|
The Solarium By Night
Pretty Poison Down the Garden Path (Miya and Foxglove) Lost in the Woods Theatricum Botanicum Stone Fox "The only people for me are the mad ones ... mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn....." - Jack Kerouac Gothic Gardening Canada: Poisonous Plants / Common Names HOME |
Pretty Poison.
An unseasonable chill pervaded the air hanging over Rhy'Din that night... Autumn was fast approaching, to be sure, but it was as though Mother Nature herself had taken a vacation trip to Bedlam and left the weather to its own upkeep... Somewhere miles distant, a storm churned at the corner of the sky, and ancient voices howled through the trees... But inside the Red Dragon Inn, the atmosphere was muggy, the air laden with too many voices, the floor of the common room crammed with too many bodies... good thing, though... As evidenced by the continual clinking of coin in the till, people were thirsty... Safely away from the heart of the bustle, Foxglove claimed a seat at the end of the bar, slipping up and settling in with a prim wiggle of her hips, and steepling her fingertips at the bar's edge. "Water, please... simply water...," was all she said, and before the tender could respond, she had spun in her seat, in a snowflurry of maribou tuft, her raspberry eyes widening to scope out the colorful scene before her. Prime specimens of every variety choked the common room tonight, from knights in armor (of course, even the sturdiest armor is no shield against the toxin of beauty), to fragile young ladies in search of heroes to save them (who would more likely find cowards in heroes' clothing aiming only to populate their beds), to the mythical, the immortal, the hunter and hunted, the bards and the temple dancers... Like weeds... At the edge of it all she sat, her only apparent role that of curiosity-seeker. Her hands remained folded in her lap all the while, and her ankles were properly crossed. Silent, watchful, her gaze drifted over the tavern, studying its contents as though it were an ant farm or a shelf of laboratory rats. But she had already learned all she needed, and so this observation was really just a means of passing the time. When her drink came, she waved carelessly over her shoulder, brushing off the bartender with a dismissive air, and when she had heard him amble off, she finally turned her back on the crowd, and her attentions to the simple clay mug of water. The preparation of her drink was involving. Cupping both hands around it, she centered the mug before her, then held it steady until the water had stopped splashing against its rim, and when that motion ceased, she released her hold and reached for the vial draped against her plunging neckline, at the end of its silver chain. A few quick turns, and the amber bottle was unscrewed from its cap, and, hesitantly slow, she tipped it over the lip of the mug. Time slowed to a crawl at that point, as a single drop of clear liquid inched its way out of the neck of the vial, plopping into the mug and creating a momentary spread of ripples. She quickly tipped the vial upright, so as not to spill a single drop more, and with a lightning-quick twitching of her thumb and forefinger, the vial was in place again. And again, she wrapped gloved hands around the mug, lifting it and swirling its contents until the iridescent rings floating atop the water disintegrated and disappeared. All of this careful preparation lent an air of ritual to something that was, curiously, no more complicated than the mixing of a martini... a dry martini, at that. But it drew attention, and that was all that was required... At the end of the ceremony, she heard the words she had come to expect, from a curious bystander watching from a few feet down the bar. "What're you mixing there?" came a young female voice, which Foxglove surmised to be that of a teenage girl, perhaps no more than sixteen, small and frail judging by its timbre. And then came the follow-up question, the one she always got, but rarely so soon. "Kin I try some?" With a sublime smile, Foxglove turned, agonizingly slow, and her features took on a guise of maternal innocence as she made a quick appraisal of the girl at her side. In a few brief seconds, she had judged the young woman's muscle tone and stamina, height and weight, figure flaws, and their relative merit against her overall attractiveness, as it would affect her potential to draw profit in the Rhy'Din slaving market. All of that... in a few seconds... "Certainly," she crooned, and her palm flattened against the bar, so that the rings weighting her fingertips glittered like sudden blinding starfire. With a gracious nod, she nudged against the mug, sending it creeping down... down... down the bar, and into the girl's naive grasp. Much to her surprise, the girl snatched the mug away almost before it had left contact with Foxglove's hand, and she found herself musing that the youngling had probably not had much to eat or drink of late, judging by the way she gulped down the mixture. She crooked her elbow, resting her chin on the end of a gloved fist, and her smile exposed nothing of her sinister joy in watching the scene. The girl continued to drink, and Foxglove just sat back... and waited... The girl could not have been more than sixteen, seventeen, at best. Her hair was fine, if badly in need of a wash, the