Lusty Literacy

  Chapter 5: Her Scion, Her Son   I wake the following morning with a realisation that today is an auspicious one. A day where, if the Queen – Mother – is telling it true, I’m going to find myself facing a very different reality, going forwards. Today, I undergo my true betrayal, if I choose to go along with it. If I choose to get that thing which I want more than anything else in the world. The Empress of Eternity. The Witch Queen. The Mother of Mothers. I shiver, to consider it. To consider that even after a night’s sleep, waking late and alone – as if time means much, though the palace does keep to a clock, for the sake of her counsel and audiences – with a bottomless well of lusts utterly expunged from me the night before and yet in their place now resides a crystallised aspect of want . I want her. The noblest parts of me, or those best talented in the act of deception, might well view that desire through a rose-tinted lens. In becoming her child , in beco...

  Chapter 4: To Mount a Queen   My days are spent in the confines of her palace, away from prying eyes. The living chambers are off-limits in the day, where the servants feed and clothe her, a state of affairs that the Queen tells me is more for her people’s sake than hers. I can’t exactly disagree, given how readily her audience hall fills each and every day. Sometimes I watch from a high window, appearing on the audience side to be a thing of beautiful stained glass, a depiction of the Empress of Eternity with hands outstretched and palms upturned to the bowing and kneeling masses of a trillion timelines, the Mother of Mothers, the Queen of Queens, She Who Saves. I am so full of doubt and conflict to watch her, to listen in. To see this woman who acts so regal and queenly, there eating one sweet snack or another, upon a throne of black metal adorned in a risqué yet intimidating garb befitting a Witch Queen. To watch her decide the fates of people she has never kn...