![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalA piece from my rather disorganized followup to Prisoners of War, in which Rolas* deals with the personal revelations he learned during him capture, when he meets a lonely widow with a passion for control.
Yeah, I write smut when I can't think of anything else. Though for the record I actually have been working on Mimsey's Tale. Trying to re-format it properly is proving a bear though.
* * *
Rolas had been left tethered to the workbench in the small engine barn, a padded cuff wrapped around his ankle (which he could have easily cut off with many of the tools available to him), locked to a chain (which he could have broken with a prybar) wrapped around one of the bench's legs (which he could have lifted up and slipped off). It was all... not a game of pretend exactly... not pretense. More like an acknowledgment he had given control of the situation to Midnight, and she, in turn, acknowledging she had taken it. An mutual agreement of sorts.
He'd stripped to the waist in the heat of the barn to work a steel brush over a pesky rust spot on Mr. Puff's boiler, when Midnight came rushing in, her usual serene look replaced by something between exasperation and panic.
“Here,” she said, tossing her key ring to him, gasping for breath from what looked like a hard sprint. “Unlock yourself and stay out of sight.”
“What's the matter?” Rolas asked, snatching the keys out of the air.
“The Two Winter Witches... Ah!” Midnight rubbed her ears in frustration. “I'll explain later! Just stay out of sight!” She rushed out again, heading back through the gardens and letting out a curse as her toes struck one of the rails hidden in the grass.
Bemused, Rolas unlocked the cuff from his ankle, kicking it and the chain under the bench. He brushed rust flakes from his pelt and slipped on his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned as he found a shadowed spot inside the engine barn's doorway to observe.
Making their way through the overgrown gardens, were two older vixens in what looked like their late fifties. They were almost certainly twins, with stark white pelts and sky blue riding dresses, riding stark white grass chasers with sky blue harnesses, like a pair matching lancers from a game of castles & corners. Even without the white pelts, from the aristocratic look of their muzzles and sharp tipped ears he could have placed them as relatives of Midnight's late husband.
He followed after them as they turned a corner, pausing as he heard Midnight ask in irritation, “What are you two doing here?”
“Inspecting our property,” one of them answered.
“It is not your property,” she shot back. “Timothy willed the manor to me.”
“It will be when you finally have the good grace to die, dear.” the second replied. “Unless you've hired a stud fill that well-used hole of yours and get you a bastard.”
“You know I haven't,” Midnight said, and Rolas could almost hear her fangs grinding as she reined in her temper. “I have stuck to our agreement. I've only gone to town for the supplies I need to live.”
“Really?” the first one asked. “Then why were you seen there buying a man's clothes from a secondhand shop?”
“What? How could you possibly...? Oh! You hired someone there to spy on me!”
“Did you really think we wouldn't have?”
“I should claw your sharp ears off!” Midnight growled.
“Whom were you buying for, dear? Tell us, or our agreement is void.” the second said firmly.
Thinking quickly, Rolas snatched up a long reed of grass and stuck it in his mouth firmly. He chewed on it until it hung artfully downwards, then stepped around the corner, coughing to warn of his approach. He gave the shocked Midnight a respectful bow of his head, touching an imaginary cap in greeting. Then in his best O'er West accent he said, “Beggin' yer pardon, ma'am, ye dropped yer keys in the engine barn when ye come to check up on me.” He handed Midnight's key ring to her, and she grasped it tightly, her expression turning from surprise back to fury.
“And who's this then?” the first sister asked.
“O, hello, ma'am,” Rolas said to her, bowing again. “I'm Rollie, Rollie Darktail. Miss Midnight here hired me t' do some maintenance on that wee little engine she's got in the barn back behind the gardens, and t' do a bit of patching on the roof o' the manor.”
“You weren't to have servants,” the second sister said sharply.
“Rollie isn't a servant, he's hired help,” Midnight said, recovering quickly. “You can't seriously expect me to let the roof of the manor cave in.”
The first sister let out an annoyed snort, but conceded the point. “The clothes were for him?” she asked.
