Admin Note: Hover over the French phrases for translations.
A lost butterfly at the break of night flapped its wings in a playful dance with other creatures that belonged to the night— unlike the butterfly who, though it did not mind and cheerfully hopped through the air, applauded at by all the moths, its distant cousins, and the dragonflies, and yes, even some sneaky night birds. So sat a raven nearby and he fed upon the butterfly’s precious beauty like no-one else of the gathering. The little flying maid then noticed the raven and approached him in such an un-reckoned manner that he, startled and astonished, flapped his ebony-feathered wings and set off to escape. However he actually liked the teasing of the butterfly; but the butterfly remained atop the sunken head of a tiny flower and sulked— wondering why the bird flew away so that the wee butterfly was now all alone.
With an hour coming to pass, the butterfly, now in human form, sat at a chess game and the pretty hazel eyes rested upon those many brown figurines, and they could not focus. It was the raven’s fault, who had settled down there on the other side with his black wings strangely turned into a deep red; they have also curled up— probably in fright or a strange, unknown, excitement. As much as his fine lips that narrowed even more now and the left corner of his mouth had sagged I thought and so he looked at the game himself— but his was not the reason for his worry. For what could it then worry after all?
The young lady suddenly sighed, and this made her company blink. She moved a figurine, and with that she picked up the queen of his side, and placed it next to the board— and his eyes watched her hand doing so, and his brow furrowed and his lips twirled even more. He, aware of the fact that he was not focused, groaned loudly, and now the little woman examined his face.
Often lately had she wondered what the reason was for his abstinence. In that time that they have been married he had never made any advantages toward her; off and on, yes, he had bantered but never in such a way that it included physical contact more than a kiss. And so she found herself riddled— maybe he found her ugly or annoying. Or maybe was it both. In her ruminations then, she was woken up by him.
“What is a king without his queen,” said he, whispering.
And the lady answered him prompt, in her alluring accent petting the words she wrongly expelled: “A lonely, lost man of misgrief, mi'lord.”
His bright blue eyes went to her face in a soft frown, as if he tried to find the true meaning of what it was that she wanted to tell him. Misgrief; he thought and then after a while he was enlightened, but was he not correcting her and instead, he rested his lazy and heavy head upon his fist, as his elbow was propped unto the table. “Surely, misgrief.”
Lady Katherine tilted her head, and with that movement, all of her fair locks swung to the side.
“Was this no proper Anglish word, Sir?”
He puckered his lips as only answer and lightly shook his head, showing her that he did not mind, but she was shifty and narrowed her eyes at him. Watched like that, he surrendered to the game and snipped his king off the board.
“But why didst thou do that?” asked she like a child and sighed softly. She wanted to open her mouth once more to add a sentence to his, but she did not know how to say it and thus remained in silence.
Henry, himself curious, awaited a speech, but as there came none, he sulked and also remained in silence. As there was no word spoken, she folded her hands in her lap and chewed on her tongue. It made him feel nervous and a wee awkward, and he thought that his queen must be bored everyday that she had spent in these halls with all the odd men, in these lands where it always rained, and with him, he who did not know how to communicate with her. In fact she had learned a handful of words, and he also had tried to be taught the French tongue, but still there were endless barriers between them. How could he entertain her, he thought, but by now he ran out of ideas and nothing of his foolish games and silly actions were still available. If he would at least make her laugh, oh, that would have been enough. Her smile namely was iridescent, warm, and it was making him exult in an almost boyish manner. But now, the butterfly sat on the chair and contemplated the draught board with her beauteous visage wrinkled and dark, which did not suit her at all and caused him to sit up, his elbow hurting from his stony head that appeared too heavy from all these ruminations and conglomerations of how he could make her enjoy her time with him. It seemed to him that he was neither a good company nor a good husband. Out of words he rubbed his elbow and grumbled to himself.
“Art thee not well, milord? Thou lookest a bit odd t’night.” was then her velvet voice thrown at his forehead and he almost fell off his seat as it resounded, like an orchestra for him, but actually was it an almost whispered question. “Dost thine illbow hurt?"
Her eyes were wide and her lips twisted in concern, and then, harkening to her yet again and her words, so sweetly wrong chosen, made him laugh aloud delightfully. Katherine looked confused and rose her ivory brows at him. With her small hand she reached out for his forehead and touched it. It was warm, but that was so because her limb was cold, so said she:
“Thou art hot. Thou shouldst lie down and sleep.”
Henry lifted his right hand to take hers and wrapped his fingers around the wee tool. “I assure thee, milady, that I dost fine and I dost not need to lie down…” and then his voice became vulpine. “Unless thee wilt lieth down with me, of course.”
