A Good Morning
No amount of blinking is making this register as real.
She’s in my bed. We slept together.
I got everything I wanted.
Now I want more. So much more. Selfishly. I want to hold her and call her mine. Only mine.
“I’ll be back.” I leave a peck on her lips and run off to the kitchen.
Open the windows. Let the Ring’s light flood. Cook pancakes. Butter them. Douse in syrup.
My heart’s cracking sparks at the thought of future nights, dates. Neither of us will have to be alone anymore.
I drop the plates onto my desk with a can of cherry seltzer, debating over how to wake Vincenza up. Should I even try? It would be cute if she woke up on her own to a nice meal, but the meal might lose its niceness if she takes even ten minutes to.
If I were waking up after her, I’d love it if she was touching my hair. Maybe she’d like it too?
Her voice mumbles and sighs under my touch, but she’s not quite waking.
“Hey, Vincenza. Good morning,” I whisper.
“Cat… Catarina?” Her eyes open with a terror, body reeling away from me. “Oh fuck, I didn’t.”
I wince. “Uh, we did.”
Everything goes cold. She can’t—She can’t regret last night.
“Catarina, I’m deeply sorry,” she sighs.
“No, no! It was great! I made you pancakes,” my fading voice offers.
She looks down at her body, shamefully pulling up the blanket and hiding the scarred skin I find so beautiful. “I was highly inappropriate with you. And—“
“And I liked it!” I retaliate with unnatural vigor. My bodily stature feels like it’s being held up by strings on long arms I cannot see. “You did too!”
She lowers her head. “Catarina… this can’t happen again.”
I’m not sure if it’s me or the strings that want this, but it feels nice to kiss her. She doesn’t refuse me. “It will happen again.”
“I have to put a foot down.”
“Put your foot down and fire me. I’ll still be waiting for you.” Another kiss.
“It’s not possible.”
“Then you don’t need to fear it.”
She fully submits to me, losing her grip on the sheets.
I drop my lips down and over her chest, into circles around her breasts. My hand can barely grab them in full.
She massages my hair, moaning.
I’m in a teasing mood today. I drop my head down to her cunt for a kiss, and get off the bed. “We can talk over pancakes.”
She rubs her eyes. “I wouldn’t mind.”
I bring the blanket just over her lap, put down a nice platter for her, and add the plate on top. “I wanted to show that I appreciated you.”
She reaches out for my hand. “I appreciated you too… Ah, sorry. It’s been so long since I’ve been this close to the Ring; it can give me dramatic moods.” She licks her teeth. “And you look like you’re starting to be aware of that too.”
“That would explain how I’m feeling.” I cuddle next to her.
She lets one arm hook around me while her other focuses on food.
“You’re not actually going to end this, are you?”
“I wanted to have the power to. I don’t.”
I furrow my brows. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I can’t make myself say no to you.”
That’s it? All this! And she acts like it’s a weakness and not something beautiful?
Because falling for a young consort with no money is inherently an embarrassment.
Vincenza finishes half her stack, shifting the plate and fork to me after. “I know you didn’t eat much last night either.”
“I remember eating more than you.”
She lifts an eyebrow… and laughs.
I rush through eating to get the platter off me and me closer to Vincenza. “D-do you have any lingering thoughts? I still wanna talk about our night.”
“Too many.” She hides her head into my neck. “I haven’t been inside this room in nearly two years.”
“I’m sorry… Was it Nascia’s?”
“No, we slept together. After her diagnosis, it became too painful to remember the dreams we had in here.”
“Would you rather we leave? And I don’t ask you about them?”
“The problem isn’t that being here hurts me—it’s that it doesn’t. Not as much as I want it to. The plans we had and could never finish seem so far away now. I wish they weren’t. But, every day, I find myself thinking less about them and more about you when I stare at the door.”
“I don’t want to take any memory of her away from you.”
“I know you don’t.” She closes her eyes. “I don’t know when the year passed. In my head, I have the memory of her funeral, and then suddenly I was meeting you. Every day ends quickly, but I’m not at a loss for time.”
I shut my eyes.
I’m playing with the emotions of a relationship older than me.
Vincenza stumbles off of me—I won’t stop her. It suddenly feels cruel that I tried to keep her in this room.
My body’s lifted off the bed. “You don’t mind if I dress you, right?” she asks.
“I thought the parlour was closed today,” I mumble.
“I can’t bring myself to run from you, so you’re leaving this room with me.”
