Argyl was sprawled over me, holding my convulsing body down. Some time had passed, that wooden man was no longer there. I still shook but the tremors slowed.
“Master, master, master,” I whispered, and I wrapped my arms about him and held him held him.
“I am not you master, Kara. You have no master but yourself.”
“He tortures me. He takes me in my dreams and tortures me, grinds my flesh to sand, rends my love and hope from me, and spits and pisses on me. His hatred is all hatred. His filth is all filth. It is all it is all. I wish to die. Master, I wish to die. Please master, please.”
“No, Kara, stop, please, look at me.”
Shuddering, frozen and barely able to shiver, yet rocking violently under the tremors of my mind, my eyes, twitching twitching, but he was there, he was there holding me.
“Master, please, save me. Save me I wish to die, please save me.”
“Kara please. Please,” he whispered with some desperation, holding my convulsing body down.
“Master,” I whispered. And then held him back, clutched him to me. My lover, she had sent me away. Yet the tree, the man, whatever he was, had left his roots.
“Jade,” I whispered, “Jade, I love her Jade Jade.”
“She is okay. Kara she is okay, the tree, the tree spirit took her. He is healing her. We spoke and he is healing her.
“Master, I don't know what I am.”
He sighed. I was no longer struggling.
“Kara, I am sorry. I have no answers for you. I wish, but it is not how, it is human not to know. It is what we all are.”
“Master. Love me. Love me please.”
“Kara,” he said. I looked into his eyes. Deep and green. Very sharp.
“Master, please.” He held me for a long time. I felt the cold sinking into my flesh again, realized that my fingers and toes were numb.
“Master, we will freeze.”
“Yes, we must act. I would not leave you. We must act though, or we will freeze. We must take the blankets to his tree. The tent is, you wrecked it when you fell into it. We must take the blankets and bring them to the tree. It is our best chance. It, I don't know how it is so cold here. It doesn't make sense to be so cold when it was not.”
“Master, I will obey.” I struggled to my feet. I felt dull, full of ache and empty of will.
“Don't call me, well, you don't have to call me master,” he said.
“Master, we must save your life.”
“Our lives.”
The tent was ruined. It was torn badly and blew tattered in the wind. The physics of it's collapse eluded me but there was no time. I grabbed into my arms a bundle of furs and blankets and stumbled into the woods. Argyl caught me. It was snowing and I could not see more than a few feet. He said something but I could not hear it. I don't know why that would have been as the wind was not loud. He pulled me and I tumbled after him. He pulled me up and we were walking into the white. The snow now blinded us.
The tree man stopped us as we almost stumbled past his tree.
“You green yellow you you red yellow,” he said, which did not make sense, but he was pointing to a ditch in the earth. Argyle threw down a bunch of blankets and then pulled me down into it. He took from me the bundle I carried and laid it over us, tucking it carefully around himself, then pulling me close to him and tucking it around me. I lay dumb and still as he did this.
And then it was very quiet. Our bodies were close, and we both breathed hard for a long time. I could feel my pulse thundering in me, only slowly did it subside. And it was still cold. The cold seemed to leech into every bit of me, I began to shiver and felt darkness press onto the edges of my vision.
“Master, we will freeze.”
“Kara, we will be okay.”
We shivered together. I pulled him to me but he seemed far away, and I felt that the cold would close around me and consume my flesh in frostbite.
“Master, we should be naked. Our warmth, we might live that way.” He didn't say anything. After a moment, I began to struggle out of my dress.
“Kara, I, I do not think you are my slave, I do not want, I do not expect you to sleep with me.”
“Master, we will freeze.” He didn't say anything. I had my dress over my head. I left the boots on. They came only halfway up my thighs. He still hadn't moved. When might the slave overrule their master? Never, save when the master's life might be saved. Then any punishment was acceptable. I reached to him and pulled up his robe.
“Kara,” he said, but then, “you are right.” He pulled off his robe and put it over us. I pulled my naked body against him. He wore some kind of undergarment over his crotch and upper thighs, but it was thin and seemed not to matter. His flesh was warm to my cold body. His robe, I thought, must hold the warmth better than my dress.
We shivered together and held each other. Did I think then? I seemed so far from myself. So long ago my old master had died. What had happened since? I was so far from myself. This strange man held me. So strange. A man who treated me as an equal. Not only treated, but insisted over and over and over despite my protests and provocations. He held me and I held him. Equals, somehow? But he was my master somehow too. My master, my true master, knew I was here and allowed it.
