, but she caught sight of a more mischievously appealing alternative. She saw Dimanche’s stockings draped over her clothes horse, and laughing to herself she snatched them up.
The first stocking she rolled up into a little ball, parting Dimanche’s lips and then pushing it inside, before closing Dimanche’s mouth. She sealed the stocking inside with its companion, stretching it out to wrap around the back of Dimanche’s head, the stocking just about wide enough to cover Dimanche’s mouth, gagging the fallen damsel, the sweet smell of her legs that lingered on her hosiery mixing with the heady odour of the chloroform which still hung on her lips.
Charlotte regarded Dimanche with satisfaction, not just because she was so lovely, but because of the ease of the whole process. She really felt like it was destiny that had led her here. For it was she, of all people, who had first seen the Thermarchyros shining when she had gone down to the Sepulchre to fix the electrics in Demeter’s shrine. She, who just so happened to be far more steeped in the lore of the Order of Mysterion than the Blue Sisters could possibly have expected. She, who had for many years been dedicated to the order’s total overthrow. And now the next Aegis was in her grasp.
She only had to wait for the Order of Mysterion to come and get her.
It was strange what stuck with you. Of all the things she’d seen and done that day, it was that bit of graffiti which had most fixed itself in her mind.
“We’ve all lost the instructions,” she muttered to herself. Dimanche had no idea what the person who’d sprayed it had had in mind, but it echoed with her. She believed what she had said to Mrs. Butler, that there was no such thing as a ‘bad person’, that everyone was grey to a varying extent; but her work brought her into contact with the darker shades of grey more and more often. In a way, her sense that things were gradually getting worse was perfectly rational, for it was no great secret that the caring arm of the state had become shorter and shorter over the previous ten years. The most vulnerable had been gradually, but ruthlessly abandoned, allowed to sink into a level of poverty and depravity that Dimanche, though she saw it almost every day, still found hard to believe.
Yet there was something else to it, as well, a feeling that the whole world was becoming like that estate in which the Butler family lived: grey, cold, and brutalist. Hopeless. The planet was boiling, but no-one with any power to alter it could be bothered to. The only ideologies which could arouse common passion were little more than hateful screeching. Right-thinking people retreated into their own lives in despair. It was seeing this helpless cynicism in so many of her friends that had pushed Dimanche into her work in the first place, and she did still believe in her work. But it wasn’t enough anymore. In the past few days, she had felt that very strongly, though she didn’t know why. Yet it wasn’t a depressing feeling. It was… strange.
Even when she left the office, always a happy moment, Dimanche felt unsettled. Something in the back of her mind was - it was like it was yelling at her, but Dimanche couldn’t understand it. She felt itchy, almost, like she needed to do something or, more accurately, needed to begin something.
The sensation followed her all the way home, to her flat in Finchley. It was a studio flat, but it was hers, and she had decorated it with sufficient care that it was always a real pleasure getting back home. The walls of her sitting room were decked with pictures, curios, and on the largest wall a beautiful hanging carpet in rich golds and purples, a gift from Dimanche’s wanderlustful older brother. Every surface that could fit one had some kind of plant on it, for Dimanche had always taken pleasure from being surrounded by greenery.
She fell upon her sofa with a heavy grunt, kicked off her shoes, and lay back for a moment, closing her eyes. She almost fell asleep on the spot. But she felt something pressing on her stomach, and opened her eyes to find a sand coloured, persian cat kneading her midriff with its paws.
“Buckwheat,” Dimanche said, addressing the creature, “if you’re trying to say something mean about my stomach... I will pout.”
“Hrrrhhhhp,” Buckwheat replied, before jumping off and walking in a significant sort of way to its food bowl.
“What a mysterious creature!” Dimanche exclaimed. “What could she possibly be trying to tell me?”
She went to feed the demanding animal, who brushed briefly against her left leg in a perfunctory attempt to endear itself to her. Before fetching its food, however, Dimanche bent over, and looked down, accusingly, at her pet.
“You can’t fool me, you little villain. I’ve found you out, see? You,” she said, putting the tip of her index finger on Buckwheat’s small, wet nose, “are a cat.”
