Cameron To Candy

Candy knelt, her hands resting awkwardly on her thighs as she stared at the lacquered monstrosity in front of her. The society ladies had practically forced her to her knees. The dummy's wooden hips practically twitched in anticipation.

She took a breath.

“Hesitation detected,” said Sir Cumsalot in a slightly firmer tone. “Sensuality points lost.”

Candy froze. The dummy’s eyes seemed to narrow.

“Remember,” it added, “men enjoy the illusion of eagerness. You may not feel it, but you must at least perform it.”

One of the wives snorted behind her. “He’s not wrong.”

Another chimed in, “Fake it like your allowance depends on it. Because it might!”

Candy shut her eyes, took another breath, and began. Her first movement was awkward, a shallow bob, tentative, unsure. The dummy didn’t respond. Then she tried deeper, mimicking what Eleanor had done earlier.

“Watch the teeth,” Sir Cumsalot barked. “I repeat, watch the teeth!”

Candy flinched. “Sorry!”

Lady Grinna stepped closer. “Angle your neck a bit more, dear. You’re jabbing.”

“Am I jabbing?” Candy muttered.

The dummy answered for her. “Yes. Jabbing detected. Try caressing, not pecking.”

Miss Claybell knelt beside her and gently guided Candy’s wrist. “Loosen the grip. You’re not milking a goat. Use your hand in rhythm. That’s better.”

“Too dry,” Sir Cumsalot intoned.

Another wife handed Candy a goblet of wine. “Sip. Swirl. Moisturize.”

“Where’s the enthusiasm?” barked the dummy. “Simulated devotion: inadequate. Visual cues lacking.”

Candy blinked. “Visual cues?”

“Eye contact,” said Lady Munselgrave from her embroidery chair. “Men love eye contact. Ideally, with a hint of longing.”

Normally that might have been true, Candy thought, but in their case she and Marcus desperately avoided eye contact. But she’d fake it here, to get through this insane training.

Candy, pivoting, gave the dummy a flat look. “I shouldn’t have to learn this just for my husband’s benefit.”

Lady Grinna let out a dry laugh. “Oh no, dear. This isn’t for him. This is for you. With your lack of skill, you’d be stuck down there all night! Trust me, once you’ve got the basics, you’ll be in bed a lot sooner.”

Several of the wives chuckled knowingly. Candy groaned, muttering, “Gludge, that’s not exactly comforting…”

Lady Grinna walked over again. “Here. Stick your finger out.”

Candy obeyed. Grinna took it gently and placed it in her own mouth, giving a slow demonstration of a swirling tongue technique.

“Like that,” she said. “Your tongue needs a job. It’s not a spectator.”

Candy tried again. The dummy gave a mechanical sigh.

“Improvement noted.”

Then: “Apply gentle suction, vary tempo. Consider alternating hand and mouth. Show some flair. Pretend you like your husband.”

Candy whimpered, but adjusted.

Lady Claybell offered another note: “Try moaning. Men think it’s a compliment. Use it like seasoning.”

Another wife nodded solemnly. “A good hum can get you done five minutes sooner.”

After what felt like forever, but was only twenty minutes in, Candy collapsed backward.

“I can’t...”

“Yes, you can,” said Lady Munselgrave gently. “You’re improving.”

“You have ceased teeth scraping,” Sir Cumsalot added helpfully.

One of the wives patted her shoulder. “It’s like riding a horse. Awkward at first. Then it just clicks.”

“Ugh,” Candy moaned, “What hard-up bastard needed this so bad he had to have it made into a law?”

“That would be the goddess Gulpedia, darling,” Lady Grinna informed. “Don’t you know why we honored her by renaming the middle day Gulpenday?”

“Uh… what?!”

“Check out the book 'The Origins of Gulpenday' from the library sometime,” Lady Claybell suggested. “It’s… illuminating.”

“Oh, and get yourself a copy of The PaddleSutra too,” Lady Munselgrave added.