It grew warm slowly. We stopped shivering and lay on the edge of a delirious and sickly sleep. Slowly that subsided, and we lay in a warm daze together. I could not see any sky or feel any snow or cold. That did not make sense either. We had no tent, we should be freezing and exposed beneath our tawdry blankets. Scarcely enough to hold out that cold. But he was warm and I held him to me, to share my warmth more than to take his. I thought, I do not know why, but I thought that he did the same for me. More concerned with my warmth than with his own.
It was a long time that we lay there. I did not think much. You must be tired of my rambling circular thoughts by now anyway. But I did not think much.
At some point, as we drifted off into sleep, I felt him grow erect beneath the thin hose he wore about his crotch. I wanted to please him, to touch it and take it into me, as is the duty of the slave to her master. But he only turned his body a little, so that it did not press against me. And still he held me, he held me and shared his warmth with me, and took to himself nothing of what I would have offered to him gladly.
I did not dream. I did not dream I did not dream, I slept and his body warmed me, and I wished for his body. It was warm and close and I desired him. Not to please him, but to please me. But he turned away from me. His cock wanted me, but he turned it away from me. And so I slept in his warmth and warmth and slept in his warmth.
I woke from darkness and from darkness I crawled a broken and maimed thing. A babe cried and I held it to my breast, but my breast was gone and it starved and died. I held the dead thing in my arms and wept for it. And he held me. He held me through a thousand broken hearts and a thousand shards of glass that cut and cut and bled me, all my blood gone gone gone. But he held it together as it all spilled out, dripping through his fingers but he held it.
In the morning, was it morning? There was no sun, I could not see. We were buried in needles and held our bodies in a warm and saving embrace. Saving? It means nothing. Abstractions that mean nothing. I am an abstraction that means nothing. A slave? A thing? A body, a will, a fractured and manipulated will. Argyl refused to take me as a slave. Nor did he send me away. You, he said to me, or implied to me, or meant to imply to me, are my equal. You do not act it or feel it, but I insist.
I felt him. I reached my hand down and felt him. He was not hard, he was sleeping and his mind was not on sex. I fumbled with his pants and pulled down his breeches. His cock fell into my hand and I felt it. It was small and flaccid. Circumcised. Was there a reason for that?
Slowly, it grew erect. I touched it gently. I did not feel that it was sex. Men. Men had always been abominations to me. Beasts with cocks that assaulted me, or at the very least were vehicles of their own pleasure, my wetness or dryness a convenience or inconvenience only. But him, he turned it away from me. Not in spite, not in rejection, but in respect. I felt his cock and slowly it grew hard in my hands. It was very smooth. Smooth and almost fragile. Not a battering ram, not a sword to penetrate me, but a piece of him, exposed and vulnerable, sticking out from the safety of his body and trusting itself to the touch of my hand. I ran my fingers up and down, it stuck out trembling, hanging slightly down from his body, unlike most of the men that had plowed me before. Smooth and vulnerable. A piece of trust he placed in my hands.
“Kara,” he whispered, but I did not say anything back. My fingers said all that I had to say. I felt him, cock pressed into my thigh then, I had turned him back, cock smooth and gentle and vulnerable. My other hand found his testicles and they were small and retracted against his body. I moved them in a slow, careful circle. It was as if he had laid a precious and fragile thing in my hand. His own insecurities, great enough to match my own in scope if not severity, were all there in my hand. His body was a mans, vicious and brutal, ready to rape and leave its seed in me, and yet his soul was gentle, ashamed of his body's violence, his cock's, wishing instead he were a pure body of warmth to save me, pure arms to hold me up.
“Argyl,” I whispered, “I wish you inside me.”
“Kara, Kara I cannot.” He turned to take himself away from me, but I held on, turned him back.
“Master, you are the first, you are the only man to lie with me and not to rape me. You, I wish you inside me, Argyl, master, servant, whatever you are. I wish you inside me, I want it. I, not as a slave but as my own master, I want it inside me, I want it.”
“Kara,” he whispered, “I care for you. I do, I care deeply, you are totally unique and wonderful and loyal, but I cannot. I am no master, I am not, I am sworn to another, I cannot, even though she, I mean, I cannot Kara. I love you, I do. You are, you have saved me from myself or from her, you are wonderful and it feels wonderful for you to hold me Jade, I mean, it is not simple, but I cannot Kara, it is not fair for you or for her or me.” He took himself from my hand.