“Ghhrrrrmmp,” it assented.
Having attended to her house-guest, Dimanche began to wind down more assiduously. She undressed, freeing her hefty bosom from the confines of her blouse and her bra, letting her tight, grey skirt fall to her feet. She unpeeled her stockings, draping them over the side of her clothes horse, and let herself feel the pleasure of being naked in the safety and comfort of her own company. She liked her body, and she liked letting it be itself, so to speak.
She didn’t revel in herself for too long. She slipped on a short, soft, figure-hugging, mauve nightdress. A mixture of cotton and spandex, it held tightly and closely to her womanly figure; and it was gently warm against Dimanche’s ivory skin. The same boyfriend who had bought Buckwheat for her had bought her the nightdress, with decidedly carnal intentions, but it felt so nice she’d taken to wearing it as pyjamas, albeit rather sultry ones.
In her favourite nightdress, on her comfortable sofa, with her cat purring at her side, with a book in one hand and a glass of nutmeg-flavoured cocoa in the other, Dimanche ought to have felt somewhere between a sloth and a buddha on the cosiness scale. But still that unease kept hold of her, that feeling that something was not right, and that something was about to happen. She couldn’t concentrate on her book, and even the taste of her hot chocolate was strangely unpleasant. She put them both down, closed her eyes, folded her hands across her stomach. She crossed her legs, uncrossed them, recrossed them. She unfolded and refolded her hands. Ever since she was a child, Dimanche had fidgeted when she was nervous or agitated. She just didn’t know why she felt like that now. She opened her eyes, giving up on trying to do any meditative soul-searching.
There was another woman sitting next to her.
Dimanche did not scream. She was overcome with so much fear and confusion and absolute incomprehension in such a short space of time that she literally could not move. Long before she had the presence of mind to call for help, then, such a call was stifled by a strong hand in a black, leather glove.
“Nice to meet you, Dimanche,” the intruder said. “I’ve been looking forward to making your acquaintance for a long time.”
She was a little shorter than Dimanche, lithe and spry, with close-cropped blonde hair and sharp, brown eyes. She was dressed entirely in black, in a material Dimanche could not have identified even if she’d been able to pay attention to such things. What she did see was the knife in a belt around her waist.
“What - what’s happening? How did she get in? How did she get so close to me without me noticing her? Wh-what does she want? Oh my… oh my god, what does she want?!”
“You’re a clever girl, aren’t you?” the intruder said. “Clever enough not to try to fight me, anyway. That’s good. That’ll make all of this much easier.”
“Mh...mh…!” Dimanche mewed, shocked by the strength of the grip over her mouth. Her lips were held totally shut, the woman’s fingers and the heel of her palm pressing like a vice against her jaw. She could not find it in herself to raise her hands to wrestle with her assailant, but as far as she could tell, there was no way she could have dislodged her grip.
“You know what’s weird to me?” the blonde said. “I don’t get why people are so fucking cynical about the human condition.” She had a Chelsea accent, so strong and so horseishly arch that she had to be putting it on. “It’s not that hard to break into people’s homes. It’s really not, babe. People could be sneaking around murdering their neighbours all the time? But I bet you felt so safe in your four walls, didn’t you? Even though you’re such a sweet lady. Such a soft lady…” She brushed Dimanche’s cheek with the back of her hand, apparently feeling confident enough to release her grip on her victim’s mouth.
“Wh… who are you?” Dimanche said, barely able to make herself audible.
“Well my name is Charlotte, if that’s what you mean,” Dimanche’s assailant said, “but I don’t think that information’s going to be very helpful.”
“Why… have you broken into my flat?” A tear dropped from one of her eyes.
“Dimanche, Dimanche, Dimanche,” Charlotte laughed. “I’m here to kidnap you.”
Before Dimanche could so much as gasp, Charlotte had shot forward so that the two were only an inch apart. Then with deadly, precise ease, she had covered Dimanche’s mouth and nose with a thick, white, sweet-smelling cloth.
