The Stallion

Where will the quest lead me? The lashing rain ahead of us is like an encouragement, an invitation in the tide of my life. Ever since the reconciliation with Finn, I keep asking myself how does luck descend? I was forlorn and beaten down by the persistence of triumphant animals. They always seemed to get the better of me. Then Finn with his mesmerising grin, his green eyes and pliantly soft voice, brought his coda into my half addled brain. I would stand transfixed with fear, when he would calmly stroke the fur of the animal, the coat of a friend, the rough hide of a creature, and they would all be transformed. His endeavour was remarkable in its solicitude.
'Is there a potion?' I eventually asked him, 'Something I can take to enable me to outwit marauders who try to inveigle me?'
'No,' he sighed, laughing his quiet assured laugh.
'No secret. Just ask yourself what happens when the light goes out? That is the nature of all animals, they live not by light but by instinct and smell. You must become like them, in their skins.'
I tried it much later in life, and do you know, it worked.
Even now, as his body steams beneath me, steaming still, glossy and fierce, I am aware that an animal's wildness can be tamed. It is like a history foretold.

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule

Madam Heath

The madam floated through the tasselled door in a funk. Snarling and spitting obscenities at the girls, her mouth raw from glittery chewed leaf tobacco. The girls, half nude, were lolling together like a sheaf of corn, so it was hard to see where one limb ended and another began. Random long limbs attached to beautiful bodies, exquisite faces, the atmosphere rife with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. The madam, like a sparrow-hawk swooping down on the prey, spoke out in a sing-song voice.
'There is a feud going on and I do not intend to be the vanquished. I have seldom had need to turn to men for protection in this MY BUSINESS, and I do not intend to break the habit of a lifetime. So, beware that from now on, things are going to get pretty nasty around here. Now I am off to sound the gong. You all know the drill'.
With that pronouncement Madam Heath swept out and all the girls began quietly twittering and trilling.
The gong sounded three times and number three girls went out to meet her first john of the night.

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule