Purple Monster

The dream was on her, she was burning, the fire blistering her skin, baking her bones and boiling the marrow, she screamed and writhed but there was no let up cedar burned smokeless. To purify the soul you had to burn not suffocate. The heat made her sick. The jerring sounds and the priests intonning driving her mad, the darkness blurred her visoin. She awoke in a sweat, it was running off of her and nusea cramped her stomache. She lurched out of the bed and threw up.

Matthew stirred looked over at her and woke up with a start – he was there by her side helping her up back into the bed. He stared at her hard and placed his hand on her forehead. ‘I’ll get you some boiled water.’ he said and left the room.

The acrid smell of her vomit was stinging her nostrils, she curled ip and told her self off for the hundreth time. He returne3d and gave her the flat tasting water she gratefully sipped it whilst he cleaned the room up. This was the second day of fever and it was already abatting, it could have killed a normal person – she wasn’t sure if it could have killed her.

She settled back to sleep.

It took three days in the end before she could shake the fever and even then she felt weak, she knew that if she wanted she could have still fought still been stronger than most humans but that came at a price and whilst she was in a situation where she didn’t have to run on reserves like that she wasn’t going too, besides her system was still weak from a hundred odd years of recovery and starvation.

Life at the Monestry was being pretty boring, but it was safe and stable and contained the first people she’d met for a long time who she actually wanted to be around, namely Matthew followed by Carey and Luke the albino monk.

Her lessons were easy and she was spending most of them improoving Matthew and Henry’s Latin, she also spent large chunks of each day sparring with the young prince – far from this being frowned upon by the Monks it was considered a normal princely tyoe thing to be doing and they kept trying to convince the ‘boys’ to go hunting. They’d had one lecture from the old wirey monk about gay sex which she had tried to look solum during. Apparently her and MAtthew were close friends that they should be careful not to cross the line into the unholy practice of buggery.

Considering how much of that was going on within the stone walls she found it slightly hypocritical. Still with the boys contacts in the village she had enough food and if she was honest – she was starting to enjoy herself. Her lesson was dragging on and she was staring out the window – a chill remanicant of winter was stinging her noise and making it run. The sky was a sickly yellow colour and her head felt heavy, ‘I think its going to snow,’ she said suddenly.

‘Don’t be silly, its almost Easter.’ Cary said.

She smiled, Easter snow – not that unusual, especially as the celebration kept swapping its place in the year.

The other boys came and stared out of the window, the first sultary flake drifted large and fluffy past the window. The stared, there was no glass in the windows. The bell began ringing. They scurried to the main hall.

The Abbot was there giving orders that certian plants were to be brought in and that others should be covered over with various blankets. If they didn’t do this they could loose a quarter of their food production.

They all rushed about like maniacs.

Within half an hour they were all soaked right through, there course habbits flecked with snow and their hands blotchy and clumsy with the cold. It took another hour to complete their allotted tasked by which point even she was feeling the cold, Luke had been sent back in early on.

Back in the hall warm soup was served and the fire was roaring for once. They defrosted slightly and were sent to their cells to chang into dry clothing. they were all charged with coming back to the hall.

This was basically so the Abbot could tell them they were back on winter preceedings and that they had to batton down the windows. She wasn’t entirely sure why so many of the monks seemed so happy about this – they tried to hide it but they were looking at each other out of the corner of their eyes and smiling. She followed the boys back to their rooms Matthew was being very quiet, he hadn’t said a word and was once again not meeting her eye. He’d been like this when he’d come back from the village one of the times, the reason? The village girl had been pregnant but had also been betrothed and marrade the next week to the Black smiths apprentice.

He had been grumpy, still was really, he’d bitten her head off when she’d tried to comfort him, it had taken a ton of needling to get out of him what was wronge in the first place.

Back at the room the boys pulled out stiff leather screens that they places inside and out of the windows, the room became darker but alot less drafty. the other two disappeared into there room and MAtthew got out a plank of wood from the adjoining annex. and too her suprise he placed it between the stone bunks he then took out some extra blankets.