But the queen was not short-witted and she did understand quite well; running her hand across her skirt, looking down at the brown fabric she explained:
“ Non,” Katherine shook her head and the hair waved in the rhythm, “qui rendrait votre état encore pire.”
And with that his confusion was easily detected, and it amused her, she liked to prattle away in her mother tongue and see how his pretty face turned either deep red or bright white in reaction. Because he could not understand, and other than that he thought could she already gather more than what he perhaps expected. “Vous allez bien?" She smiled viciously and enjoyed this canvas of red in front of her, with his curls raising slightly in resentment, almost, and his azure eyes, there lit by a fire of dissatisfaction. How quick bluntness could turn into a big pouting, found she but was she too entertained by this and she laughed and clapped her hands.
“This eve I have won two times!” The palms of her hands still touching each other, she stretched out two of her fingers as she spoke. “Once, when I took thine queen from thy king, and now, I see that I too took the humour off mine king.”
She clapped again and giggled a last time, both very silly.
At least she was laughing, thought he and nodded. “Thou laughest,” said he. “and even though it is at me, I like to behold that.”
“Be lucky that I adore thy foolishness.” She chirped and picked up a pawn off the board, she hauled and tossed it to his chest. “ Now not such a face, my king, thou shalt be delighted. In fact it is me who is locked up in this house because it is raining each day.”
Henry leaned back in his chair, peeked down at the pawn rolling down his chest to his lap in a jolly ride and there, it rested, he took it with two fingers only and looked at what could be a face. “Oh, thee…— lecherous man.” Said he to the figurine there in his lap. And he was joking, but when he looked at the figurine, he unwillingly drifted off to memories and those men, represented by this pawn, ascended in a dark night and befogged his mind, so much, that his face turned as gloomy as the fields which surrounded the castle. He sat it down onto the board where it belonged and pondered shortly about a midnight activity they would take part of, and yet before he was taking a path he disliked to go, he distracted himself from this wishful thinking and so he pushed himself out of the chair and rose to his full length under the eyes of the noblewomen who investigated him and tried to find out what he was up to, if he would retire to bed and leave her behind, as mostly every night. In fact this was not because he wanted to flee from her company, more wished he to flee from his desires. He even at times did not lay down next to her on their shared bed, but instead, he would retire to a different room.
But at times it was hard to flee from these, and he actually did not like to have to run from those for longer. Nor did she, but both rested in their polite personalities and hung up their wants to settle down in a peaceful and patient sphere were nothing could hurt.
And then it was that he glanced at her, and she, anticipating, smiled at him tender and loving. So he asked her:
“Dost thou fear the darkness outside, milady?”
Katherine formed a "no" with her mouth and did append, “Not with thee on my side!”
So he reached out for her and held up his hand, making her eye the elegant limb before she would raise and place hers upon his palm, and then she chuckled standing. He bowed his head to her hand and kissed its back, then he let go quickly and picked two of his own cloaks - one for her, even though it would be too big for her, and one for him. Having thrown the garment around his shoulders, he would do the same with her and dress her in dark blue cloth, but softer than he did to himself and he would even wrap it around her slender form so he was sure that his little butterfly did not freeze in the cold embrace of the night. Doing so, he watched his hands shift and she took advantage of this short moment to have a better look at his face, as she always did in secret. Fine lines had God drawn upon this canvas, with a careful devotion, making sure that each tiniest detail was perfectly fitting to the other and with crafting this face. He had taken all his gifts to make him resemble a winter’s morn with the dawn of an early spring time there, deep in the corner of his twinkling eyes.
It was so seducing to touch this visage that she simply did so and her thumb ran across his left cheekbone, following a line, a wee scar there that she found and which she had not seen before.
“Nightly strolls can be deceiving,” said she then, and he rose a brow at this statement.
“Fear not, the wolves are hiding farther away.”
“I am not scared of the wolves, mi'lord.”
“Then what is it that thou art scared of?”
She pondered, liking to say it in her tongue, but would it be more adequate to say it in his to not upset the good sir even more, she thought. And so she searched for the fitting term, and she answered to his question: “Ardency.”
He dropped his hands, wondering if she picked the wrong word to describe a situation, but deeply he wished that she did not.
“But how canst thou be scared of that?”
“The restraint is then what scares me most.”