color of newly-hewn straw as it straggled over her shoulders and wisped down around vagabond shoulders. Had it not been for the decidedly feminine length of those locks, she could just as easily have been mistaken for a boy. The overly large, pouting lips and gigantic dark eyes appeared almost androgynous in combination with the gangly frame, the torso that shot straight down, with no swells or curves, but for those created with the loose drape of fabric from her blouse and jeans... But given that, in Rhy'Din, there was a market for virtually every type of girl, Foxglove's only concern was that the wastrel appeared to be healthy, with the requisite number of teeth, fingers, and toes, and all parts in place... With an avid smile, the brightness of which threatened to betray her intentions, she watched the girl drain the last of her water, and folded gloved hands neatly in her lap as the mug was set to rest on the bar top. "How would you like to play a game?" Foxglove gushed, the raspberry of her eyes suddenly taking on a sparkle of delighted lunacy. The girl's head tilted to the side, her grotesquely large eyes widening further, in confusion. "It's called 'How many steps can you take towards the door before your legs stop working?'...," the slaver simpered, tilting forward with a solicitous grin, her eyelashes all a'flutter. At that, the girl's brow furrowed slightly, but it was clear that she still had no clue, no idea what was about to happen to her. Foxglove had been careful to keep her voice lowered, that no one but her prey might be aware of their exchange, but at that moment, she spotted the first tell-tale sign - a single bead of perspiration popping to life at the girl's temple. She slipped from her seat, her arms outstretched, her features exaggerated by a look of feigned concern. "Oh, my dear, are you all right?" Almost on cue, the girl began to stammer, and her eyes grew to the size of saucers. But one of the ironies of being poisoned is that, by the time one realizes what has happened, it is generally too late to protest effectively... Childlike fingertips clutched at the bar's edge, and a tiny cry of alarm squeaked out of the girl's throat, but that was all there was... Before you know it, Foxglove had an arm wrapped around her waist, supporting her over one shoulder as she led her shuffling towards the door. "It's all right... she's with me... she's just had a bit too much to drink...," she explained to curious passersby. "I'll help her home now..." And the girl, too stifled by the poison slowly seeping up to freeze her feet, paralyze her limbs and still her tongue, could only stare ahead as Foxglove ushered her out the door... ------------ MitzyWaif ------------
Consciousness came - not with the gentle, creeping ease of a sunrise, but with the screaming, grating blare of a chorus of trumpets blasting in her ears, so loud she was sure her eyes would begin to bleed from the vibrato... Sunlight surrounded her, and as she jerked upright, lifting a hand to shield herself from the blinding rays, she managed to bang her skull against an iron grate just overhead. Slowly, cautiously, she opened her eyes, and though she could not be sure, because of the ringing in her ears at the inadvertent blow she had just taken, she thought she detected a woman's hum ringing sweet and clear from somewhere below... Below?!?!? Her eyes snapped closed, then open again, still carefully guarded by her hand, the bones and vessels of which were clearly outlined by the sunshine burning against it from the other side. "Wh... where am I?" she tried to wail, but her throat was thick with mucus and her jaw seemed, as yet, unwilling to cooperate... just as her legs had been the night before... and the noise came out as more of a pitiful mewling than anything else... Breezy, tinkling laughter rose to her ears, and battered at her raw-edged nerves, causing her to wince, but the sound had the unexpected effect of clearing her senses a little more. As she lowered her arm, she turned her head away from the light, towards a place where there seemed to be darkness, to soothe her tired eyes. Propping herself up on both hands now, she shuddered at the sudden realization that her fingertips were curled through a lattice of iron bars... a cage... she was in a cage... The clouds began to clear from her vision, and she blinked once, twice, a third time, then slowly dipped her chin, to see if her addled senses had been playing tricks on her, or if what she had heard was indeed from down below... As soon as her gaze fell on the parquet flooring far beneath, her head began to spin anew, and she fell into a faint, slumping against the side of her cramped prison and sending it into gentle motion, so that it swung, pendent, from the chamber's ceiling... ------------ Foxglove------------