“MMMPHHH!!” Dimanche cried, her dark, hooded eyes shooting wide open. “Mh! Mh-nhhh….!” she moaned, shaking her head in a pleading, bewildered denial. “Wh… what’s happening?” she thought, still in a state of incredulous, powerless shock. “I don’t.... I - is she… drugging me?”
The dizziness that began to take hold of her answered the question. She was finding it hard to think, finding it hard to focus. She couldn’t quite bring herself to feel that this was real. That she was being - chloroformed, like a girl-detective in a cheap novel. It was so bizarrely frightening that it jerked her into trying to fight, and she raised her hands to try to pull the cloth away. But, just as she’d feared, she couldn’t move her attacker’s hand. And she was only getting weaker.
“Mmmmhhhhh-mmmhhhpphhhhh!!” Dimanche cried, hoping that perhaps a neighbour would hear her scream, but the cloth was thick and stifling, and her voice didn’t carry.
“No-one’s going to hear you, Dimanche,” Charlotte said. “No-one’s going to help you.”
“Mh… mhhhh…” Dimanche whimpered, knowing that Charlotte was completely right. Her body felt heavy, and sort of disconnected from itself. When she saw her hands slip from Charlotte’s wrist, and fall limply onto her lap, they almost felt like someone else’s hands. When she felt Charlotte begin to caress her naked legs, they almost felt like someone else’s legs. When her eyelids began to flutter, they almost felt like someone else’s. But they were hers.
“I’m… sinking…” she thought, the only words her hazy mind could find to articulate it all.
The feeling of the fabric of Charlotte’s trousers against her ivory skin was strangely pleasant, and she found herself looking down. She saw her womanly legs completely exposed by her nightdress, so pale and silky and supple. She saw her own breasts heaving against her dress’ fabric, the garment’s plunging neckline exposing their gorgeous, ripe swell. She felt Charlotte’s foot stroking her legs - and she could do nothing. She felt a hand stroking her pale, swanlike neck, so smooth and so slender - and she could do nothing. She felt a sudden, desperate awareness of her own appearance. She was a gorgeous, voluptuous young woman; dark-eyed, ivory-skinned, buxom, long-legged - she was intensely desirable, and she was terribly beautiful. It was not vanity for her to think that there were a thousand reasons why this woman would want to capture her.
Charlotte drew Dimanche closer, and the raven-haired maiden flopped against her, her legs slipping clumsily uncrossed. The chloroform had defeated what little strength she had.
“That’s it,” Charlotte said, pulling Dimanche onto her lap, “down you go, babe. So sleepy, aren’t you? So sleepy, and weak, and pretty…”
“Mh…” Dimanche was helpless but to obey, drawing in heavy lungfuls of chloroform with each rise and fall of her ample bosom. Her white shoulders sank, her body narcotised into limp passivity.
“You have no idea,” Charlotte whispered into her captive’s ear, “how important you are, Dimanche. You have no idea how long we’ve all waited for you. No idea how many people would kill to be where I am. Well,” she giggled, nuzzling Dimanche’s neck, “maybe you have some idea.”
“Mh…?” Dimanche felt herself being shifted around, felt Charlotte’s legs wrapping around hers, like two powerful serpents capturing and squeezing her calves and her yielding, creamy thighs. At the same time, she felt a hand invading the luxurious perfection of her bosoms, cupping them from beneath, so that Dimanche felt the soft, springy fabric of her nightdress caressing the undersides of her breasts. She looked, or was allowed to look, downwards, and she saw Charlotte’s fingers slipping past her nightdress’ borders, and she moaned as she felt cool leather against her warm skin.
“I know some people,” Charlotte said, “who think you’re supposed to be a warrior, or even saviour. That you’ve got some heroic destiny. But I know better, Dimanche. And you know better. You’re so warm… so soft… your only destiny is to be used. Oh, we are going to use you…!”
She intensified her molestations, vigorously fondling Dimanche’s breasts, kneading them like a baker with dough, toying with them, cupping and jostling them, slipping her hand into the narrow channel between them to watch how they parted and reunited when she took her hand away.