“Naturally. The poor fellow ripped his only shirt on Mister Puff's boiler fittings the first day he arrived. I couldn't let him run about half-naked, could I?”
“I suppose,” the second allowed slowly.
“And when he's done, he'll leave,” Midnight reassured them.
“Very well. We check again to make sure he has.” She glared at Rolas. “You're just working on the house and that decrepit engine, are you?”
“O, aye Milady,” Rolas said, bobbing his head cheerfully, as if he hadn't heard the implications in her tone. “She's a right beauty she is. Double boiler with a three stage compression chamber for both pistons, automatic gravity pump for water and fuel and the sweetest sounding whistle y' could ever ask for.” He grinned up at her, acting oblivious to her obvious bewilderment at his technical babble, and chewed on the grass blade a bit more.
“Mister Darktail, perhaps you should get back to work,” Midnight said pointedly.
“O aye, Milady. Didn't mean t' take up yer time,” Rolas said, giving her another touch to his invisible cap and walking off back towards the engine barn.
It was nearly an hour later before Midnight found him there. He'd relocked his ankle cuff and was painting over the cleaned rust spot when she stomped in. She sighed in an expression somewhere between exasperation and relief before stating, “You could have gotten me into a lot of trouble with that O'er West engineer act.”
“Sounded like you were already in a lot of trouble,” he replied, putting down his paintbrush and turning to face her. “Who were those two unpleasant vixens?”
“My husband Timothy's older sisters,” she said, sitting on the repair bench, swinging her leg. “They considered him the baby of the family, and never forgave me for marrying him. They thought he was marrying downward, falling in love with a commoner vixen, and that I had seduced him to gain his fortune.”
“So what were they talking bout when they threatened to void your agreement with them? What agreement with them?”
Midnight rubbed the side of her muzzle. “Towards the end, Timothy was very sick. The cancer was eating away his stomach and he was in constant pain. The two witches tried to use his distraction to pry me away from him, but he was having none of it, and it just made the rift between him and they worse. We finally retreated here to the manor when it became obvious the doctors could do no more good, and he forbade they come to visit him.”
“Then what happened?” Rolas asked.
“One morning the manor woke to find Timothy and one of the grass chasers in the stable missing. We were frantic to find him. It was two days before Civil Protection found his body on the bank of the river. He'd apparently gotten out of his sick bed and drowned himself.”
“A deathly ill male, managed to harness and ride a grass chaser some.. two miles I think... to the river just to drown himself?” Rolas asked.
Midnight turned her face away, tears running down her cheeks. “He always had a high pain threshold. Anyway, the two witches had the same suspicions as you. They threatened to have me arrested for murder.”
“What stopped them?”
“The fact that Timothy, in front of three witnesses that they knew were of impeccable public character, had signed a will that stated flatly that if I were to die unexpectedly or be imprisoned for any reason, they would not see a dime of his fortune and it would all be donated to charity. Their parents had left him the bulk of the family fortune, you see, having as high opinion of the two witches' character as Timothy and I did.”
“So their own greed protects you?” Rolas asked.
“To a point,” she admitted. “They might still be willing to let me go to jail out of sheer spite, but they can't quite bring themselves to do it, knowing that if I die from natural causes they get everything. But only so long as I don't make a nuisance of myself, and remain sequestered here. I'm satisfied with that. I've no desire for children anymore. Not without Timothy.” The sad curl of her black tail between her legs gave the lie to that last statement. It made Rolas wonder what the other lies she was concealing exactly were.
Insight suddenly struck him. “You're more of a prisoner here than I am. I can at least call this game off.”
“Something like that,” Midnight admitted. “The irony is not lost on me, believe me.”
“So how did your husband die exactly?” he asked.
“I told you, he drowned.”
“On his own? Alone?”
“That's what Civil Protection concluded.” She unlocked his leg chain from the workbench and wrapped it around her paw. “Come along, it's dinner time and it's getting dark.”
He couldn't argue with that last statement.