Satisfied with a job well done the night before, she had roused herself long past dawn's first light, so that by the time she had drawn the drapes on the solarium's expansive front window, the sun was already high in the sky, and nearly every corner of the chamber was bathed in its warming light. "Rise and shine, sweeting," she had chirped up to the captive, her eyes following the trail of woven moonseed vines that snaked up the side wall, looped through hooks in the ceiling, and then dropped from the center to suspend a heavy iron cage that was just large enough to hold a child comfortably, and a fully grown adult with no small amount of unease. The response she received had been much as expected. Even the strongest constitutions did not recover from a poisoning hangover so quickly. As the girl uttered a garbled, piteous cry, then slumped to unconsciousness, Foxglove only stood beneath her and sighed - it was a dreamy sigh, and her smile was disturbingly cheerful, almost maternal, as she watched the cage swing from side to side. With the sheer lavendar lace of her robe billowing about her ankles, she sauntered towards the window, turning her doll-like features up to worship Mother Sun as she went. Reaching for the braid of vines, she unwound the tendrils from a steel hook and slowly let it out, until she heard the tell-tale (thunk) of the cage settling to the floor. In a whirl of girlish ribbons and ruffles, she spun back towards the center of the room, and hopped up to seat herself on the top of the cage, kicking her legs out playfully and wriggling her slippered feet with glee. The girl was sleeping peacfully in a tiny huddle at the bottom - she would be for some time, Foxglove surmised, as her fingertips danced adoringly over the deadly stalks of the supporting vine rope. ------------ MitzyWaif ------------
The next sensation she felt was the chill of wood panelling pressed to her cheek... or rather, it was the other way around, as she found herself crushed to the floor by a set of slender fingers curled around the back of her neck, recklessly tearing at her hair and digging into her muscles with bruising force. Her first instinct was to squirm away, but as the fog of grey and seafoam began to clear from her mind, she realized that her ankles had been firmly bound, and the cool draft across the bottom of her feet told her that her shoes had long since been removed and discarded. When she tried to push herself up on her elbows, that hand at her neck only pressed harder, and the fingertips crushed even more brutally. "You, my pretty, pretty plaything, are going to be a dress-up doll," came the cloyingly sweet whisper at her ear, inspiring her to wriggle once more, but when she did so, a second hand came down, across the small of her back, squashing her belly flat to the floor. Oh, what had she gotten herself into? Her guileless curiosity had never led her so far astray before, and now, as she craned her neck around just enough to see a pair of lavendar satin pumps just in front of her, she trembled slightly, not with the peril of her plight, but with its seeming innocence. The whole room smelled of wildflowers, and even her captor's voice pretended to be soothing. What was lurking for her behind this sweet facade? As though in answer to her unvoiced concern, the hand at her back moved, turning over, and she felt a sudden series of sharp stings, as though dozens of razors were ripping at the fabric of her shirt and cutting into her skin. It must be the woman's rings - she had noticed them, but paid no heed earlier... only now, as they were rending the white challis blouse and sending another bracing gust of air across the bared skin of her back, those gems that had seemed so innocuous were just another harbinger of what she was sure would be her eventual doom. The rings continued their work, shredding her shirtsleeves and collar, until the fabric hung in scraps around her slender torso. Once, she tried to move, but the cutting edges of those jewels issued a stern warning as they dug a harsh path between her shoulder blades, and after that, she only hung limp, like a rag doll, against the floor. She was taken by surprise when the cruel hands of her captor were lifted away, and for a moment, she felt an instinctive rush of relief, until common sense told her it was only a brief calm before the storm. Sure enough, her arms were wrenched from beneath her and crushed to the small of her back, her hands forced one over the other, and as the scraps of her blouse were torn away, one of them was wrapped around and around, to bind her wrists. Half-naked and helpless on the hardwood floor, she was overtaken by a shudder that seemed endless, her muscles refusing to obey her and maintain calm. Her breathing began to deepen, and her heart raced, as she reached the verge of panic. When the sound of delicate clicking told her that the woman was walking away from her prone figure, she dared to lift her gaze, peering to see what she could through the veil of straw that had fallen over her eyes. Her captor was bent over a steamer trunk some feet away, and from what she could make out, her attire was much changed from the innocent and girlish fruu-fruu of satin and feathers of the night before. Now, rising from the base of those lavendar heels were long, spindly legs wrapped in mesh, or fishnet, of deepest amethyst, and thick seams marked a path to a pair of painted-on satin shorts, so richly violet they were almost black. A simple blouse, also of satin, but of a hue to match the shoes, clung to her shoulders and shimmered over her curves, and those gloves, with their heinous rings, rose to far above her elbows. The woman, from what she could see, was merely rummaging... but for what?? There were no tell-tale sounds rising from the trunk, only an indefinite clinking that might have been the shifting of chains, or coins, or the musical shuffling of a silverware drawer. She thought her heart might stop... almost wished it had earlier... when the woman whirled around, holding, in one hand, a chrome circlet affixed with an odd manner of rivets and bolts, and in the other, a pair of vicious-looking garden shears... ------------ Foxglove------------