“Mh… mhh… mhhh…” Dimanche moaned, her sweet sighs in time with the rhythm of Charlotte’s lascivious massaging. The material of her nightdress rubbed against her hardening buds, and a deep blush reddened her cheeks. “Plhhs…” she mewed, “s...sthhp… hhh… hlp… mhh…” She shifted her creamy shoulders with sensuous weakness, but all she achieved was dislodging one of the thin straps of her nightdress. Her right shoulder was bared, and her captor took immediate advantage, stroking and then kissing her decolletage, and then in one moment of sensual cruelty, running her tongue over Dimanche’s naked shoulder, her collar, and finally her neck, all while still fondling her bosom and rubbing her silky, moist legs.
“You sound so sad,” Charlotte crowed. “Poor thing. I mean, I can see you blushing, so I guess you’re having a little fun… but maybe it’s just better if you… go… to sleep.” She pressed the cloth tighter, and she felt Dimanche go a little more limp. She started stroking Dimanche’s luxuriously thick hair, letting its dark tresses wind lightly around her fingers. “Just sleep,” she whispered. “Just sleep…”
“Mhh…” The temptation was irresistible. The rhythmic massaging, the overpowering sensual humiliation, and the heady scent of the drug draining away all her strength, all her will and capacity to fight. “I… I can’t… can’t move… I… oh… oh no… no… nhh…” Her eyelids were so heavy. Her body was so powerless. Her eyes fell shut with a sweet, fetching flutter, and with a long, low lament, a moaned confession of the totality of her helplessness, she passed out.
For a few seconds Charlotte left the cloth over Dimanche’s mouth, until she was sure the maiden was utterly subdued. Even when she did take it away, she pushed Dimanche’s head, let it flop onto her shoulder. She lifted one of Dimanche’s hands as high as she could, then let it fall onto her thigh with a satisfying ‘slap.’ She stood up, letting Dimanche sink back against the sofa cushions. Her head remained fallen on one shoulder, so her neck was a little stretched, only highlighting the elegance of its form. One hand lay where Charlotte had left it, on Dimanche’s thigh, and the other by her side. Her thighs were close together, her calves slightly askew, and her lovely face bore an expression not quite of totally peaceful repose, the crinkle of her eyebrows a subtle testament to her captive state.
“Oh yeah,” Charlotte laughed. “You’re absolutely fucking out, aren’t you?”
Alone with this ravishing, helpless beauty, Charlotte elected she had a little time in which to indulge herself. She sat by Dimanche, lifting one of her hands, and kissing her wrist, feeling the thrum of Dimanche’s pulse against her lips. She let Dimanche’s hand fall again, taking pleasure in its complete limpness. She put both her hands on Dimanche’s thighs, tucking her fingers underneath them, feeling them sink against her hands. She lifted one of Dimanche’s long, milky-white legs and folded it over the other, watching with pleasure as her thigh muscles tensed and hardened as they were pushed against by the thigh beneath them. Charlotte removed her glove, and shivered as she felt the flawless silkiness of Dimanche’s skin, her hands dancing all over both of the fainted damsel’s legs, then shooting back up over the curves of her hips, her stomach, and her heavy, supple bosoms.
Charlotte slid her hand up her captive’s slender arm, until she had a hand on both of Dimanche’s soft, gently sloping shoulders. She spread her fingers out like spiders, tracing the lines of Dimanche’s clavicles with her thumbs, and working Dimanche’s trapezius muscles with her fingers.
“...hnh…” Dimanche breathed, her slumber only slightly disturbed by being so mercilessly taking advantage of.
Raising her hands to Dimanche’s face, Charlotte took pleasure in the firm, feminine structure of her features. She kissed Dimanche’s elegant jawline on either side, before softly tracing her lips with her thumb. They were plump, and pillowy; shiny with gloss and wet with chloroform. Charlotte even, partly to give herself a thrill of power and partly to check that Dimanche really was firmly unconscious, carefully opened one of Dimanche’s eyes, though she hardly saw more than the white, for it was rolled back about as far as it could go. Laughing, Charlotte pushed Dimanche’s head to her other shoulder, before - with a wicked grin - putting her hands on Dimanche’s hips and sliding her tongue up the channel that ran between her captive’s breasts.
