In which dining wine is enjoyed.
“Before I stole this body I saw you pour a goblet of wine down this girl‘s throat.”
I looked at her suspiciously.
“I wanna know what it feels like.”
Well I shouldn’t fight this.
We poured goblets.
I stood her up. Not remembering exactly how I had once done this.
I took a drink, and pulling my queen against me to simulate the other day, brought the goblet to her lips.
At first it worked,
*Pffffttt!
Most of the wineglass spilled down her chest.
“My poor Dove!” I exclaimed.
“No no again, I just got nervous.” She excused herself. “Tis a trifle!”
I grabbed a napkin and wiped her chin, then another and stuffed it over her dress.
She giggled.
“Come now…”
“And waste good wine down your dress?”
“It’s wine dark for a reason! Come now your queen is thirsty!”
It’s rude to keep a woman waiting.
As if a machine I grabbed her close, breathed deep and brought the goblet to her lips.
This time it worked, she chugged the goblet like a champ.
I looked at her she was looking up at me, an image of bliss.
“Why do I love that so much my Lion?” She asked me.
“New body perhaps?”
“I think it’s you.” Very sweet of her.
“Not the wine?” I teased.
“I didn’t like wine this much a week ago.”
“Would you like another?”
“I thought you would never ask!” She bubbled.
*pfftff
Oops, that napkin was stained deep red over her bosom.
“Try again!” She ordered
*pfft
“There is going to be a full glass for me down there.”
She giggled “No No I can do it!”
She did on the third try. We squeezed out the soaked napkin in a new goblet and fell to eating and drinking and flirting proper.
Maybe an hour passed, but we had eaten an entire bird and maybe most of a pig at this point. I dimly worried the cooks were tired of acting as servants we hadn’t yet replaced.
I have never understood how people can act like fools and not feel the need to defend themselves from instant and irreversible assault.
Call me paranoid.
“How did this peasant girl get so fat?” My queen asked, poking her body curiously.
“You are not that fat…”
“I mean for a lowborn, lowborns are supposed to be skinny!”
“Maybe the Lion had been having meals with her. Perhaps the guards and I…”
“Don’t joke about that!” An awkward silence before she changed the subject.
She pinched herself as if to prove a point.
“See!? It’s fat! On this little servant floozy! Only nobles are supposed to be fat, we didn’t work her hard enough. And besides she shouldn’t have been able to catch the king’s eye!”
I must not have been as interested as the queen in this conversation because she came for me. Jabbing at my face.”
“This body of yours is noble, you eat a lot, you fight a lot. You throw and you sport, imagine if a peasant boy had the same body or more despite it all, wouldn’t you be jealous and fight him?”
Why was the queen worried about this?
“What has got you worried O Dove?”
It had taken a lot but my mind was finally relaxed and unthinkingly I fumbled with her.
I think she wasn’t thinking either, she sank into my body as she rested across the arms of my throne, I underneath, sinking into the chair that we both warmed.
“Peasants shouldn’t be eating more than the king and queen.” She concluded.
“I’m not sure it’s strictly food.”
“Then what is it?” She snapped back. “Was she a noble in disguise? Did she have the divine right to rule? Are we importers to the throne?”
Uh oh, was the queen angry when she drank? Disguised noble was probably the easiest way to defuse this, but… to lie was not what I wanted.
But to say “Yea…” What would she do?
How could I distract her?
Well the issue was that she distracted herself.
“Gosh I ate so much. I can’t believe it!” she wallowed.
“The other world? You know the one I dream of?”
“What about it?”
“They call fat healthy.”
“Why?”
“I guess because they are all nobles.”
The queen stopped for a second, I could practically hear steam coming out of her ears as our slow brains processed what I said.
“Woah” She said. “Is that why they have so many warriors?”
“That’s why it’s so peaceful I think.”
“I didn’t understand that!” The dove gushed. “How are there so many warriors and it’s peaceful?! Warriors make war! Nobles make feuds! Peace cannot exist among warriors and nobles!”
“They don’t call it war unless lots of people die.”
“Tis the king’s duty to bring harmony between the people and the nobility!”
I nodded along sagely, as if I really knew what this somewhat sloshed beauty of mine was talking about.”
“What are they fighting over then? I have studied their history and they are always fighting! Killing even! But hundreds of years ago they quit claiming land. Yet still they fight! Now you tell me that even as their numbers increase they all remain noble and fat?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a civil war?”
Uh oh… “Well do not always nobles fantasize about such things?”
“Yes in the hundreds but… there are… Hundreds of millions! With weapons I cannot imagine! How terrible would the conflict be?”
“I’m still hungry.” I agreed.
You really don’t realize how much fuel an athletic body needs until you have one.
A part of me, dim and lost in the stimulation worried this was not healthy.
“We need to conquer that world someday!” My overconfident queen offered. “I eagerly await the day! I seek to tirelessly study magic, until we may enter and destroy that backwards and loveless realm!”
Gosh I hope she never figures it out. I’m happy I got out, I rather don’t want to look back.
I don’t know how much we ate or drank but we made it to bed. Because I dozed in and out of sleep next to my pretty queen.