The look of sheer terror, even behind the straggling veil of hair, was more than Foxglove could have hoped for. She brandished the shears with an extra taunting snap as she approached, and was rewarded with a spasming of the slave's shoulders. "Oh, you poor dear.. there's nothing to fear," she crooned, snapping the garden shears once more. "I'm only going to relieve you of the burden of those worn-out denims. It's far too warm in here now, anyway, with the midday sun coming in." Slipping into a crouch, she set the collar aside, and with her now free hand, gathered up the loose fabric at the back of the girl's jeans. The first cut was delicate, just enough to prick through the denim and make a hole, but after that, she hacked away with careless abandon, slipping occasionally and making faint gouges in the girl's virgin skin that caused her to twitch and utter kittenish yelps of pain. "Oh, dear, all that noise is becoming distracting. We can't have that, now, can we? Wouldn't want me to slip and take out an artery..." She fussed as though what she were doing were the most normal thing in the world, as though the girl's cries were unwarranted - although, truth be told, they did have a certain lyrical quality that pleased her sense of aesthetics. But it pleased her other senses far more to see one of the scraps of denim wadded up and shoved into the girl's mouth. Renewing her relentless attack on the pair of jeans, she hacked away until they were nothing but tatters on the floor. Closing the shears and setting them carefully to the side, she sent a few fingertips dancing across the backs of bare thighs, pinching here and there, testing the tone of the girl's young muscle. "Time to get you all dolled up," she chirped, and a leather-clad palm came down with a satisfactory (smack) across the slave's bare behind, leaving the brief red imprints of fingers, and even longer-lasting bars of crimson from the bands of her rings. With that, she lifted her hands away and pushed up from her crouch, snatching up the shears and swinging them around on one finger, as she turned to deposit them in the trunk, and begin her rummaging anew... ------------ MitzyWaif ------------
Her back and thighs were a seething mass of raw nerve endings, the skin dotted with pinpricks of pain from the lacerations the shears had left behind. She could not help but offer a muffled cry each time a draft brushed across her bare flesh, causing the skin to prickle to life with goosebumps that only intensified the stinging agony. Silent tears, not of rage, but of humiliation, coursed from her eyes, and caused a few strands of yellow-gold hair to become matted against her cheeks. Those overlarge eyes, now shot with spiderweb veins of red, kept a peripheral watch on the woman as she bent over her steamer trunk. It occurred to her that this slaver probably had no intention of killing her, and while she probably should have been grateful, the thought that whatever she had planned might be far worse brought a horrified tremor to her muscles, a shudder that caused her wounds to scream anew. She forced her gaze away, forced her body to still, until a hollow noise from inside the trunk startled her, causing her to quake once more, and again, those cuts on her thighs demanded notice. Again, she struggled for calm, taking in a deep breath and directing her focus to the sweet scent of wildflowers in the air. But as she distanced herself from the scenario, a new sensation began to steal over her... warmth... not from without, but from within... bare flesh, tantalized in a thousand places by its contact with the wooden floor... helplessness, that somehow brought with it an odd sense of assurance, a certain knowledge that, within her bindings, she was free, somehow, to lose control... ------------ Foxglove ------------
No matter how alluring the sight of the girl, naked and trembling on the solarium floor, might have been, her little captive was a blank canvas, demanding adornment. And she was only too happy to provide it. She emerged from the steamer trunk, her arms laden with all manner of silks and satins, a reflection of her own tastes, but far less... elaborate? Mincing steps carried her back to the slave's side, and she dropped her bundle in a heap on the floor, then wafted to her knees, to begin her play. The first item she plucked from the pile was a black silk stocking. Taking it gingerly by her fingertips, she brought it snaking up into the air and shook it loosely, to straighten it to its proper form. A little stretching, a little snapping, and she leaned to the side, nimble fingers tugging it over the girl's toes and then smoothing it up the back of her calf, to her thigh. The band at the top of the stocking came to rest across one of the more severe cuts, but there was nothing to be done for it - that was where it belonged, and that was where it would stay. Another perusal of the pile of clothing brought forth the stocking's twin, which she eased onto the girl's yielding leg with equal dexterity. Next, a tiny pair of shorts, patterned