The Real Theophania

vol. II ch. 6

Thia inhaled deeply from the bouquet of wisteria her lover had just handed her. “Oh, I wish I could stay and smell this forever,” she whispered, wistfully, “I’m sorry I have to go.”

The buxom redheaded baker’s daughter, leaning over the second story handrail looking down at Thia, sighed dramatically. Thia appreciated the view from this angle and what the motion did to Rebecca’s nightgown. “Will I … ever see you again?” Rebecca fluttered her eyelashes enticingly.

“Oh, my love,” Thia began waxing, “if only were like only the winter, and an illusion of scarcity to be soon and surely proven false in the next spring. And when glorious summer was heralded by the marching of resplendent peacocks in the wood, and you felt my spirit always with you like the wind that shakes the barley growing the field, and to be in autumn rewarded for your faith by the bountiful harvest of my return. Your dutiful ministrations, digging furrows in my soil and sating my carnal thirst would never leave risk to failure that I would rise to you again. You are like a merciful mermaid rescuing a poor sailor from my shipwreck of lonliness. You are my seelie queen, guiding me when I am lost in the jungle of despair. You are-”

“Ahem. AHEM.” Ophius sharply slapped the thighs of the poetic princess perched atop their alchemically augmented shoulders, since she wasn’t deigning to stop at his polite taps. “Tick tock. Tick tock. Time to go. We need to get out of the city before the Night Watch starts looking for those filthy interlopers who ransacked the Thief King’s manse. The fire I started in his granary won’t be distracting them for much longer.” The burlap sack on his bag wriggled aggressively, as if on cue.

“mmmr brpmm hmmrAAAAP,” came muffled murmurs from within, before being punctuated with a harsh rip, “AND THE STITCH WITCH WILL HEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU DID TO MY FACE! My kingly visage was sewn with the finest Melcene silks! That, eueugh, HEMP twine you stitched my mouth shut with wasn’t even tensioned proper-” Ophius shut up their kidnapping victim with a sharp thump to the spongy skull. Cloth golems could be so dramatic.

~~~