He bethought those words and put the index finger of his left hand to his lips, hiding a little secret there behind them and the key laid not afar from this closed gate. At the zenith of another, new silence, she gripped this finger’s hand just to remove it and to have the voracity immediately ceased that she was a slave to in the last hours, the last days and even the few last weeks which she had spared with. A kiss was that, but was it no such a kiss as was shared often in the past by the two of them. It was a kiss of a warmer kind, a fine frenzy, a gathering of two destructive fires lead by a vast wind. His lips tasted of salt - like a drop of the sea, as velvet, beguiling, and untamed as the billows at the shore, crashing upon the rock which she was, dashing into a calm scenery and waking the fiercest of all well-hidden passions. It lured a wolf out of a sheep and made one lose the few remains of self-discipline. These lips made a humble woman lose her mind with ease.
Never found she a piece of clothing more unnecessary than right now as she felt this radiating warmth from his chest. There, her hands rested now and she felt this fine heart beating in his chest. Its pace had slightly increased with her fumbling hands, gripping the cloth of his tunic, holding it tight and even pulling it toward her. Never had she expected herself to shaft such a temper and demand inside her but never had she developed such feelings before. His whiskers tickled the silken skin of her cheek as those lips grazed the skin and the sensation of it. The soft pricks worsened her arousal. The scent of his skin impairing with those tingles filled her inmost with wild fire, as fiery as this pair of teasing lips which had found a way to her neck long ago she would have even thought of it.
There, he rested for a while and her sweet and almost innocent odour befuddled his mind so much that the thought of a midnight wandering had erased itself from his mind right on time. Nothing like that would he find in the fields or the forest he had visited for so many times, and this landscape was utterly alluring; those bright dales and elevations of such a fine land that he had never visited afore. His lips then unwillingly hid behind the curtain of the golden waves of her hair and so did the rest of his face, however was his hand exploring more to the south in this valley, leaving the river upon her back and trying to find a secret orifice between a conglomeration wide ranges to hide in and to find shelter from the rain, from the dark and from all the wild beasts resting outside ready to attack and rip the lost traveller apart. But yet he did not want to be lacerated by a careless savage. She let out a whispered tune of whim. There, it rolled out of her throat from down her chest and it made the night bird nudge its head in want and to snap for the little, lost butterfly.
An easy move was it for two talented hands to pull the light tunic out of a tight pair of trousers there, as she did, and ten sneaky fingers walked up his stomach; tracing scars of long lost or won battles when yet this one was to conquer.
Upon the battlefield, a man as he was was forward, powerful, and mighty, but when a man bent down to the fine, supple curves of a lady, he would be lost soon in this velvet waves of a river and its nymph, the voice one harkened to was leading each soldier astray. His hands, striven to find hold, strode down the sides of her luscious shape, while hers freed him from the burden which both the cloak and the tunic were, and apace she proceeded, they ran to his face and held it to direct it in front of hers, so her eyes could behold these two of his; yet before she would shut her lids and choke these few words, that wanted to be released out of his mouth, for them able to slaughter this moment of rapture, with a fervid kiss. Condemned to silence, he gripped a pleat of her skirt, pulling it up to have access to her leg. But she pulled back from the kiss not startled, rather teasing, the mouse, just caught by the playful cat, drew back and crinkled the small nose.
Henry frowned and then his brows rose as there was way too much space between them and even his limbs had lost the grip and now his butterfly held her skirt in both hands; ready to jump away when the predator he was would follow to devour the gracious creature.
The woman exhaled in a heavy sigh, and caught her breath, whispering: “Thee, as a man o’ war, shalt wit that no battle is easily won.” She nodded. “But there art great rewards.”
His mouth narrowed, he chewed on his bottom lip and got onto his knees, stretching out both of his arms. “But dost thee not have mercy with me?” He then joked, after he was taken by surprise and wondered yet what it was that he did wrong.
“No.” She shook her head and blinked at him. However she laughed and reached out with her arms for his, and she took his hands and neared him anew, with caution and with grace, and she locked him, still down onto his knees, in her eyes and bent forward a wee, enough to reach his ear with her lips to whisper: “Mercy is for the lowly man.”
His lips vibrated in a groaned purr as one hand escaped her grip and snaked sneakily underneath her skirt, reaching up to her thigh almost between her legs. “Am I not humble then?” asked he, and she shook her head again, she giggled, feeling his warm left hand close to her demanding warmth, teasing the skin near it, so she took the cape and before he could embrace her waist as she let go off the other hand, she tossed it right at him. He sighed forlorn and sat on his backside, making a face petting the cloak.
“Oh, thou poorest king.” said Katherine in a motherly tone as she rolled up the hem of her dress and sat upon his lap, leaning against him and the cloak between them.
“No feigned mercy,” winced he, “or I shalt die before thee.”