I blink them back open. “Alright.”
Slowly, respectfully, she gets me into my old non-bespoke dress. Her hands take physical notice to the points where it’s become ill fitting. “This is why I’ve been holding off on the rest of your dresses. We should get you new measurements at Stella’s.”
I raise hopeful eyes to her. “Does ‘we’ mean we’re both going?”
“...Yes. I found the confidence to have a one-night stand after the festival, for anyone’s asks.”
“Oh?” I draw out with extra vocal fry. “Who’s this theoretical woman you pulled?”
“A Lawrinian, barely spoke Roversellan. She fled in the morning after I patronized her.” A smile forcefully carves across her lips. “And maybe she keeps coming back, right as her connection’s about to run out.”
“I like this woman. Maybe we could all have fun together.” I chuckle, but very quickly add, “uh, I don’t actually think I—No threesomes.”
“You’re terribly cute when you stutter.” She pulls me closer by the collar and kisses me.
“Typically, I’m told that it’s annoying.”
“Your little vocal hiccups aren’t annoying. You are,“ she reassures.
I hide my eyes by staring at her chest.
Our hands disconnect after the car parks.
I couldn’t dare to make myself ask her how she felt towards me; she doesn’t deserve to be asked that question.
And, maybe, I’m afraid that a stone engraving will be left if I do ask. No second chances. No more time to grow closer. If I asked, and she had to know without any ambiguity that I wanted her romantically, I could so easily see her finally putting down the courting.
Stella turns up to us as we enter the shop and—I can see them.
Dark shadowy specters surround her. They look like tailors too, and they’re all so gaunt. Once I manage to lock eyes on one, they all turn their heads to me.
Stella looks back at her companions then to me. “Can you see them? I’m sorry. They’re supposed to be hidden.” She snaps her fingers, causing the figures to glimmer but not disappear.
“I couldn’t see them, Stella,” Vincenza says.
“Oh. Interesting. Well, they’re gone now.” Stella hops around the counter with arms open. “Now give me a hug!”
“No.”
“Well… fine. But I am going to want to know what brought you here!” Stella’s cheerful, like she’s meeting an old friend.
“My apprentice here needs some refined measurements before I commission you for the rest of her dresses. I apologize for not bringing her in your bespoke dress… It’s in the wash.”
“Then get here, girl! Same corner. Hurry up.” Stella snaps her fingers, specters sprung into following me.
They indiscriminately measure my features, phasing through the material limits set by my clothes.
“I see why you keep them hidden,” I say.
Stella frowns, putting down the measuring tape in her hand. “Most people pay more if there’s a show… No point in it anymore then. You’re both free to go. Vincenza, how many more dresses do you request?”
“Nine. Check’s already written out.” Vincenza hands over an envelope.
“Then I wish you two a good day. And perhaps I’ll meet your lovely paramour next time, Vincenza.”
Vincenza gives no dignity to the provocation and simply leaves.
I follow. “Bye, Stella! I hope to see you at the bar.”
“I’ll be there. Maybe Vincenza’s new favorite can be too.”
I’d join in teasing Vincenza, but she looks hurt. As the outside light grates our eyes, I whisper, “sorry.”
“You’re not at fault for her.” Vincenza surveys the block. “Now, I understand you had rye bread last time you were here?”
“Yes, I’ll show you!” I take her across the block to find the bread shop.
Line’s short this early, with the vampire crowd waning and the human crowd slowly crawling in. The smell of the bakery’s new batches fills the air with… unique aromas. Some born vampires have a truly truly unique taste for garlic that I do not share.
Vincenza kneels before the glass, searching the limited ingredients list for each bread.
“Hello. I can take you.” The clerk beckons us.
“I’m allergic to dairy and eggs. Do you have any bread without either?” Vincenza asks. “I’m not concerned with cross contamination.”
The clerk turns their head and clicks their tongue as they look around the display. “Wasko, do we have anything without milk powder?”
“If you give me thirty minutes, we can,” a worker yells from the back.
“If you can wait thirty minutes,” the clerk repeats to Vincenza.
She sighs and hands me a crescent. “Wanna get your rye and go?”
“I can wait—We’ll wait. What bread is it?” I ask.
The clerk shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s Wasko.”
We take seats to wait. Besides a radio in the corner relaying the news of some murder spree in south Avenale, there’s nothing to focus our minds on but conversation.