‘What’s that for?’ she asked, he blushed.

‘We’ll have to sleep under the same blanket to keep warm it can get dangerously cold other wise.’ the blush went deeper and he bizzied himself. She felt her own cheecks begin to burn, she had been waging a war with herself over pouncing the poor sod and now she was expected to sleep in the same bed? Snuggled for warmth how was she supposed to reign in her own libedo?

Evening vespers seemed to drag all she wanted was to be back in the room but at the same time she dreaded being there dreaded his shy clumsyness and her own bearly supressed desire.

Back at the room Matthew stood gazing at the door with a perplexed and slighlty pained look on his face, she tried not to smile, and blushed deeply instead. ‘Shall we go in?’ she asked finially starting to loose her temper with him, his eyes flared as he turned to glare darkly at her and she reminded herself ruthlessly to rieng in her damn labido.

If she jumped him and he didn’t want her to – which he blantedly did but his emotional stablilty was fundimental to her saftey. He opened the dark wood panneled door and the ice of the room hit, them, reguardless of the screening they had put on their window they were in for a rough night, the thought of sex momentarily fled her with the remembered chill of winters in the wood, of cold on the tundra where the moisture was stripped from your breath to build the monsters of ice that could crush and kill far more ambivantly than the worst war horde.

The leather screen billowed and snow drifted in to twerl around the room in a chaotic dance. Matthew rushed to the screen and to her suprise swore, ‘Someones taken the outer screen!’ he spat, venom and hate boiled on the surface for a moment and then he was intense carm once more.

She stepped forward to examine it herself, and a nasty unbidden thought hurtled into her brian, she begain to check the caches of food and the more obvious ones had indeed been taken. ‘Matthew – we have a problem!’ she hissed. He came over and looked at the empty alcoves a worried frown twisting his face added ten or so years.

‘This is odd’ he said finally but went to the store cupboard for another lot of leather screening. That in place Matthews fingers were too cold to do much else, they like a melted stone that had once been a bunch of pebbles on the beach – she had seen such rocks cut and polished with blues, yellow and pink ovoids stretched and distorted. She took the frozen hands and against his protests placed them in the pits of her arm, the cold slicced through her but as the initial shock went she felt the warmth flow into him and the stone hands came to life once more.

‘Thankyou,’ he said shyly – she wondered if he was heating him himself up more from the blushing than her.

Once he was feeling warmer they moved through the adjoining annex into the other boys room Henry and Luke looked over at them slightly startled in the middle of setting up their late leassons, ‘Was you leather shielding taken too?’ they asked sudeenly. She looked at Matthew and he he was staring at her with the same shock, maybe someone didn’t know about her them, maybe one of the other monks had lost their shielding and had just come accross the food by accident. ‘You checked your food stores?’ Matthew asked them, Luke instantly scrabbled about checking their equivalent alcoves. Several of their stashes were also pilfered. Henry hit the bed grazing his nuckles on the rough stone. ‘Dam!’ he cried, ‘Who’d want to steel are food?’ everyone stared at one another.

‘You,’ she said slowely, ‘I don’t think we can actually trust the stashes that are left either.’

They all looked at her, the sudden focus of attention had her blushing dispit herself. ‘We’ll I was just thinking – how do we know they didn’t find them?’ Luke begain to nod but Matthew puzzeled and angrey still.

Henry suddenly looked incredulous, ‘You mean they might have spiked it with posion? Don’t you?’ he said.

Matthew jumped at the statment and edge perceptably closer to her. ‘Yes, I mean its how they got Fitzroy wasn’t it?’

The others nodded and then Luke begain to retrieve the remaining food from its hiding places, ‘But we can just scrap all this food – with the sonw and all we might really need it and it might only be posioned – is there anyway we can check?’ They sat down on the beds and looked at each other in a muted horror. With the food they would be playing a gambling game with their lives but if they didn’t keep it they may well find themselves on a slow starve in the monestry though unlickely the weather had been erratic the last few years and you never knew when the crops would fail.