“Please” I whispered, grasping at his manhood. “I wish it inside me. It is, it is an organ of mine that is missing. Not a weapon or a tool of your pleasure. I am not whole, master I am not whole, I need it to be me.”
“Kara, Kara,” he whispered into my ear, pulling his shorts up to his waist, crushing his hard cock inside, “I wish it too, but, it cannot be. Not as master and slave. Not as husband and mistress. It cannot be like this. It is not fair to you. It is not fair to Jade.”
“I love her too master, I would mate her too.”
He took a breath before speaking. “Kara, I do not know, but this is not right, not now. Not while we are freezing and she is almost dead. I don't know Kara. I am so lonely. She, she, was an arranged marriage, did we tell you? I was the prince and she the duchess. They put us together and it was never right, and she, she took another man and, but, but that doesn't make it right for me. Not now, not like this. I will not make you my mistress. I will not let you accept being her second best, a secret with no real existence. You, you are a person whole as any other. You are, she, I don't know Kara, But not now, not like this.”
I held him to me and said nothing. I held him to me and felt his hardness against my thigh and knew that he desired me as much as I him. Was that enough? Was that enough?
“Master, I mean, Argyl, I love you.”
“Kara, I am so sorry. I am so sorry you have suffered as you have suffered. It is evil what they have done to you. It is evil. You are such a wonderful and pure being, such a pure soul, they have wronged you so. I hate them, you know that? I fought against them all my life, all the bastaards that have done this to you, or would, or would take advantage, but, but it was never enough. Never enough. For every small victory a thousand armies came and multiplied. And we were so week. So pure but so week. We could not stand against the efficiency of tyranny. All for nothing.”
“Master, not yet, you live, she lives, it is not done yet,” I said, although I did not know of what he spoke.
“Kara, Kara please, just, let us just hold each other. No fucking, no lust to sully the moment. Let us just hold each other and be pure and love each other as human and human, not man and woman, not married man and slave girl. That is evil. But two humans, two humans holding each other in the cold to stay alive, that is something beautiful, and let us be beauty in the face of evil and tyranny.”
“Mast, I mean, Argyl, there is nothing evil about your cock, or my cunt. Let us put them together, let us join as one perfect being in the face of everything, let us love each other.”
He held me, for a long time, and I realized he was weeping, tears sliding from his eyes and down his cheeks onto mine. I held him for a long time. I wrapped my arms around him and we held each other, and we both wept then, and we held each other and in our shared warmth we wept.
We drifted in and out of sleep for a time. It had grown comfortably warm, warm enough that we might have dressed, but I enjoyed the sensation of his body. And enjoyed too the knowledge that his body enjoyed the sensation of mine, even if his mind was discomforted by this.
He was very thin. My lover had been soft and luscious against me, Jade had been firm but gentle, strong in a smooth form. Argyl was hard and angular. His hips and shoulders jutted from his body, his stomach alone was soft, and it only slightly bulged from his hard ribs.
He had forbidden me to touch him sexually, but desire still smoldered in me. I wanted this gentle man. I wished for him to dominate me, lead me from indecision and incompetence, stand me up to my master and slay him for me, slay him with kindness, anathema to the demon.
He was sleeping then, and heavily. His rising chest pressed gently against my breast. He had slipped his cock back into his hoes, and turned himself so his hip pressed into me. I put my hand on him, feeling through his hoes the shape. It stirred at my touch but he did not wake. I was used to strain and torture, he was not. His exhaustion must seem to his flesh extreme.
Gently, I pulled him out. He was quickly fully erect beneath the touch of my naked hand. It was a long smooth arc, and I traced my fingers against it, not to masturbate him, but just to feel him, to touch with my fingers what seemed so strange to me. Was I simply so used to abuse that finding a man who didn't was a curiosity. Like a strange bug I wanted to poke and prod to life? Did I love him? A moment ago I had been sure, now not. I did not love him as I loved my lover, or had loved my lover or, but leave it.
Why should it matter that she had sent me away? I the willless one. Why was I not simply happy to obey? I had whored myself for my first master, I had been tortured and raped by my second, I had slain for my third, my current, one of my current masters, what? Why was I not happy to obey her? Was she my second master? But she had not bonded me, it made no sense. And yet, and yet.
His testicles were soft now, warmer. I cupped them in my hand and he moaned a little. I froze but he did not wake. I took again his cock and simply held it. It was neither huge nor small. I held it and it throbbed gently. I held it and felt that I was holding something precious. Something vulnerable and fragile, that I might brake him with a squeeze of my hand, a bite of my teeth.