#shortys2024

Content advisory: Racy situations and bawdy humor; light yarn bondage. Implications of sexual activities occurring. Nothing explicit, though. 

There is an extremely cute lady in a cotehardie at this reenactors' feast, and she seems to be flirting with me. I think. I'm not sure. It could just be my wishful thinking, and, alas, wishful thinking on the part of the lustful does not constitute flirtation on the part of the object of lust.

"If we were Vikings, we could marry very easily," she says, all glancing, laughing eyes. "All I'd need to do would be to say, 'I marry you! I marry you! I marry you!' in public, and then we'd be married."

"I thought that was Bedouins."

"It might be Berbers..." She pauses to think for a moment. "Anyway, we're in public, so now we're married."

"But what if I don't want to be married to someone I just met?"

"Oh. Well. Divorce is easy, too."

Fair enough.

We're sitting below the salt; the food is a little more basic than that served near the high table, but there's plenty of it. There is also plenty of mead going around, because we're sitting next to a friend of hers who is a mead maker, and unsurprisingly, this section of the dining area is a crowded and popular one, despite there being fewer removes of food. The apple melomel being passed around the table right now is particularly nice. I don't like the out of control feeling that being drunk gives me, but I'm starting to notice a bit of a buzz, because the meads have all been too delicious to pass up. I decide to just get smaller samples from now on, so that I stay more or less sober but don't have to miss out on the mead tasting.

The next remove (for us) is a hearty stew made from beef, parsnips, carrots, leeks, mushrooms, and red wine, simmered with juniper berries. It needs just a little more seasoning, in my opinion, so I add coarse sea salt and ground black pepper from the little cellars I've put on the table with the rest of my feast gear and offer them to the lady who has been keeping me company. Cinnamon, I think; what this stew needs is a tiny pinch of cinnamon to bring out the savory character of the meat. Cassia would also work. The two spices are not the same, although they are similar enough in flavor that people frequently confuse them. (Cassia is more pungent than cinnamon).

"Much better than the soup," she says as she digs in, and I have to agree with her, although just about anything would be an improvement over the soup, the prime ingredient of which was apparently burnt, grated sandalwood, which made the soup smell unsettlingly like rotting leeches. Probably the taste was similar, although I have never ingested rotten leeches, nor did I bring myself to sample the soup.

As we are finishing our bowls of stew, the next performer is announced: a bard who is well known for his off-key singing, strained versification – when he butchers the work of others, the effect is bad enough, but he even manages to butcher his own work, and the end result is even worse – and, in mundane life, equally well known for his fondness for Rush Limbaugh. He wears a purple houpelande, purple hat, purple boots, and, according to rumor, a number of other purple things that are intimate enough that I prefer not to imagine them, at least not on him.

"There probably won't be much dancing tonight," she says, pouting a little. "It's already seven, feast hasn't ended, and we still have to have court. And you know how windy this king likes to get."

Unfortunately, I do. He has all the thespian ambition of the last monarch, with none of the actual acting presence.

"Wasn't somebody supposed to get knighted tonight?"

"Not that I'm aware of. However, I filled out more than a hundred award-of-arms scrolls as a scribal volunteer today."

A bad bard, a long and boring royal court, no dancing. No wonder our table companions seem eager to drink all the mead that's available for sampling. I feel sorry for the designated drivers, who will have to endure the evening's events without the benefit of self-medication. "Post-revel?"

"Won't start early. Want to hang out at my place until it gets off the ground?"

The bard starts singing. I shudder. There are times that I hate being sensitive to pitch.

"Yes, please..."

*

I'm sitting on the couch, surrounded by balls of yarn and half-completed sewing projects, and if I'm extremely careful, I don't need to see the pins holding the fabric of the uncompleted garb together. My lady companion is on the floor cutting fabric to a surcoat pattern. We've been doing this for a couple of hours, now, while watching recorded episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus. An unusual way to spend a wedding night, but then, we did only just meet each other.

