The Second First of Dates!

Our Queen returns to us with tidings of the second First of Dates!

This one was kept secret to all except Lady Chamberlain Heidi and Lady Eva. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all, and our sovereign likes to keep up on all social niceties as best she can.

As you may have anticipated, this First of Dates was with Prince The Real Megillah.

Our queen returned to us after her meeting pale and distressed. She assured us all she was “quite well, thank you”, but took to her chambers and remained there for the better part of XXXVI hours.  As to why she was so pensive and silent, we knew not though we fretted with anxiety over our ruler’s health. She refused most food, but took double rations of mead in the evenings (which even babes in the bassinet know is not the happiest of signs). Although she barred all but the aforementioned companions from her righteous presence, she could be heard pacing the floors of her bedchamber late into the evening and through early dawn.

This was not a good sign, and all good subjects of Aes Sidhe awaited her emergence with bated breath. What could have happened, they wondered? Are we at war? Is there a secret pestilence spreading through the lands? What danger has befallen us and our beloved ruler?

The soothsayers questioned Lady Eva, whose response was something to the effect that the Queen reaped what she sowed and that she would recover from her experience in due time.

The soothsayers also questioned Lady Chamberlain Heidi, whose response to their queries was to strip them to their under-britches and toss them into the moat. “Be gone!” she yelled, “Leave well enough alone or you will be fed to the hounds!”

So what, pray tell, had happened to our Queen? It is true that the evening in question shook with lightning, hail, and snow – all of which promised an ominous outcome. But having screwed her courage to the sticking place as the Lady Macbeth had done so many centuries ago, our blessed sovereign ventured out into the raging dark towards a personal attendance with Prince Megillah.

We can say with certainty that the evening began well enough, with shared food and drink and stories galore. Our queen liked Megillah’s company and the manner in which he could traipse from subject to subject with casual ease and intelligence.  All was well for a First of Dates. All was well, at least… at first.

When the private audience was drawing to its close roughly two hours after it had begun (almost like clockwork, our queen noticed), the Prince insisted on returning our Fairest Daughter to her castle via his personal carriage pulled by the regal and dangerous Panthera onca. Normally our queen would have chosen to return to the castle under her own sure footing, but as the weather was still blowing cold and wet she accepted the offer.

And here, faithful readers, is where things went very wrong.

Secreted away from prying eyes and public places, the Prince immediately took liberties with the Queen. The nobleman who had just exemplified all the courtesies of the term “noble” in public had turned, once interred within the confines of his carriage, into a beast of cephalopod origins. He was more than forward with his advances, Dear Readers, for he took liberties with the Queen where none were offered! The ride took X minutes at most, but for our sovereign it was about V minutes too long. So shocked was she by his immediate physical reaction to her that she herself did not react much at all!  She did remove his hands from her person more than once, but apparently it was not enough for the rogue, and at minute X when the carriage pulled up in front of the castle walls he embraced her before she could disengage the lap belt and stole – can you believe it?!? -- a kiss! Lady Eva scolded her later that by not bluntly ceasing his pawing by both word and action that she brought the physical assault on herself. There is truth to this statement, to be sure, but our Queen could be heard in her bedchamber afterwards repeating the same phrase over and over, “Not without my permission!”

By forcing the embraces, by making the queen flutter like a songbird trapped in a cage within his Panthera onca driven carriage, by stealing kiss from her… what may have been allowed had Prince Megillah merely asked first… turned our ruler’s heart from fire to ice. By not allowing her to come to mutual agreement on a plan of action, the Prince lost much of his leverage that night. She retracted much of her good will towards him, and now she finds herself torn between barring the beast or losing her friend.

“Not without my permission,” she whispers through the corridors now. The servants have even caught her mumbling the passage under her breath in public places. But kindly souls that they are they merely avert their eyes and curtsey with good breeding since they can tell even with their peasant eyes that the queen is not herself at the moment.

The queen has a choice to make, and the decision must be made soon. If she chooses to continue an affiliation with this fellow, and she may do so as he offers her much by way of mental and verbal stimulation, she will have to continually bear in mind that his motivations are for one purpose and one purpose only. All things being equal, that may not be a bad arrangement, but of course the reason why the queen finds herself in her current predicament is because all things were clearly not equal on that fateful evening.  There must be mutual understanding. There must be equanimity. Without this, she is an object to be owned not a creature to be tamed. It goes against a codex in the Art of Sex. It cannot be. She will not allow it.

Not without my permission!

“Leaning over you here cold and catatonic
I catch a brief reflection of what you could and might have been
It's your RIGHT and your ability to become my perfect enemy” ~A Perfect Circle