Aleia Mills > Recent Status Updates

I jerk my head towards our reflections. ‘Look.’ She looks and sees what I see. Her, chained to the bed and spread out for me. Arms up. Back arched. Me, hooligan mask on and muscles flexing as I lean over her. I hope she sees how big I look on top of her. How much more powerful than her. I hope it feeds her desire as much as it feeds mine.

But, you know, he got it completely right. He called it. Because I know a lot of women out there will empathise when I say so much of the female orgasm is in our heads, right, and it’s not even how we feel about the person we’re with. It’s how we feel about ourselves, our bodies, whether we’re stressed, or exhausted, or our brains just won’t shut the fuck up.

Wandering over to the new garden, I take in how big it is and how much work it must’ve taken. It doesn’t make his behavior okay, but it does help knowing that he worked his ass off on something that he thought would make me happy. No one has ever done something like this for me.

“Lucan?” she murmurs. God, let her say my name again, and again. “Yes, Elara.” “You’re not what you want people to believe you are.” Yes, I am. You’re just the only exception, little scribe.

He indicates another. “Atropa belladonna.” I draw the glossy leaves, the dark berries like polished eyes. I know it already, but I want to hear him say it. I want him to teach me, because teaching is intimacy in disguise. “Deadly nightshade.” “Belladonna,” he repeats, as if the name itself is a caress. “Beautiful woman.”

His hand on my wrists slides upward, intertwining our fingers, not tender, but claiming, binding me to the table, binding me to him. “In all honesty Elara, I hunger for you like a wild animal. Things are growing back in me which I ought to be long dead and gone. And, God help us both…” His voice fractures, then reforms sharper. “…I feel a fraction of humanity again when you touch me Elara Vance.”

I wish small wishes. For normal. For Mother’s hands to stop shaking.For the boys at school to misplace my face. For the cold in my veins to loosen its grip. For me to be a child, with a childhood. In the middle of it all; I am eight years old. Not knowing that the thing meant to save us is already destroying every piece of us And that monsters can wear your father’s face, or that love can feel exactly like fear.

At school, there is one boy who doesn’t pull at me. He ties his little sister’s scarf every morning with gentle hands, knots that hold but never hurt. I watch his fingers move, memorizing tenderness like it’s a foreign language. In my coat pocket, I practice tying a piece of string into knots I hope won’t choke anything.

I’m in isolation, completely cut-off from anything and anyone. The world above feels imagined, like something I wrote once and forgot how to end. I tell myself I’m still a journalist. That this is research, documentation, survival through observation. But the pen shakes differently now. The act of writing feels like prayer; and if it is, then congratulations to me, I’ve finally landed the interview from hell.

I’m not sure I can stand to lose that.” My breath hitches. “Lose what?” He moves away from me. “The way you make me remember I still have a pulse.”

The idea of being read without recoil is intoxicating; I have spent my life hidden behind layers and masks, and the possibility that someone might look and not flinch feels like a promise I have no name for.

The fox skull is light in my hands, almost fragile. The teeth are still sharp, small crescents of white. I used to study them when I was drawing, how they fit together perfectly, how precision exists even in predators. Back then I wanted to be a scientist. To study toxicology, maybe. But writing offered a softer kind of danger; one that let me observe without touching. I thought that would be safer. It wasn’t.

“These are pleasant,” I murmur. “They just have teeth.”

The pencil moves easily tonight. I add shading to the foxglove sketch, small strokes to darken the bell-shaped blossoms. Used wrong, it stops a heart. Used right, it saves one. That balance always fascinated me—the thin line between cure and catastrophe.

Pulling her into my lap. Probably not the most appropriate seating for such a conversation but I couldn’t care less about what the others thought. I wanted her there. Needed her as close to me as possible. The feel of her kept me grounded, gave me strength.

Throat dry, I stared up at the ceiling , careful not to disturb the thick blankets piled on top of the wide bedroll. It was silent. I hated these moments. The quiet. The nothingness of night.
The waiting when nothing could occupy my thoughts enough to prevent me from thinking his name.

I felt only determination and anger, so much anger; it seeped out of my bones and coated my skin but I was calm. I dint know one could feel such wrath and yet feel such silence

“Life doesn’t wait to hand you a new puzzle until you’ve figured out the last one”

His arm loosened around my waist. “You can do whatever you want”

And I broke. And just like he had promised he was there to catch all those pieces, holding them together and keeping them safe until I could piece myself back together. Somehow I ended up in the floor with him, in his lap, my arms and legs wrapped tightly around him.
And I stopped pretending .
Because I wasn’t okay .

Its my duty as your husband to make sure you feel safe enough to be real. You don’t have to pretend you’re ok with everything that has happened”
I did the only mature thing possible. I smacked my hands over my face.

“Most of us have fostered friendships that can’t break. So, we just…we just made room for you.”

Made room for me.
“I like the sound of that”

Slowly I looked down. Red. So much red everywhere. A bolt protruded from my chest.

The thing is you won’t mess up it your mad. You won’t do the wrong thing. Each is different. Some whisper sweet words and some spend the time baiting one another. Both enjoying being the tiger in the cat and mouse chase. That is us.

I often wanted to scream, scream for no good reason in the middle of the great hall.

There was nothing wrong with me. There was nothing wrong with her. Or maybe, there was something wrong with both of us, but who cared? Even if we were both broken, then put together, her cracks matched up perfectly with mine.

And when I finally drifted to sleep on his chest, I did so to the sound of Marla’s words. “Only the deepest love was capable of bringing about the deepest pain.” Love and pain. Truth and lies. Light and dark. Fate and choice. None of them were adversaries; none of them could exist without the other. Together, they were life.

Iwandered along the Tarred Road, with its obsidian stone polished by centuries of marching feet, imposing buildings to each side too opulent for a farmer’s son like me, and shops selling trinkets too rich for my blood. My friendship to Malyr aside, I felt strangely out of place.

“And I… I love you. Don’t cry, sweetheart. It’s fated,” Sebian said, his fingertips twitching against my palms as if he meant to hold me tight just one last time. “Take it. Keep something of me. You have to… have to hurry.”

He grunted, tried to counter, but his blows were slow, clumsy, “This is hardly an honorable fight. I’m old…” “And I was young.” Not a child anymore, but not yet a man, stripped of all honor, decency, and anything that had been good about me. “Innocent.” Another swing of my blade. “Pure.” I kicked his chest, sending him reeling back before he fell onto his back with a groan. “Helpless.”