She didn't ask me to carry her over the threshold, for which I am grateful. I'm fairly strong, or so I've been told, but I didn't want to put it to the test, at least not until after the effects of the mead tasting wore off.

They're climbing the north face of Uxbury Road as I wind yarn around my fingers, in preparation for making a pompom. I've been making pompoms. I've been filling a wicker basket with pompoms. This is my last pompom; after I tie it off and trim it, I toss it into the basket with the others and pick up another skein of yarn, of a particularly soft and fuzzy variety. It's dyed a lovely shade of heathery violet. This, in turn, almost threatens to make me think of the purple-clad bard we fled the feast hall to escape – no, no, I really don't want to let my mind go there. This has been a pleasant day so far.

"What is this stuff?" I ask, making a loop and tying it around my left index finger. "It's positively decadent."

"Alpaca," she replies.

"Ah."

From the video, something about storage jars. I begin weaving the yarn into a rope, using my fingers as a loom.

Minutes go by. I weave. She cuts and pins. Bouzouki music plays. There is no cheese.

"Are you ever going to make a move on me?" she asks.

"Um. I didn't know you fancied me."

"I married you, didn't I? Good grief, what more do you want?"

I can think of a few things. I bend down and kiss her neck, planting kisses on her until she leans back and meets her mouth with mine. Her hair is a cloud of brown curls, tickling my cheek, and I bury my fingers in it. There is a subtle scent of spice in the air.

"Cloves," I murmur, "you smell like cloves..."

"It's my shampoo. I get it from a soap maker I know."

We spend more time exploring each other. Under the cotehardie is lovely, soft warmth. She moans nicely.

I fumble.

I can't figure out how to remove her clothing.

"Could you please take off the cotehardie?" I whisper. "Also. Would you please shut that bloody bouzouki music up? It's distracting."

She giggles as she complies.

No more bouzouki music. No more clothing. Much better.

And now for something completely different.

"Could you hold this for me, please?"

She gives me a puzzled look, but holds out her hands for the ball of yarn that I put in them. It is still attached to about three feet of finger-knitting, which I detach with her sewing scissors and tie off before I wrap it around her wrists.

"Well," she says with a smile, "I wasn't expecting that."

"No one does. So. I presume you have a comfy chair."

Yes, of course, I had to say it.

*

Having ascertained that the recent twist in the evening's events was not unwelcome, and firmly settled her in the comfy chair with the help of more yarn, I get back to the business of interrogating her. She might, after all, be a dangerous heretic. So far, I haven't detected any suspicious witch's marks on her mouth, her ears, her breasts, or her thighs, although there's always a possibility of missing something important, so I double-check and triple-check my work for errors. No, no marks. A certain amount of moisture, but I don't think it has anything to do with witchcraft or heresy.

Of course, I haven't brought out the soft cushions yet. There may still be a confession.

"Aufputzen," I say, reaching into the wicker basket.

"Gesundheit," she replies.

I shake my head. Should have seen that one coming. "Pompoms. They're German pompoms. German hunters used them to quiet their bowstrings." There. That's a nicely sized one. Like the others, it has long strings attached, to make it easier to tie it on to a crossbow. I tickle her with the pompom, eliciting a gratifyingly loud gasp. "Interestingly enough, the word Aufputzen is remarkably similar to the word Aufputschen, which is German for stimulant." In goes the yarn ball. "Rather bizarre that the word for something that silences something is almost identical to the word for stimulant, isn't it?"

"Er. Um..."

Hot, ragged moans.

"Well? Do you confess?"

"I'm – I'm not – I don't understand what I'm accused of!"

Clearly she is made of harder stuff.

I start to work on her with my tongue. We'll see if that gets a confession out her – or at least a lot of shouting.

*

No heresy in this apartment. Also, no false grail beacons and no larches, which is probably just as well, all things considered.

We cuddle together, naked, weak-kneed, and exhausted. Interrogation can be so tiring.

It also tends to make me hungry.

"Do you have any cheese?" I ask.

She hits me in the head with a pillow.