“What in the Cone is the PaddleSu—”

“Break time exceeded expected parameters!” Sir Cumsalot cut in. “Return to oral devotion training.”

Candy groaned, but got back into position, and the instruction continued. Periodically, one of the women would take over for a moment to demonstrate a specific technique, an alternating grip, a flick of the wrist, a delicate hum. Then Candy would try again, grimacing, adjusting, refining.

In another room, Lady Eleanor reclined on a velvet settee with a cordial and a worn paperback, Thrice-Bound and Slightly Bruised, the original book club selection for the evening. She turned each page with the same patience she’d once used teaching Marcus to waltz, silently pleased by the distant hums, commentary, and chaotic feedback echoing from the parlor. It wasn’t the book they’d planned to discuss tonight, but this? This was both amusing and urgent.

Meanwhile, back at the Elwood estate, Marcus and his father had been sitting in silence, watching the magic mirror for the last twenty minutes. The newsreel flickered in and out of color, occasionally lapsing into black-and-white until his father tapped the side of the frame to coax it back. Marcus kept telling his father to buy a new one already, but the frugal patriarch said there was no sense in spending money when this one worked “just fine".

“…King Roderick the Firm-Handed has formally recognized Outer-Cone as a sovereign nation,” the announcer intoned.

Marcus broke the quiet. “Huh. You don’t see that very often.”

His father nodded toward a corner ad still hovering on the mirror’s frame. “The Queen’s Summit was last week. Queen Isaddora attended, and the queen of Outer-Cone was there. Dandydrift, I think her name is. She probably had something to do with that.”

Marcus gave a small grunt of acknowledgment. The silence returned. The Magic Mirror hummed, the newscaster’s voice droning in the background: “…in other news, the nation of Bellefemme has announced a new tariff on food imports to GearFord, citing what officials call a ‘strategic recalibration’ of trade priorities. Economists describe the move as… unusual.”

A chair creaked. A servant coughed in another room.

“So,” Marcus said at last, “what do you think Mom and Candy are doing right now?”

“I don’t know,” his father replied, perfectly straight-faced. “They’re probably just relaxing with wine while swooning over some romance novel.”

Fast forward another thirty minutes, and Candy, tired and sore though she was, had found a rhythm, adjusted her hand, and given the right hum. Sir Cumsalot gave a low, approving tremble.

“Good technique,” he intoned. “Full release imminent. Brace for output.”

The pudding burst forward through the lacquered shaft, warm and thick, straight into her mouth. She gagged once, cheeks ballooning as it filled her mouth faster than she could swallow. A little spilled past the corner of her lips, dribbling down her chin. Vanilla of all things coated her tongue, the flavor almost cloying after so much practice. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. She gulped down the rest, breathing hard through her nose, and wiped her chin with her hand, ignoring the approving hum of the dummy.

The ladies erupted in polite applause, a few laughing warmly. One called out, “Not bad at all for a first real go!” Another, grinning, added, “Though you’ll have to work on not spilling. Spilling’s quite against oral devotion etiquette.” A third wife chuckled, “Vanilla’s not bad, dear. Just be glad it wasn’t treacle.”

By the end of the hour and a half, the longest, most humiliating training session of her life, Candy had stopped gagging, mostly. Her hand movements were smoother, her breathing more controlled. And though she still hated everything about the situation, even she could tell she’d improved. She had made the dummy shoot two more pudding cartridges, and she’d hardly spilled that last one.

As she wiped her brow and sat back on her knees, she found herself thinking back to a very different kind of training, her early years in Paddlewick military service. Back when she was Cameron.

All Paddlewick boys were required to serve from ages nineteen to twenty-one. Then came the reserves: two-week refresher stints every six months, unless they enlisted full-time. Cameron had served dutifully, grueling morning marches, blister-polished boots, midnight drills, endless barking from captains who drank too much coffee and too little water.

And now, here she was. This was far more intense.