* Yes, this is Rolas from CotRV pre-spaceflight ancestor. Apparently getting caught by powerful vixens is in the genes.
Yeah, I write smut when I can't think of anything else. Though for the record I actually have been working on Mimsey's Tale. Trying to re-format it properly is proving a bear though.
* * *
Rolas had been left tethered to the workbench in the small engine barn, a padded cuff wrapped around his ankle (which he could have easily cut off with many of the tools available to him), locked to a chain (which he could have broken with a prybar) wrapped around one of the bench's legs (which he could have lifted up and slipped off). It was all... not a game of pretend exactly... not pretense. More like an acknowledgment he had given control of the situation to Midnight, and she, in turn, acknowledging she had taken it. An mutual agreement of sorts.
He'd stripped to the waist in the heat of the barn to work a steel brush over a pesky rust spot on Mr. Puff's boiler, when Midnight came rushing in, her usual serene look replaced by something between exasperation and panic.
“Here,” she said, tossing her key ring to him, gasping for breath from what looked like a hard sprint. “Unlock yourself and stay out of sight.”
“What's the matter?” Rolas asked, snatching the keys out of the air.
“The Two Winter Witches... Ah!” Midnight rubbed her ears in frustration. “I'll explain later! Just stay out of sight!” She rushed out again, heading back through the gardens and letting out a curse as her toes struck one of the rails hidden in the grass.
Bemused, Rolas unlocked the cuff from his ankle, kicking it and the chain under the bench. He brushed rust flakes from his pelt and slipped on his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned as he found a shadowed spot inside the engine barn's doorway to observe.
Making their way through the overgrown gardens, were two older vixens in what looked like their late fifties. They were almost certainly twins, with stark white pelts and sky blue riding dresses, riding stark white grass chasers with sky blue harnesses, like a pair matching lancers from a game of castles & corners. Even without the white pelts, from the aristocratic look of their muzzles and sharp tipped ears he could have placed them as relatives of Midnight's late husband.
He followed after them as they turned a corner, pausing as he heard Midnight ask in irritation, “What are you two doing here?”
“Inspecting our property,” one of them answered.
“It is not your property,” she shot back. “Timothy willed the manor to me.”
“It will be when you finally have the good grace to die, dear.” the second replied. “Unless you've hired a stud fill that well-used hole of yours and get you a bastard.”
“You know I haven't,” Midnight said, and Rolas could almost hear her fangs grinding as she reined in her temper. “I have stuck to our agreement. I've only gone to town for the supplies I need to live.”
“Really?” the first one asked. “Then why were you seen there buying a man's clothes from a secondhand shop?”
“What? How could you possibly...? Oh! You hired someone there to spy on me!”
“Did you really think we wouldn't have?”
“I should claw your sharp ears off!” Midnight growled.
“Whom were you buying for, dear? Tell us, or our agreement is void.” the second said firmly.
Thinking quickly, Rolas snatched up a long reed of grass and stuck it in his mouth firmly. He chewed on it until it hung artfully downwards, then stepped around the corner, coughing to warn of his approach. He gave the shocked Midnight a respectful bow of his head, touching an imaginary cap in greeting. Then in his best O'er West accent he said, “Beggin' yer pardon, ma'am, ye dropped yer keys in the engine barn when ye come to check up on me.” He handed Midnight's key ring to her, and she grasped it tightly, her expression turning from surprise back to fury.
“And who's this then?” the first sister asked.
“O, hello, ma'am,” Rolas said to her, bowing again. “I'm Rollie, Rollie Darktail. Miss Midnight here hired me t' do some maintenance on that wee little engine she's got in the barn back behind the gardens, and t' do a bit of patching on the roof o' the manor.”
“You weren't to have servants,” the second sister said sharply.
“Rollie isn't a servant, he's hired help,” Midnight said, recovering quickly. “You can't seriously expect me to let the roof of the manor cave in.”
The first sister let out an annoyed snort, but conceded the point. “The clothes were for him?” she asked.
