Mr.Lion and Mrs.Dove play house.
My queen was alone in the dining hall, she sat at a bench at the end of the table, a tight violet dress squeezed her body into an eye catching ornament under a crown.
Her cleavage pointed directly at the door, at me, she smiled and took a bite of a juicy slice of pork belly. From across the hall her alluring side-eye struck me.
She didn’t wink but she may as well have.
It looked like a cartoon.
I approached under the light of a supernatural flicker that gave the appearance of a sunset twilight. The marble staff lay upon my throne unattended, the queen was already starting on appetizers. My place in this palatial hall was next to her, and I was starving.
If a strap kept her dress from falling it was hidden my royal frill somewhere below her shoulder and on her back.
Her hair had been tied up into a pile I wanted to play with inside of her tall, citrine sparkled and dainty crown.
What a truly adorable creature she was, I hadn’t known this feeling in a decade, maybe two decades
I didn’t really know what to say.
I sat beside her almost self consciously calculating how close we were. Why?
Why was I acting nervous!? we woke in the same bed.
“Are you winning?” I mumbled.
“Yes!” She responded! “Look at all this pig! She jabbed some on her plate. “And dried glazed fruits as well!”
A mirror was conjured before us.
I had tried to avoid them, seeing my new body unnerved me.
I frowned.
My sons might be a little disappointed if they were not as tall as I was. Looking at the royal couple that was likely.
Or maybe the queen was just small, I had not felt I was looking down on anyone until this very moment. Maybe this was a trick mirror for the queen to glimpse a realm that didn’t quite fit into reality.
I don’t understand magic.
She was a little goblin whose body nearly spilled onto the table as a droplet or two of juicy flesh dripped off her fork and onto exposed skin as she slipped it into her mouth.
I was staring at her in the mirror, ignoring my new broad shoulders, my scruffy face that resisted the shaving I had done only this morning, the contrast between my sturdy frame and my pleasantly figured queen felt cozy. Sweet… comical.
Her gentle face chewing on food. Her soft shoulders, the dress that hugged her body and squeezed it, calling me to touch her.
Her expression of total relaxed superiority tattooed itself into my mind through my eyes as she examined the array of fine dining we had all to ourselves.
“What is wrong with you O lion?” She grinned realizing I was staring. Our eyes met in the mirror.
“Is the paradise of war I have fetched you from really so harrowing that you have forgotten how to treat your wife? Nayyy womankind herself should be exhausted by your weary gaze. Your eyes feel cold upon my skin as if I’m just some crude doll our future daughter will cast away in scorn.”
She playfully examined herself in the mirror before grabbing her staff and waving the mirror away to some ethereal realm, or perhaps an underground store room I had not found.
I chuckled. “If only you had seen the world for you know not how near truth you may be.”
“Is that the terrible cost of victory unending and world peace? Kings and Queens lose the love they feel for each other?”
“Well, now I don’t have to say it for you have.”
“Really?” She set down her fork and grabbed a napkin,
I took my first bite of food.
“No really, really… truly? The realm of your dreams has no love?”
I practically swallowed the tender meat whole, I needed to chew to check for bones next time…
“Can’t talk I’m eating.”
A pair of hyenas we carved the carcass. Passing each other food with mild abandon.
Eventually the queen managed to get her question to land.
“Who is the noble stable boy of war in your dreams married to?”
“No one?”
“What? Why? A man is not complete without woman… without one he becomes….” the queen puzzled.
I smirked imagining what she must be thinking.
“But he is no bandit he must be betrothed!”
“No.”
“Then I have stolen the dreams of a sad invalid! Sorrows and pity be upon his family!”
Ouch… that hurt.
“No tis the custom of the land.” I mumbled through the last of the porkbelly. Gosh I could eat this all day.
“Then we must devise a way to conquer that sad place! You shall mandate that the youths of such a land all marry harmoniously! They may grumble but you shall see how much happier they are in only a year’s time! Those who prevent the practice of marriage must be put to the sword!”
I looked down at her as she defiantly sliced open a turkey breast. I wondered which of us didn’t get it.
She breathed heavily as if this was strenuous for her.
It shouldn’t be, we had been walking up a mountain in thin air only earlier.
“You may think yourself a master of the element of light, but so too is the realm of my dreams. Though in ways we wouldn’t imagine.”
“Such as?”
“Have you ever seen a video of people who do not exist?”
I didn’t know if that was an invention of the nineteen twenties or the twenty twenties. Perhaps some would blame the printing press.
“What is video?”
“Moving life captured in a recorded series of lights.”
The queen frowned. “Have I ever seen a moving life captured in a recorded series of lights that doesn’t exist?” She asked herself out-loud.
“As a dream?” She concluded.
“It is not so different, a sort of blending of dream and real life. Always it is designed.”
“And this prevents marriage?”
“By teaching people to hate each other.”
Naturally it wasn’t quite that simple, but it did exist.
“By story alone? Surely it is not so simple!”
It nearly was, but my queen continued.
“Really of all the evil things you could imagine…!” her knife clattered against the porcelain beneath. “I shall pretend you have never imagined such a thing! Teaching people not to marry by icon… it sounds a barbaric myth!”
The queen‘s tired sigh was such I needed to hold her and ask her what made her sad.
“Nobody has ever been helped much by a video.” I reassured her. Dimly remembering how helpful a video was for repairing hardware.
I was becoming too emotional. Stupid, entangled in the lies of domestic living. I don’t know what it was, but that could’ve made me cry, rage…
Tears of rage called to me, perhaps they would feel good.
It is so nice to feel something, I have missed that. My disapproval or approval at my emotions being rendered is not important.
“Do not be sad O dove of my heart. The people of that world willingly pay such a price for victory.”
Gosh I was such a sap now, is this really what having a girlfriend is like?
She looked up at me and smiled.
“I’ve turned you into a melancholy fool.”
“It doesn’t suit me.” I agreed
She looked at herself, I looked at her
All four of our eyes fixed on a dribble of grease that had fallen upon her bountiful bare chest proudly presented to the world by her low cut, firm and tight violet dress.
It couldn’t be comfortable but as much as I want to question queens I know it isn’t productive.
The queen grabbed a handkerchief and dabbed aggressively at the spot of mess risking a wardrobe malfunction.
“I swear I am enjoying this body more than you are. Every little thing I do becomes fun.”
I was very far outside my element I would have tried to disassociate, but I couldn’t really focus on anything else other than her right now.
Instead, I looked at the three wine bottles she had set around our dinner of slow roasted bird and cattle.
No, I didn’t drink, but something now called me to it. Some feeling like the smell of cookies. A Pavlovian response perhaps.
“I fear my mind is not quiet and needs to relax, perhaps some drink would set our emotions free.”
“Which one do you wanna open first?!”
My queen was suddenly happy and cheerful. But I disapproved mightily
If we couldn’t enjoy each other without some chemical aid, we were doing it wrong. We were not winning despite what my queen said.
I keep asking if she’s a demon, but I think I’m just trying to justify losing her before it happens
Not very Kingly was I?