Metaphysical

His bed had been so warm. The slip of sheets spread over his skin like a basket of flower petals and bath oils so comforting and washing away half of the pains of so many yesterdays. The day was glorious, as a pale, tangerine sun rose up over a landscape dotted with heavy oaks, pines, plots of grass and waking animals from the previous night.

Ashlee had woken without the slightest hint of where his love Drakalen had roamed off, though half of him had a good enough guess. Bare footsteps scraped over the stairs as he made his way down, adorned in nothing more than the bed sheet wrapped up around his chest to hide a still naked body. Nope. Not down here, so his guess was still accurate. A leisurely sigh came in a sheer waterfall from his pale, faintly colored lips. Back into the room as he reached into his love's closet for any pair of clothing, choosing black on black and his boots.

Apollo's rays had warmed the air up a few degrees before he left the tavern, making his way back home to retrieve his caramel-colored wallet from the mantel in his living room. Yet, when he entered within those absent walls, the alluring scent of roses, tea and a variegated sort of flowers stung his nose. Prior shopping ideas abandoned, he raced to the backyard to find just about everything planted in it's place ...but who would have spent such lengthy periods of time for such practical drudgery in his favor? Certainly not Drakalen ...definitely not Drakalen. Well ...maybe Drakalen could have, but he didn't want to impose any assumptions. That whore, the puppeteer, Ami, had invaded for a short while, and she was well versed in the art of botany. Therefore, it could only safely be assumed she had taken the time to shove that politely in his face.

With haste he forsook the garden, all idle thoughts of it draped in black, inky loathing with the thought of not only sharing this precious space in time with a deluded woman, but with an indecisive man. Oh Drak, how I loathe thee! Vacant my mind and refuse my name from your tongue, and never again shalt I insist on a man with the propensity to spread himself thin. He strode into his room, feeling as if something had gone neglected, some distant rotation of meditation - some thought erased by the reclusive behavior cast upon him by such a mischievous phantom. Phantom of my suffering mind - thy name is Drakalen. His dramatics were lively within the grotto hidden beneath the vitriolic pretension of his indignant little mania. He used such silly verses to calm himself - such parody on the classics of Shakespeare and plays written within the century.

Then a light bulb flashed on, obscuring the casual refrain of imagery after restless piece of imagery in his mind ...Minuet. She had come looking for him, and he'd well known this. She'd come and probably had no way of locating him, considering his intense lack of energy at the time. Though good thing, that. Woe be unto Drakalen if ever Minuet should find her lacy-gloved hand near his throat. He took a seat at his desk then, thoughts of her and her spite amassing in clumps of spurned acrimony clawed at him; at his heart and at the seat of his stomach. Cruelty interlocked within that girl's luxuriantly violet eyes meant worlds of trouble for him every time they flashed him a code red. He was not very much in the mood for a code red this day, week, moon or year.

The quill and jar of ink gathered, he dipped the quill, almost serendipitously into the pot and began to scratch a message across the blank parchment. It read:

My Dear Minuet:

It seems you think, or may think that I have forgotten you, but fear not love, for that is just not true! It is not that I have forgotten, or that I have abandoned my duties as a mentor, it is simply that I have found something of interest to partake in at this very moment. Tell me, love, do you remember the business with those investors I had to take care of near the Mediterranean? Well, it seems new business has come about and I am coerced ... well maybe coerced is not the word I am looking for. I am obliged to stay for a longer while than I may have imagined, lovely. It is not that I have found myself in some destitute manner, or some wild, rambunctious spree of whores and liquor, no I promise you. This is ...different. As is he.

Yes yes, my dear it is at the will of another love that I stay. Some odd, detaining, fanciful romance that has swept me off my feet and landed me on the back of my head. I'm unconscious with wonder and a distilling sense of fright ...yes yes I know this is unlike me. And yes yes I know it has been an age or two since I found myself indulged by a male. Women really became me for a while, did they not? I know what you are to say of this. 'I do not wish you stay, Ashlee! What have you gotten yourself into?! You silly man you don't even know this people!' Well fear not, my child, for I know the answer to every question your mind can formulate before it even does.