after her own, but in slick black nylon, the shiny, stretchy nylon that vintage girdles were fashioned from... these were wriggled past the girl's feet, up and over her legs, and into place at her thighs. Wedging a gloved hand beneath the waif's stomach, she forced her up a fraction of an inch from the floor. "Now, hold steady there, or it'll go all the worse for you," she commanded, her cloying tone containing, for the first time, some hint of malice. An eager, panicked nod from the girl was her reply, and she removed her hand. The slave's figure was blessedly slender, and so the task of tugging the shorts into place was a simple one. That accomplished, it remained only to snap garters to stockings. At last, the heap of clothing at her side had been wittled down to a sparing few items... a pair of satin gloves, and a pair of shoes with horrendously high heels, both in lustrous black... and, of course, the collar. ------------ MitzyWaif ------------
A huffed breath accompanying each new piece of clothing, each new tug and pull at her body, sent the fringes of silken straw fluttering out before her nose and then drifting back, to matte themselves against her lathered forehead, impairing her vision and obstructing her breathing even further. The pain, too, jerked at her, and just as she thought her senses were becoming numb to it, a new thorn of agony would jolt them back to awareness. Her only reward, it seemed, was that each snap against an open wound triggered an unconscious spasming of her body, and each of those spasms, she discovered, meant another chafing of her bare bosom across the wooden floor. At times, she was grateful for the veil of hair covering her eyes, concealing the errant flashes of pleasure that appeared to narrow them, for if her captor were to see, surely this little luxury would be denied. All at once, the dressing seemed to stop, and she merely laid there, too exhausted by fear to maintain her wariness against the next intrusion. As the woman lifted her calves, propping them up on her own lap in a gesture almost comforting, Mitzy experienced yet another element in this symphony of conflicting actions and emotions. The stinging, the confinement, the soothing, even the occasional pleasure, all seemed deliberately designed to create that most profound of tortures - confusion. But she wasn't given time to philosophize on the dynamics of her situation - as her bare foot was crammed into the uncomfortable confines of a shoe that wasn't necessarily made to fit her, all reason was washed away in a tide of burning and pinching, and her toes began to sing with a relentless ache. Her knee-jerk reaction was to chomp down hard on the piece of denim filling her mouth, but her only reward was to be choked by a few stray strands of cotton fiber that tickled at the back of her throat. ------------ Foxglove ------------
Lifting the girl's prone figure was no easy task - awkward, at best - but even more daunting was the problem of keeping her upright, as she was clearly not accustomed to feminine trappings such as high heels. And never mind that these shoes were inordinately difficult to balance in - Foxglove was determined that this slave would learn to be a woman if it killed her... the girl, that is... "Just hold your legs still," she hissed. All semblance of the former treacle was gone from her voice, and she punctuated the command with a snap of one of the garters, letting it flick sharply back down against the cuts at the back of the slave's thighs. "Lock your knees if you have to." At the snap, the girl wobbled, then froze into place, her figure slightly huddled as she fought to stay standing. "Now, then, I'm going to untie your hands, but I suggest that you don't move too much, else you might find yourself flat on your face..." Nimble fingers went to work unknotting the cotton wrap at the girl's wrists, unwinding it with just a few deliberate tugs designed to test her balance and keep her nerves unsteady. Tossing the rag aside, she slithered downward, to collect the gloves, and one of her hands brushed over the back of the slave's tensed thighs. "You may flex your hands, if you like," she cooed, and noted with some satisfaction that the girl's hands had remained frozen in place until then. Excellent. Perfect evidence that fear of the unknown had already imprinted the wisdom of compliance on the girl's psyche. As she snatched the gloves from the floor, draping them over her shoulder, she also took up the chrome collar, winding her hand through it and allowing it to snake down her arm to the crook of her elbow. "I know just the thing that will help you keep your balance." Her lashes settled down over the seething violet of her eyes, and with one hand holding the girl's shoulder steady, she stretched across, to the top of the cage, unhooking the vine and shaking it loose over the iron bars. ------------ MitzyWaif ------------