“Naturally. The poor fellow ripped his only shirt on Mister Puff's boiler fittings the first day he arrived. I couldn't let him run about half-naked, could I?”
“I suppose,” the second allowed slowly.
“And when he's done, he'll leave,” Midnight reassured them.
“Very well. We check again to make sure he has.” She glared at Rolas. “You're just working on the house and that decrepit engine, are you?”
“O, aye Milady,” Rolas said, bobbing his head cheerfully, as if he hadn't heard the implications in her tone. “She's a right beauty she is. Double boiler with a three stage compression chamber for both pistons, automatic gravity pump for water and fuel and the sweetest sounding whistle y' could ever ask for.” He grinned up at her, acting oblivious to her obvious bewilderment at his technical babble, and chewed on the grass blade a bit more.
“Mister Darktail, perhaps you should get back to work,” Midnight said pointedly.
“O aye, Milady. Didn't mean t' take up yer time,” Rolas said, giving her another touch to his invisible cap and walking off back towards the engine barn.
It was nearly an hour later before Midnight found him there. He'd relocked his ankle cuff and was painting over the cleaned rust spot when she stomped in. She sighed in an expression somewhere between exasperation and relief before stating, “You could have gotten me into a lot of trouble with that O'er West engineer act.”
“Sounded like you were already in a lot of trouble,” he replied, putting down his paintbrush and turning to face her. “Who were those two unpleasant vixens?”
“My husband Timothy's older sisters,” she said, sitting on the repair bench, swinging her leg. “They considered him the baby of the family, and never forgave me for marrying him. They thought he was marrying downward, falling in love with a commoner vixen, and that I had seduced him to gain his fortune.”
“So what were they talking bout when they threatened to void your agreement with them? What agreement with them?”
Midnight rubbed the side of her muzzle. “Towards the end, Timothy was very sick. The cancer was eating away his stomach and he was in constant pain. The two witches tried to use his distraction to pry me away from him, but he was having none of it, and it just made the rift between him and they worse. We finally retreated here to the manor when it became obvious the doctors could do no more good, and he forbade they come to visit him.”
“Then what happened?” Rolas asked.
“One morning the manor woke to find Timothy and one of the grass chasers in the stable missing. We were frantic to find him. It was two days before Civil Protection found his body on the bank of the river. He'd apparently gotten out of his sick bed and drowned himself.”
“A deathly ill male, managed to harness and ride a grass chaser some.. two miles I think... to the river just to drown himself?” Rolas asked.
Midnight turned her face away, tears running down her cheeks. “He always had a high pain threshold. Anyway, the two witches had the same suspicions as you. They threatened to have me arrested for murder.”
“What stopped them?”
“The fact that Timothy, in front of three witnesses that they knew were of impeccable public character, had signed a will that stated flatly that if I were to die unexpectedly or be imprisoned for any reason, they would not see a dime of his fortune and it would all be donated to charity. Their parents had left him the bulk of the family fortune, you see, having as high opinion of the two witches' character as Timothy and I did.”
“So their own greed protects you?” Rolas asked.
“To a point,” she admitted. “They might still be willing to let me go to jail out of sheer spite, but they can't quite bring themselves to do it, knowing that if I die from natural causes they get everything. But only so long as I don't make a nuisance of myself, and remain sequestered here. I'm satisfied with that. I've no desire for children anymore. Not without Timothy.” The sad curl of her black tail between her legs gave the lie to that last statement. It made Rolas wonder what the other lies she was concealing exactly were.
Insight suddenly struck him. “You're more of a prisoner here than I am. I can at least call this game off.”
“Something like that,” Midnight admitted. “The irony is not lost on me, believe me.”
“So how did your husband die exactly?” he asked.
“I told you, he drowned.”
“On his own? Alone?”
“That's what Civil Protection concluded.” She unlocked his leg chain from the workbench and wrapped it around her paw. “Come along, it's dinner time and it's getting dark.”
He couldn't argue with that last statement.
* Yes, this is Rolas from CotRV pre-spaceflight ancestor. Apparently getting caught by powerful vixens is in the genes.