But Charlotte couldn’t have her way with her sleeping beauty forever. She had a mission - a quest, even, and she needed to get on with it. She eased Dimanche off the sofa and onto the floor, laying her down onto her front, the damsel’s body limply surrendering to her captor’s commands. She took a moment to admire her prone form, the way the stretchy material of her nightdress clung to the swell of her behind, and then set about binding her. Fortunately it was all prepared already. She had a kind of large tarpaulin, inlaid with clear, thin plastic. All she had to do was shift Dimanche until she was on top of it - and then just roll her.
All in all it took only ten revolutions to wrap Dimanche up completely. The plastic clung easily to her body, damp with sweat from her sleepy struggles. Her arms were pressed hard against her sides, her hands pushing against her hips. Her long, satin-soft legs were pushed together, sealed and subsumed in tight, plastic wrap. It hemmed in Dimanche’s voluptuous breasts, trapping them, forcing them to strain against the transparent confines whenever Dimanche breathed.
It was brutally efficient. From her ankles to just below her naked, white shoulders Dimanche was completely bound, each layer gossamer thin, but collectively more than strong enough to bind her up tight. She was completely covered, but still completely visible beneath her bindings, giving Charlotte a perfect view of the way Dimanche’s bondage promoted and highlighted her feminine curves: concealed and revealed at one and the same time.
All that remained was to gag her, just in case she came to while someone could hear her. Charlotte was to have used a roll of duct tape, but she caught sight of a more mischievously appealing alternative. She saw Dimanche’s stockings draped over her clothes horse, and laughing to herself she snatched them up.
The first stocking she rolled up into a little ball, parting Dimanche’s lips and then pushing it inside, before closing Dimanche’s mouth. She sealed the stocking inside with its companion, stretching it out to wrap around the back of Dimanche’s head, the stocking just about wide enough to cover Dimanche’s mouth, gagging the fallen damsel, the sweet smell of her legs that lingered on her hosiery mixing with the heady odour of the chloroform which still hung on her lips.
Charlotte regarded Dimanche with satisfaction, not just because she was so lovely, but because of the ease of the whole process. She really felt like it was destiny that had led her here. For it was she, of all people, who had first seen the Thermarchyros shining when she had gone down to the Sepulchre to fix the electrics in Demeter’s shrine. She, who just so happened to be far more steeped in the lore of the Order of Mysterion than the Blue Sisters could possibly have expected. She, who had for many years been dedicated to the order’s total overthrow. And now the next Aegis was in her grasp.
She only had to wait for the Order of Mysterion to come and get her.
Hi! I hope you don't mind if I give some feedback. I want to preface it by saying that I'm not saying I don't make the same mistakes, just that these are the things that stuck out to me.
Okay, first I'll do a running commentary as I read through the text.
I don't really like how many complicated words were used. Stuff like "dodekatheon", "mens sana in corpore sano", "sepulchre "...
I mean I get that the reason is to show its extravagance (I think?) but if I'm forced to Google something I tend to glaze over that paragraph instead, and end up getting lost when I skip ahead later.
To be really honest with you, I had to re-read the first few paragraphs several times to grok them, and I'd like to consider myself as a moderately-educated person. I hope.
I enjoyed the bait-and-switch thing when the priestess started complaining about modern electronics when all this while I was led to believe a rather ancient setting (ignoring the stuff about time travel). I felt this could've been shifted ahead, though, instead of making me go through all the prior content. It felt like a huge info dump, which I want to insist is completely fine, but turns me off especially if it's placed at the start of the story.
I think you could try to simplify some of the words used. Even words that you can expect most to understand can probably be simplified, for instance:
"The room adjoining the shrine had never been intended as a sacred space in itself." could become "The room beside the shrine wasn't meant for ___". I get the whole "holy" feel the text is trying to convey, but if it were to be described in simpler terms it could really help the reader read through the whole thing instead of having to slow their reading to process a word. And the complicated vocabulary habit continues on to the second post in the thread, even outside of the shrine.