The lady pursued to harvest a new kiss from his lovely lips and her hands found support onto the furled cloak, she pushed it down as she kissed him and soon, threw it aside. The cloak gone, his hand rose to her back, there where the laces of her dress held the fabric together as one, and the fingers blindly performed a trick to untie these, pulling on one and the other. Soon the cloth was loose, and the access to her shoulders was made. His lips rested on the smooth skin, and she closed her eyes under this sensation, her right arm sliding upward to slink around his shoulder and her hand rested on the back of hist neck, grabbing a tuft of hair as her cheek leant against his temple. His fingertips danced across her exposed back and made her shiver in excitement, rippling down her spine to the small of her back until he felt the light fabric of the garment underneath his fingers. With visible impatience he pulled on it and forced her out of it. The lips of the queen upon his hairline, his eyes traced her body; his index- and middle finger followed the path between her breasts detecting a motivating heartbeat. Ere he went ahead to the stomach, were his touch tickled and aroused her, too, that she sniggered lightly which was hidden in his hair. The exploring one had arrived on her hip and there, only one fingertip painted a line to her thigh and to his inside. Right before the warmth of hers then, his hands rushed to her back and held her there, pressing her chest against his. Stimulated she rose her hips and fiercely dragged him out of these dreadfully tight trousers and caused him to sigh assuaged, as like these were a burden, a cage holding his demand in a painful gaol. He retreated and laid on his back once unharnessed, but his eyes kept examining the nymph upon him and watching how she leaned forward, down to him. Her hand on his cheek, her thumb caressing his lips, she smiled at him placing small, loving pecks across his face. Each beautiful detail she re-numerated with a kiss. The lips and the warm tongue teased the skin of his face down to his neck and so he leaned his head back and stretched his neck as a coltish tomcat being bantered by its mistress. His excitement ground against hers, she toyed with it in a repetitive dance of her hips. Her hand supported the game as it quickly slid down his chest, taking in his luscious body, making her want worse, and as revenge, she worsened his too with gentle moves on his length.
Because he was not able to resist the charm of her movements, the sweet fragrance of her body and her hair, falling on his face like a curtain, a slight animalistic urge took his mind and set the common sense on fire. He draped one arm around her hip and pressed her closer against his groin. Katherine moaned delightfully and raised her hips, just enough to allow him in; a little twinge furrowed her brow by this slowly performed conjunction, for she had never experienced this before. The inhalation of the cool air ceased the burn as she felt his manhood in her depth. With a shaking hand, he touched her face and directed it toward his to taste her lips, and her chest risen accentuated her curves, in the dim light of the candles and torches of this chamber, enlightening the forms, illuminating her hair to shine as the purest gold. Her rolling hips arched his back beneath her and she gripped his shoulders, digging her nails into the muscles and the flesh there, gaining a firm hold. With time and familiarization, the passionate kisses shared easing and relaxing, though his breath increasing and his chest heaving, his hands strode to her chest, his fingers running over the velvet and sensitive skin of her breasts, which were big enough to rest in the cups of his hands. She bit his lower lip with his touch, mayhap a wee too keen, and her nails scratched those shoulders and ran to his chest, but he did not mind and did demand more of the impulsive actions from her.
The lady rolled her arm around his neck and sat up with, pulling him to her chest and let him find her neck, the chest and the elevations; collecting beads of sweat and drying the spot with his tongue. And then she moved to his hair, those red curls she adored so much, and ran her hands through it, removing damp strands that way and watching his joy, which was perceptible upon his moist canvas. To tantalise him, she increased her pace, and as she felt how he joyfully received the change, she slowed down and leaned in to nibble on his earlobe. She licked it with the tip of her tongue and the moment as his body gave in to the dilatoriness, the pace accelerated anew and his arms now held her strong and tight, his palms on her back, softly and cattily painting red lines on the map, leaving a trail of desperation with his demand to release. As reaction she grasped the skin of his neck and gasped zestfully, joining in to his silently exhaled moans against the bend of her neck as his mouth rested there, teasing the skin with suavely set nips. He crested the apex of the lustful game then in multiple small waves as yet the last one sent his mind ashore to a more peaceful territory. Her breastbone was the platform for his chin to rest upon, as he took deep breaths having quivered in a release different to those in the past. A new experience for him and so it was for her, as she felt his body tremor against hers, and it catapulted her toward a new found pleasantry, a bliss convulsing her and taking her breath away as she joined him in satisfaction. He kissed the soft neck of his butterfly as apology to his gentle bites, nuzzling her neck and rubbed his sweaty forehead against her skin while she caressed his head and played with his curls, twirling it around her finger remaining on him and leaving his heat inside her, for it felt too fine to yet let go of it.
