The Eternal City's soirees always captivated Bliss, and tonight was no exception. The grand hall of Lady Seawhisper's city house buzzed with life and glamour, musicians filling the air with the delicate strains of the classic dance standbys while the various peers and lesser nobles of the realm added the vital counterpart of soft leather soles on polished silkwood floors, whirling about each other in perfect time. Each measure's swirling movement between partners set a great rustling breeze in the air, with acres worth of taffetas and satins, velvets and silks and fine linens spinning out around their wearers like grand wings and shrouds that seemed as though they might carry the fine and delicate-boned women into the air if they could but leap. The latest styles favoured grand billowing skirts and external corsets with fine silk panelling and giltwork to exaggerate the hips and waist, and more than a few of the ladies played at fainting spells in them - to which Bliss could only ever politely smile, pretending not to find the whole display silly and childish.
These ladies - girls, really - played not just at the fainting spells but at the corsets themselves, chasing reductions of scant inches from their waists. None could match her in that respect. Mere slaves to fashion, they lacked the will to keep at it as she had over the last decades. She'd started out like they had - external corsets, tight but not outrageous - but had long moved away from springy whalebone stays. Beneath her white silk dress - scandalously close fitting, and without the exaggerated skirts - she wore a far harsher corset than any of them could hope to endure. Her wasp waist was legend now, a perpetual wonder at parties and balls - the waist so delicate a large man might almost fit it in his grip completely. That she was otherwise possessed of a robust, curvaceous body only further served to set her apart from the girls playing at fashion - stripped of their corsets, padding and bustles, they lost all trace of the exaggerated hourglass. But not Bliss. She had broad, sturdy hips - birthing hips, enviable hips with the Eternal City's constant demand for more and more offspring to replace those lost in the Wars and the Great Tragedy - and plump thighs.
She was also - she was quite proud to say so herself - bustier than any woman in the Republic. Her breasts were vast, inviting, full and prodigious - so large that sitting, their undersides nestled against her thighs, that standing, they seemed almost to dwarf her torso. They'd always been large, but the same enviable fertility that had blessed her with close to a dozen children so far (the only times she departed from her corsetry routine, in fact, was when she was with child) had seen them grow to gargantuan proportion, and their perpetually milky state left them not only vast, but full and round.
Tonight's dress emphasized her fertility, and wonderfully framed her breasts. It was difficult finding designers who understood her desire to flaunt them without simply letting them hang out completely. They all seemed to want to either leave them virtually bare or cover them as tightly as possible and hide them away. But the latest - Vienn, a flamboyantly gay little man - seemed to understand the importance of the aesthetic over the purely sexual. For her, he'd designed the swooping bare shoulder and neckline that teased at cleavage but bared the vast expanse of her upper-right breast, the carefully seamed design that supported her bra-less, that lifted without binding.
The fine white silk dress was a masterpiece, emphasizing her breasts and her hips without rendering her a mere sex object, and the delicate gilt filigree that panelled the clinging waist disguised ingenious hooks to fasten it tightly around the corset while mirroring the embroidered floral patterns so common to the emerald and sapphire corsets of the other ladies, and a fine swirl of cloth of gold along its single shoulder blended with her cascading blonde hair. Among the pastels and rich jewel tones of the other ladies, hiding away their skin and pretending at curves with padding, it was a scandalously different fashion statement.
"Lady Starshadow?"
She turned at her name, smiling demurely at the Lord Seawhisper. "My Lord Seawhisper." She offered back, with a polite bow of her head.
"I wasn't sure it was you - you know what, that's a lie. I was quite sure. How could I not be?" He said, stepping in closer than decorum allowed. Up close, he smelled like cinnamon, and she sighed sweetly at the scent of him. "There's not a man here tonight can keep his eyes off you... As usual."
"You're too kind."
"No, no... It's not a kindness, Lady Starshadow. Tonight, I'd take it as a warning - some of the other women are getting increasingly catty. They aren't all as... Liberated as we are, shall we say?" Quietly, his hand found her waist, slowly caressing upwards until it came to rest on the curve of her breast, the heat of it soaking through the thin fabric, hiding it with the position of his broad, bulky frame. "They don't all understand that etiquette and decorum are well and good, but interesting company is priceless... If the wrong ones catch their husbands looking they might play at their abhorrent little revenges."
"Well..." Bliss croons sweetly, leaning into his hand. They'd fucked, of course, once or twice. He was simply adequate in bed, but a genuine believer in the fervent wave of sensual depravity that had swept the over Republic of the last decade, and a kind man. His deep pockets were always open for her school for the wretched, regardless of how open her legs were. "...we don't want that, do we? Tell me... How is the Lady Seawhisper? I'd hoped to see her here tonight."
"Recovering. Not everyone finds childbirth as easy as you do, I fear - she needs a few days more rest yet, even after a week. Do thank your friend the shaman for their suggestion? I didn't think the two of us being flogged as we did the needful would work, but sure enough - a boy. He's got my eyes, even."
"Good. I'll pass it along - and please, pass along my fond regards to her... Now, I believe people are beginning to stare." With a playful little tsk and wink, she peels away from him, sauntering away to join the dance again.
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"That fat fucking cow..." Karandreya does her best not to scowl, whispering under her breath. It's unladylike, or so she was always taught. Instead, she raises her champagne bowl to her delicately painted lips, allowing the dry sparkling wine to wash over her tongue. It does nothing to remove the foul taste left by seeing the Lady Starshadow parade about with her nose in the air, as though she were anything but an upjumped whore. Dreya's lip twitches against with distaste as she watches the slut whisper to Seawhisper, and she pointedly turns away, draining her glass and fixing her companion with an intense glare.
"I can't believe they let a whore like her in here."
"Dreya!" Jessamine flushes, looking furtively about them with her amber eyes, biting her thin lower lip. "You can't say that!"
"And why not? It's true, isn't it? She's a whore. She fucks for money - on camera, no less. Just because she married into a title doesn't make it any less true."
"Yes, but... It's not polite..."
"Not polite? Jess, since when was letting whores - she was born in a brothel, for god's sake! - into society polite? Look at how the men stare... They're all imagining her under them, the animals." She shudders, suppressing a flash of envy. What must it be like to control a room so utterly? To be the object of such intense desire?
"No, but... It's... You know who her wife is, it's not s-safe to..."
"Not safe to... Since when did you stammer? Are you unwomaned by the thought of her? Am I the only one left with a sense of decorum?" Dreya scowls, turning away again. One of Seawhisper's footmen passes, a silver-and-niello tray balanced neatly on a hand loaded with champagne bowls, and she liberates one elegantly while the object of her ire joins the swirling dance.