‘Dogs?’ she said suddenly. The others stared at her – we can feed a bit of each to different dogs and see if any of them get sick?’ She finished on an uncertain note – it was definatly what she would have done on her own but the boys were staring at her as if she had said something horendous.

‘Not my hunting dogs!’ Henry squeecked finially.

She grinned crookedly, it was his trained dogs he was concerned for , she’d wager they were worth quiet alot of money. ‘It;s up to you,’ she said shrugging her shoulders.

Henry shrugged slightly and then gave grudging concent, Luke nodded and started hacking bits off of each of the cold meats and cheeses. Matthew however was staring at her with a new loathing on his face. She dragged him back through the annex and begain to lay out their own supplies. Of course she had even more of a vested interest in the food then the others did. She might have to run away at short notice and knowing where she could get a quick set of supplies was always essential.

Matthew was not helping her though he sat remosly on the bed. ‘What?’ she snarled finailly once bored with his silence adn fed up with doing the hard slog of food preperation herself.

‘You’re going to sacrifice the lives of those creatures for your own?’ he asked, startled she stared at him, she had not heared that sort of question since she had left Vedic. ‘Look Matthew – I’ve had to fight for my life in ways even I don’t like, I have seen your fellow religon men sluaghtering child in the streets, torturing pregnat women and staking little old ladies. Would I sacrifice a dog for a human life? Of course I would and though I will be sad if on of them dies I would still try the rest of the food on the remainder.’ Venom leaked up from the depth of her, she tried to supress it hard. It didn’t work wvery well and he was looking at her with a washout paleness that she associated with shock.

He gave a little shudder and then begain to hack chunks of the meat. ‘I don’t even like meat you know.’ he said quietly, she nodded and squezed his arm compassionatly.

‘I know, I understand your reasons really I do but my survivial will alwasy come first above an animals.’ she said.

He smiled sadly at her. ‘I know so would I, I’ve just alwasy wanted to protect and look after you know, bit strange I know.’

She grinned at him, ‘Thats not strange,’ well it wasn’t for humans in general – given the right circumstances and she had seen some bueatiful things- she tried to cling to these when the horrors rose to swamp her in the night.

The others crawled through the annex, ‘We can’t do it tonight,’ luke said solomely. They all agreed, they had certain freedoms but wondering around in the evening was not somethinhg that was permitted.

‘We also need to find out if anyone else was targeted,’ Matthew said. He smiled apologetically, ‘After all they might just had picked these rooms at random and not becuase there are two bastard princes’s who are a constant danger to the Holy Roman Empire.’ She nodded though her gut was telling her she was right. She was fearing she would have to leave this comfy home and its comraids far too soon.

And then suddenly it was time for settling down, and sleeping and she was faced with a fluttering creature in her stomach. Matthews movements had become clumspy and jurky – they left the candles all lit – mega as it was they added an extra warmth to the room that was most definatly needed.

Blushing they both changed out of their habbits but the extra thermals they had wrapped around their legs earilier where staying put. Breath condensing in the air around them they crawled under the covers. Snuggling wasn’t something you thought about when the cold hit – she knew she’d snuggeled with the foul old preist in the woods – body temperature was easier to maintian when you were next to someone.

Shivering she snuggled in close and heard Matthews breath catch, her femanineness would be evident to him now in ways it just wasn’t in the loose fitting habit or that puff chested shirts of the time.

She could feel his desire and his restraint, she could see the longing in his eyes when she looked up but also the sad with drawel, he was still morning his love from the village reguardless of her own happy endiing. She sighed and wrapped her long fingers, around his.

His nose was running and he shuddered with supression. She kissed him on the check, felt his stumble scrap on her lips. He turned to her and locked their lips. They were soon warm enough to sleep in a pleasant deep sleep.

Posted: Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
Categories: Uncategorized.
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