The Tower (a short story)

[Lillykins]

I wrote this a while ago, as a birthday present for my daddy. But I wanted to share it here, because I feel like it encompasses a lot of feelings I have as a little, a sub, a woman, and maybe it can be valuable for someone else here

Thank you so much, first of all, for clicking on this and wanting to read.

 

 

Prefer to listen? Here is an audio-version.

 

The Tower

 

Once upon a time, there lived a woman in tower, built high and strong. Every morning, she would put on her armor, and sit down by the window in the highest room. She watched the sun rise and set, and the moon. She watched the people, riding past. And she liked the world, the way the fields shone like liquid gold in the sun, when the wind brushed gently over a million ears of wheat. The way the rushing river was like a promise of places unknown. She liked the people, too, or some of them – when they laughed together, or when she’d see a couple by the river, fingers interlaced like a braid.

But the woman had felt the teeth and the claws of this world and its people far too early to trust their beauty. And they were still beautiful to watch, up from her window.

There were the knights that sometimes rode by, in their shining armor and confident smile, like they might as well be an entirely different species of human. Beautiful and faultless. But if they turned to see a tower, they never noticed her looking once; because no knight ever had to climb dangerous towers to find a woman to look at him like he hung the stars with his very hands.

But every once in a while, someone would stop at the foot of her tower and, leaning his head back far to look up into the sky, and he would catch a glimpse of her, a smile, a naked hand on the window ledge. There were times when she would get invested in whether they would make the climb.

But nobody knew the tower as well as she did. They just saw the obvious first hurdles -- but she knew all the other traps, the loose stones and watchful gargoyles on the way. And over the years, she had stopped believing that anyone could bravely overcome all of those hurdles just to come to her window. She stopped believing the bounty was worth the effort, and she would tell the men at the bottom of the tower – in so many different words and ways.

It would hurt when they walked past or fell at the first hurdle, but it ultimately just confirmed why she had to live like this, in her tower and in her armor.

It was during one long, dark night of the soul. Rain was battering her tower, buffeted by the winds enough to make the timber creak in the roof. And the woman sat, shaking with fear, more certain than ever before that there was no knight out there to rescue her now, when she heard a voice down from by the foot of the tower.

It was too dark to make out his features, but she thought she saw the vague outline of a man, a steadying hand on the brick as he looked up at her lit window. As he rested in the relative windchill of the building, seeking some shelter from the rain.

He called up his name and a greeting, as he settled there, using his cloak to shield himself. And the woman responded, warmed by the company. By knowing someone was there in a night this long and dark. They would talk as it stretched on; and his voice was gentle and kind, a voice so strong that it knew how to bend reality, time and space, like a whisper in her ear. And when he asked her to show him who she was, she found it wasn’t so hard to take her helmet off and let him see her face.

It was too dangerous then, but the night had to end eventually, and the woman found that she couldn’t remember the last time she had wanted someone to climb her tower as badly as she did now. But what monster would do that to a man she cared about, to take a climb so traitorous for such uncertain spoils. And like she always had, she started to tell him all the reasons he shouldn’t, told him about the lose stones and the watchful gargoyles, with every piece of armor he asked her to take off. Until his gaze, the way he looked straight at her, had replaced the heavy burden with a thrilling sense of lightness and joy.

He would be gone by morning; and her heart would seize with the pain of trying to make her armor fit again. It wasn’t beautiful made peace-time armor, like the kind the knights wore. It was roughly hewn together war-time plate, made out of whatever she could find to protect herself at the time. It had never fit quite comfortably, never gave her room to maneuver, chafing her raw.

But when night fell, he would be back to talk with her again. And this time, her armor came off more easily to the sound of his voice, every gentle command. And by the next morning, she was a little less afraid that she would never see him again. And she would start to hint, in her own complicated way, that maybe, just maybe, he could find something worthwhile if he started to climb. That she would make it so for him.

But throughout the years, the woman hadn’t taken care of her tower the way a person ought to take care of the place they inhabit. She’d wanted to. But there is only so much you can do to a tower. And it is a painful thing, to create beauty that no one else will ever see.

She told him this, too, but he smiled at her embarrassment and shook his head. Nothing she had ever shown him, had ever told him had shocked him, or even caused him to turn away. There was magic in doing so, like an ancient spell long forgotten by the people of the land. A spell that warmed and healed and bound the woman to the caster.

And she learned little by little, that every bit of effort she put into making her tower a more beautiful place for him to visit one day was an act of love.

And it became easier, to stand by her window without armor for the other regular passers-by, to wave at them and let them see her for who she really was. He had taught her, after all, about the joys of being seen, instead of hiding in fear.

In the end, she would start to give him advice on the first hurdles, trying to help him along. She would even try to explain to him why she lived the way she did, so he could truly see her in all the ways he could. But when she whispered the final plea, he just took a step back and looked up at her, shielding his face against the sun.

“Babygirl,” he said, “all you have to do is open the door. Open it now.”

 

 

 

 

The End.

Edited April 11, 2020 by Lillykins