She dared not move until her captor gave the word, but once that permission was granted, her cramped hands rejoiced at the ability to flex and move again. It was a brief celebration, however, as moments later, she felt the vine brush against her leg, through the sheer silk of a stocking. The touch, though barely there, was enough to send a shiver coursing through her, upsetting her already precarious balance and driving her crashing to her knees. The pain of the impact radiated upward through her thighs, stabbing into her belly like a dagger laced with poison. Perhaps the impact would have been lessened if she had thought to bring her hands down, to break the fall, but her arms were so stiff from their long captivity, it was as though they were not even a part of her body anymore. A sudden blinding light shattered her senses, as her hair was swept away from her face, gathered like a handle for the woman to jerk her upright again. All she could do was bite down on the choking scrap of denim, to stifle the anguished wail at her ankles being so cruelly twisted into place, and forced to hold there. Through all of this, she had managed to hold back her tears, but as the flaxen main swam down over her features again, veiling her from sight and hiding the humiliation in her eyes, those lenses began to gloss over with dewy moistness, and as her fingers and forearms screamed in protest at being forced into a pair of gloves, the first crystalline droplet rolled down her cheek. ------------ Foxglove ------------
The vine, with its sparse foliage and sinewy, flexible stalk, was just the right material for binding the girl's wrists once more. With the chrome collar jangling on the crook of her arm, she made a loop far down the length of the vine, bringing the end up through that loop from beneath, then around in a horseshoe, and back down, in the beginnings of a classic bowline. While one hand held the tangle, the other pinned the girl's wrists together and slipped them through the lariat formed by the entwined stalk. Four turns around the pinioned wrists, and pulled to tighten, then made another horseshoe, leaving a bulk of solid knot that the girl's squirming could not even begin to hope to loosen. Retiring to the far wall, she unwound the other end of the vine from its hook and began to tug slowly, cinching it up like a pulley and lifting the girl's captive arms into the air, to the point that those arms were distended at such a painfully odd angle that the slave had to ease forward, doubling at the waist to achieve any sort of comfort. Foxglove watched and pulled, watched and pulled, until the girl's nose was touching her knees, and her long flaxen locks scraped the floor, and with a satisfied smile, she tied the vine off at precisely that spot. As she sauntered back to the slave's side, spinning the collar with careless aplomb about her own wrist, she noted that the girl remained stock still. Of course, balance on those heels was much easier in her forced posture, but also made necessary, because the vine was not about to give, and to topple from such a precarious position would surely snap the girl's arms right out of her sockets. With the tangle of hair safely out of the way, she stooped to fit the collar into place at last, snapping the cool chrome circlet tight about the slave's neck and, with quick, nimble fingertips, screwing down the bolts that would hold it firm. ------------ MitzyWaif ------------
The snapping of the collar was the final, grisly assault on her senses, worse than the cuts, worse than the humiliation of being stripped and actually finding pleasure in it, worse, even, than the increasing ache of her ankles, as she balanced precariously close to another fall, saved only by the awkward suspension of the vine knotted around her wrists. In a sudden outburst, she exploded with sobbing, her torso quaking and threatening her delicate balance, and each time she pulled against the vine, she was rewarded with a sharp pain that coursed from her shoulders, flooding her entire body with new misery. "Please... please let me go," was her futile cry, choked out between her tears. ------------ Foxglove ------------
"Somehow..." She paused, the word lingering, sweetened, on the tip of her tongue for a long moment. "... I don't think so." And Foxglove nearly capsized herself in a fit of demented laughter, the force of her amusement propelling her across the floor towards the work bench, and turning an otherwise feminine sway into a mincing stagger. Curling her fingertips over the edge of the table, she stretched up on tiptoes, reaching for a ginger jar, squat and round, with a plain limoges finish the color of burnt cinnamon that revealed nothing of the mystery of its content. The occasional quiver of laughter sent her shoulders tp trembling as she wrenched the thick cork free of its holding place and set it aside, reaching inside to pluck up a few tiny, glistening gems and roll them across her palm. They might have been emeralds, on their backdrop of lavendar kidskin, for all that they winked in the sunlight streaming through the picture windows, but no... With a delectable jiggle and the rustle of satin garments, she pranced over to an empty planter before the windows, lifting her palm heavenward, as though in offering to Mother Nature herself, before turning her hand and flexing her fingertips, scattering the seeds to the whims of the rich soil below. The room was silent, but for the transient hiccuping sob from the suspended slave girl... And then a slow, rumbling vibrato crept into the air, on the feet of mice, that blossomed into the roar of a lion, and the metal legs of the planter creaked with their trembling as tendrils, like slithering green garter snakes, spilled over the edges. With a look of divine rapture, Foxglove wound