Onto the next post. I love the detail that went into the family, it was really well-nuanced and Dimanche's job is pretty well portrayed, though I admit I don't know enough about social work to comment on it. Still though, we're probably several A4 pages in, and I don't really feel a story? Like yes, all this prose so far is excellently-written, but I'm not really seeing the point to all this writing so far. Please take this comment in good faith, I really don't mean to insult you here.
Next post. Ah, now I see. The Thermarchyros has chosen someone to wield its power. I kinda get what you're going for here. First you show the shrine and followers of some Order that protects the Thermarchyros. Next you show the character of the bearer, and finally you explain how the Order will play a role in finding the bearer? Then I assume after this post, we'll be going back to Dimanche where she'll receive the power?
I'll be honest. I don't hate it, but I really felt this whole block could've been condensed significantly. It's like the classic "hero stumbles upon hidden power" story, except that the hidden power is explained for 75% of the movie, and the hero's journey isn't touched so far.
Onto the next part! Ah, so now I think the villainess reaches the hero first before the good guys can find her. Okay, I sort of understand now. I loved the peril. I mean, for the story as a whole your descriptions are really detailed and you really delve deep into it, so while I personally feel that's bad in some other parts as I mentioned above, your writing style really works in these situations of peril.
Now, I'll go into the story as a whole.
First off, I like the effort that went into building your world. From what you wrote I can kinda tell you're pretty damned knowledgeable in Greek mythologies and stuff like that and incorporated such things into your fictional world. However, I'd like to caution you from infodumping too much.
You're pretty skilled at describing things almost to a fault, as I personally feel you went too deep into otherwise unimportant things especially in the first post. Still, that style paid off well in the peril portion.
I like your characters. They seem pretty human, especially Dimanche. I don't really think you need to go into too much detail for more minor characters though.
Yeah, that's about it. Sorry for the wall of text. I'm really not a critic or an experienced writer or anything, just a random reader who's decided to pick out the things in this story that were good and bad to me. Thanks for your story!
Okay, first I'll do a running commentary as I read through the text.
I don't really like how many complicated words were used. Stuff like "dodekatheon", "mens sana in corpore sano", "sepulchre "...
I mean I get that the reason is to show its extravagance (I think?) but if I'm forced to Google something I tend to glaze over that paragraph instead, and end up getting lost when I skip ahead later.
To be really honest with you, I had to re-read the first few paragraphs several times to grok them, and I'd like to consider myself as a moderately-educated person. I hope.
I enjoyed the bait-and-switch thing when the priestess started complaining about modern electronics when all this while I was led to believe a rather ancient setting (ignoring the stuff about time travel). I felt this could've been shifted ahead, though, instead of making me go through all the prior content. It felt like a huge info dump, which I want to insist is completely fine, but turns me off especially if it's placed at the start of the story.
I think you could try to simplify some of the words used. Even words that you can expect most to understand can probably be simplified, for instance:
"The room adjoining the shrine had never been intended as a sacred space in itself." could become "The room beside the shrine wasn't meant for ___". I get the whole "holy" feel the text is trying to convey, but if it were to be described in simpler terms it could really help the reader read through the whole thing instead of having to slow their reading to process a word. And the complicated vocabulary habit continues on to the second post in the thread, even outside of the shrine.
Onto the next post. I love the detail that went into the family, it was really well-nuanced and Dimanche's job is pretty well portrayed, though I admit I don't know enough about social work to comment on it. Still though, we're probably several A4 pages in, and I don't really feel a story? Like yes, all this prose so far is excellently-written, but I'm not really seeing the point to all this writing so far. Please take this comment in good faith, I really don't mean to insult you here.
Next post. Ah, now I see. The Thermarchyros has chosen someone to wield its power. I kinda get what you're going for here. First you show the shrine and followers of some Order that protects the Thermarchyros. Next you show the character of the bearer, and finally you explain how the Order will play a role in finding the bearer? Then I assume after this post, we'll be going back to Dimanche where she'll receive the power?