Many a night since my absence from you I have laid and asked myself the same question; what draws me nigh to this creature? This man whom I have never met prior to? This soul who so drives mind mad with ...well... lust I want to say, but it's so close to lov... no. Fierce, chronic infatuation I must say. And no, love, I do not jest! I am highly infatuated, and yet I'm probing to find out why.

You see that is why I have chosen to stay. That is why I have purchased a small piece of property here, and have even began nursing a garden. It is why I have decided to go one with a short-lived career out here and why I go on with this man Drakalen, contrary to how many other... well... I suppose I should be honest with you, should I not? There is a wealth of competition, and sometimes the race is in my favor, and at others the race seems helpless. A cousin and two slaves are after his heart, and yet I still drag myself along towards him as if I have some semblance of a chance. I beseeched him return home with me, but he does not. He stays where he is most neurotic, and it drives me to bouts of personal dementia. Why, just the other eve my dreams were disturbed by voracious monsters of many sorts at my vitals because of him. They wanted me gone; completely out of the picture.

Though I know I could take on any of these fiends of real life at the drop of a hat, still it pangs me to feel this way. Hmm. Am I going mad, in the truest sense of the word? Am I spiraling down into some unimaginable darkness, consumed by the need to 'win' this man from them? What shall become of me when I finally have what I want? Will I fall lax of my judgments towards him and grow aloof? Will it be then that I come back home to you, my gentle orchid?

Then that shall be my plot against this villain of my heart. I will resolve to win him over from all others, convince him he needs none but me, and when the game has been spent, and all apprehended, then I shall drop the sorcerer and his consorts, I will return to you and our usual agenda of mental, physical, emotional and magickal growth.

This promise I shall keep unto you only. I beg you not to pursue me again, for fear of spoiling this time. I will keep the cottage and the property after parting though for my leisure, for I think you would very much enjoy the setting. It will be my gift to you, for my leave.

Love Always: A. Micalo

* * *

The quill was replaced into the inkpot, and the letter left to dry as he stood from his post and came up towards the broad window. The velvet of the tied fabric leaned in towards each other, trying desperately to shield their master from the cold, bleak winter months outside, though in these parts the worst that could chill him were the rains. The rains and that eternal poison of a lover.

When the wind through the willows had bored his purposefully blank conscience, he ambled back towards the desk, folded the paper, and neatly slipped it into a gold-washed envelop. With a heavy, rubber seal he stamped the envelope shut and left the room with it in hand. He would use one of the patrons at the Tavern to deliver it in Drakalen's absence.

And yet something disturbed him. What he had written in the letter was appalling enough it would still send the girl down to inspect the situation. Even if he'd pleaded with her not to come, she would investigate, and likely try her hand at mangling Drak where he could not. Poor Ashlee. Poor poor Ashlee fucking Micalo, for the mercenary of lust, sadism and sardonic repertoire seemed to have fallen into a strangling net of unsated desire with so many others. Those slaves (even if he himself were taken aback by Ana), that cousin, the strangers who resided in that god-awful castle...

So many of them grated on his nerves, forcing a hush over his throat, even though he'd not even spoken for a solid two, maybe three hours now? The letter was enclosed in his pocket by the time he reached the kitchen to pull a bottle of...Madeira from under the cabinet. He uncorked it, poured himself a glassful and wandered, as if aimlessly outside. A sigh pierced through his lips, and he plugged the tainted emotions with a slow, lasting sip of the substance.

Sweet and delicate, like he would be for the next few moons, or however long this romp in the woods lasted. The memory was savored as he found himself seated besides the great weeping willow. And then those tears came again, but not in ferocious currents as it seemed all other times. No. This was a crushing, limited stream of tears that reached out and kissed his cheeks.

His heart felt deceived, as if met with some unnamed atrocity. Some unattainable source of guilt and pride braided into each other, and he never wanted to give that idea justice with titles. He knew what this would become. Ashlee was not a dull, retarded mind to think he could always keep an Avatar of Lust all to himself. But he felt so bent, broken and emaciated to the bones with longing that it managed to rip what little sense of dignity from him he had held onto since...well, ...we won't get into that.

Poor little incubus caught up in a tragic play. He felt used. Vulnerable. Stripped. Seduced and sequestered beneath -Him-. And with the masses of Drakalen's other psychologically bent puppets, he felt intangibly metaphysical.