her fingertips through the emerging sprouts, nuzzling the fingers of foliage like a mother tending her children as they crawled up over her shoulders. "Yes, that's it," she gushed. "Grow, my beauties... grow..." Leather stretches in time, and rope frays, given enough friction, but no other substance on earth binds so tightly or burns so well as the fresh-plucked vine of the European red-berried bittersweet, as Mitzi was about to discover. Though it pained her to rip her children from the soil so soon after their arrival, Foxglove saw it as a worthy sacrifice, and bore the fresh saplings proudly, cradling them in her arms as she strode back to the suspended girl, who still wavered in place, painfully posed and helpless, her hind quarters contracting and quivering violently - forget dignity, she was doing all she could just to remain standing. "Maybe I can help you out there," the Mistress murmured, with a soft intimacy that implied her honest belief that she was being of aid, as she dropped the bundle to the floor, and crouched to loop one of the sprawling stems about the girl's ankles, winding it around and around, until they casing it formed held the slave's feet in place as surely as if she had been standing in cement. "That should still your squirming," she muttered under her breath, tying the length of vine off with another quick bowline, then reaching into the tangle of greenery to separate an extra-long piece and shake it loose from all the rest. For this next bit of artistry, she stood, dropping the sinewy stalk to rest across the backs of the girl's knees, and curling her own body over the slave's posterior, to bring the ends of the green rope up, through those distended arms and over the top of her back. Then it was back down, across, and back up again, with a little tug to tighten each time, until the slave's torso was firmly pressed to her own knees, and the joints in her shoulders crackled a barely audible protest at the extra strain. The long, slow process of dressing the slave and binding her up made the last moments before her inevitable beating an eternal, interminable agony, and had no doubt had its effects on the girl's nerves, as Foxglove could see from the convulsive tightening and flexing of her thighs. With one amused eye on the girl, Foxglove grabbed up the remaining tendrils of vine from the floor, adjusting them over her forearm, so that the tips met at one end, and looping them together at the irregular end to form a flogger of natural greenery, its tails barbed with the occasional stem that would ensure discomfort, in the extreme. She swished the makeshift whip through the air a few times, testing it for flexibility, and the whistling sound made Mitzi shudder, and while she tried to make herself as small a target as possible against the imminent beating, her arms, suspended above and behind her, refused to allow her to hunch down any farther than she already was. The hiss of the whip melted into a satisfied hiss from between Foxglove's lips, and she lowered the whip to her side, watching all the while. As she saw the slave force her muscles to relax, she suddenly drew back, swinging the vines and stepping forth, so that the greenery fantailed just below the ivory rounds of her posterior. With a shriek, the girl jerked forward, straining at the vine that held her upright, and teetering precariously, as her knees threatened to buckle under her at the sting of the first blow. "One," Foxglove seethed, amethyst eyes flashing wide with pleasure. The word excited a horrified wail from the slave - in the recesses of her mind, she must have known that such an elaborate binding could only be the precursor to an equally elaborate beating, but to hear the word, to hear that each blow was being counted out, made it suddenly all the more tangible. Without skipping a beat, Foxglove brought the whip swinging in the opposite direction, across her chest, striking in tandem to the previous blow and cutting across creamy thighs that were rapidly becoming laced with a tracery of welts. "Two." She followed through with a playful pirouette, twirling on her heels and coming around again, this time sending the rough lengths of greenery lower, over the backs of the slave's knees, so that the barbed buds of leaves shredded through her carefully placed stockings. The sound of rending silk echoed through the solarium, along with Mitzi's piteous sobbing and the swish of vines through the air. "Three." Twirling the flogger in a figure eight, Foxglove stepped just to the side, to achieve a better angle for viewing the dimpled hollow of the slave's lower back, and as she drew closer, down came the whip, cutting circles into that milky skin in a series of rapid-fire blows, each one drawing cries of anguish. "Four... five... six... seven... eight..." Suddenly, Mitzi's wail broke through the sounds of discipline, ringing clear as a bell above the crack of the whip and the sawing of skin. "Why are you doing this to me???" The question was enough to give Foxglove pause, but not before landing two more vicious blows across the flimsy covering of satin protecting the girl's rear end. Flipping the whip around by its knotted handle, she brought it to rest at her hip, cocking her head and dishing up a pensive smile. "Why... because I can... ," as though it were the most natural answer in the world... |