I'll be honest. I don't hate it, but I really felt this whole block could've been condensed significantly. It's like the classic "hero stumbles upon hidden power" story, except that the hidden power is explained for 75% of the movie, and the hero's journey isn't touched so far.
Onto the next part! Ah, so now I think the villainess reaches the hero first before the good guys can find her. Okay, I sort of understand now. I loved the peril. I mean, for the story as a whole your descriptions are really detailed and you really delve deep into it, so while I personally feel that's bad in some other parts as I mentioned above, your writing style really works in these situations of peril.
Now, I'll go into the story as a whole.
First off, I like the effort that went into building your world. From what you wrote I can kinda tell you're pretty damned knowledgeable in Greek mythologies and stuff like that and incorporated such things into your fictional world. However, I'd like to caution you from infodumping too much.
You're pretty skilled at describing things almost to a fault, as I personally feel you went too deep into otherwise unimportant things especially in the first post. Still, that style paid off well in the peril portion.
I like your characters. They seem pretty human, especially Dimanche. I don't really think you need to go into too much detail for more minor characters though.
Yeah, that's about it. Sorry for the wall of text. I'm really not a critic or an experienced writer or anything, just a random reader who's decided to pick out the things in this story that were good and bad to me. Thanks for your story!
-
Damselbinder
I am far, far more amenable to such thorough, thoughtful criticism than I am to the wall of silence stories normally get on here. Thank you very much for taking the time to do this.
I see much of what you're saying. I don't agree with all of it, but I do see where you're coming from. The only thing I would say perhaps to keep in mind is that the pacing of this story is more like the pacing of a novel. This is the very beginning of what I intend to be quite a long adventure, so the relatively leisurely pace of the introductions and so on is to ease people into the Greco-Roman-modern-Britain bit of nonsense I'm going for.
I see much of what you're saying. I don't agree with all of it, but I do see where you're coming from. The only thing I would say perhaps to keep in mind is that the pacing of this story is more like the pacing of a novel. This is the very beginning of what I intend to be quite a long adventure, so the relatively leisurely pace of the introductions and so on is to ease people into the Greco-Roman-modern-Britain bit of nonsense I'm going for.
If I could, the longer form words you're probably having trouble with Artee, are just like... ancient Greco-Roman lingo you probably shouldn't spend TO long trying to translate. Like for the Thermarchyros far as I'm aware isn't even a real word EVEN in 'the old tongue'... just a word that reads as what an ancient Greek might name an artifact.
So you'd be fine with reading over it and re-contextualizing the word as 'power amulet' little different from Wonder Woman's 'power belt'........ just with a name and framework that is more in line with some simulacrum of historical context. I'd personally advise not thinking TO hard about the words that read like Greek, as they're probably (without trying to say to much in DB's place here... cause I obviously am not him) meant more as setting sprinkles than essentials for understanding whats going on.
So you'd be fine with reading over it and re-contextualizing the word as 'power amulet' little different from Wonder Woman's 'power belt'........ just with a name and framework that is more in line with some simulacrum of historical context. I'd personally advise not thinking TO hard about the words that read like Greek, as they're probably (without trying to say to much in DB's place here... cause I obviously am not him) meant more as setting sprinkles than essentials for understanding whats going on.
My stories
Origin - http://www.superheroineforum.com/forum/ ... =9&t=26745
Camelot - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30886
#Canceltwitter
Origin - http://www.superheroineforum.com/forum/ ... =9&t=26745
Camelot - viewtopic.php?f=9&t=30886
#Canceltwitter
-
Damselbinder
Thank you, Femina. Much of what you say is right - with one exception. I chose "Thermarchrysos" quite deliberately. It literally means (in, admittedly, gramatically broken Greek) 'the hot gold'.
-
Damselbinder
Oh hey, thank you! Boy, didn't this come out of nowhere! Yes, indeed, I'm going to finish Valora completely before I even CONTEMPLATE returning to this, because it's going to be yet another long-form project. But glad you liked this, and Val, and EG!