I glimpse the crescent in my hand. “Were you just planning on going hungry?”
“We have flour and an oven at home. Maybe no chef, but you’re nearly okay at cooking.” She rests her face on her hand. “You know you’re free to enjoy these foods I can’t have.”
“Food is more tolerable when it’s shared with you.”
She lets me receive a small smile. “...If you do make this choice, you will have to stand by it harder than you expect.”
“What do you mean?”
For the first time ever, Vincenza looks embarrassed. “I didn’t realize that pizza had cheese.”
“H-how?”
“Popcorn has fake butter. Ice cream is hydrogenated soy oil… I thought… Nothing about pizza looks natural; I had no reason to believe they coaxed real cheese into looking like that.“ She snickers. “And, of course, sometimes it really is fake. It’s hard to find out when it is given how much shame they tend to have over it. The consequences of accidentally eating a lot of… It’s not fun.”
“Oh. Uh, I’ll make you deal with that for me.”
“I’ll try my best for you, Kate.” Her eyes burrow into the table. “I still miss milk chocolate. Never had a tongue for the other flavors.”
I exaggerate a noise of disgust.
She half-heartedly defends, “it mattered a lot to me. Nascia hid bars around so she could act clever and hand me something whenever a spell left me in a poor state, and it sometimes worked… I found one once—nearly a year ago. It was so painful, and I couldn’t find any comfort in…”
I reach to squeeze her hand, keeping the act tucked between our thighs and hidden from scrying eyes. “Would it have hurt anyone if you just had it?”
“Yes. Me.” She pulls my hand to her mouth and leaves a dainty kiss.
“We never went vegan because cigarettes weren’t.
Rat testing. We had complex excuses, moral pandering to justify ourselves, but that was always the reason.
I can’t change the choice we made, but I won’t stop adhering to what we should’ve done. ”
I look at her, back onto the verge of tears while waiting for a loaf of bread. All because she can’t have milk. Because decades of excuses left her heartbroken.
Bored customers queue for their loafs, wholly unamused by the vacantly poppy music echoing.
What a wholly unimpressive world.
“Do… you ever wonder why this is the world the Ring planned? I don’t want to doubt it, not when it seems to have given me the most perfect life I could ask for, but I can’t tell what about these moments is supposed to be divine. This all feels so mundane.”
Vincenza whispers, “only the conservative sects believe in the Ring’s perfect planning.
I tried to—it never makes the world shine brighter to believe that it’s the best we could’ve had.
The one matron I ever met of a liberal sect told me, ‘the Great Ring brings gifts, because the world brings tragedies.’”
“But the Ring is infinite? Why would it let through any tragedy?”
“She told me that the Ring could only choose the best of possible worlds, and a world without tragedy is impossible.” Vincenza sneers, “she just didn’t want to compromise any part of her beliefs with reality.
It’s wholly fine to worship something that isn’t omnipotent or perfect or infinite, Kate.
Worship makes us whole—it makes us moral.
Gives us gifts, even. If the Ring was perfect, but worshipping it made us worse, then it wouldn’t be worthy of that worship. ”
Makes us whole. Makes us moral. Gives us gifts.
Her words feel enchanting, enticing, but they’re flawed. It’s because worship’s inability to make us whole or give gifts that I need the Ring to be perfect. Prayer never gave me more clarity or rewards, but it has to be right to pray, so the Ring needs another reason to be worshipped.
I’m not going to say any of that to her. She gave me all I could ask for, an excuse to think.
“Thanks for talking to me, Vincenza. It helps to have your perspective, and I’m sorry about how much pain asking for it caused.”
“It’s only painful now. These conversations linger in my head, and I like them being there.”
“I like having you inside me too.”
She sternly glares at me. “Is this the moment you felt appropriate for a joke?”
I shrivel and cower. “Sorry.”
“You’re too sweet of a thing.” She embraces me and laughs.
“Wait. Did I upset you? I can’t tell.”
“No, and you shouldn’t let my judgement hold so much sway over you. I’m too temperamental a mistress for you to bind your mood to mine.”
“I like you when you’re temperamental.” I lean my head on her shoulder.
“I wonder why…” she muses, brushing through the mess in my hair. “I can’t believe I forgot to take care of you this morning. You wouldn’t mind if I tied your hair, would you?”
I shake my head vigorously.
“I also forgot to leave you time to bathe. Come back to me after to have it tied again.”
I feel her lips press against the back of my head.