𝑰𝑵𝑲 • 𝑻𝒆𝒘𝒌𝒆𝒔𝒃𝒖𝒓𝒚 / 𝑳𝒐𝒖𝒊𝒔 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒅𝒈𝒆

Play The Part

Your teeth, cheeks, fingertips,

Shoulders, waist, and your hips,

Knuckles, thighs, both your wrists,

And how could I forget your lips

—————

Sometimes when you look stare at the mirror for too long, you forget what you're looking at. The image you see staring back at you becomes foreign. Familiar, but slightly off.

The same way a word loses meaning when you say it over and over again, slowly turning into nothing more than a blur of noise. A combination of sounds and syllables, none of which hold any meaning. Vowels and consonants like puzzle pieces so morphed and mangled that they no longer fit together.

That's how I felt, looking at myself in the mirror that morning. I'd been standing there for a while, don't really know why. I knew who this person was, what they wanted. And I don't mean what I, or they thought they wanted, no; what they really wanted.

What they craved, desired, above all else. What it was they needed, in order to fill the pit deep in their stomach, feed them, give them a life worth living. I could see it, but they couldn't.

Denial struck her- my, face. It was evident that they didn't want to wish or wish to want. But it went against every better judgment, every lesson they'd ever learned and everything they'd ever taken from past experiences.

The promises they'd made to themselves late at night when the next day felt like a curse rather than a gift, or when the only person worth trusting was themselves. The things they had done in order to survive, protect themselves from the things they knew would hurt like death and scorch like fire.

She'd come to terms with it years ago, that what she wanted, would never be worth it. Not at the time, not in this life. But the boy rattled her discipline like nothing else, tempted her soul and drew in her attention. As much as it was torcher, it was necessary.

Because I didn't want it. Not really.

I'd woken up early that morning, long before the sun's first greeting, tasked with preparing the hounds for a hunt. Some man were visiting from London and would be staying on the grounds for a few days. I didn't know who they were, didn't really knew to either. Just that they were all middle aged, rich, here to congratulate Tewkesbury on his new title, and good friends with his uncle.

I carried pails of kitchen scraps, spare bits of chicken and hog roast, over to the kennels. I think they could smell the slop because barking pierced my ears as I approached. This wasn't usually my job, but whoever's it was was on leave at the time, and I had things I wanted to distract myself from, so I volunteered.

Their howls diminished once I entered their space, realizing that I wasn't going to walk past their enclosure, and that they would in fact get to eat. I poured the contents of the buckets out into the troughs before placing them aside. Whatever they were eating, it looked disgusting, and I considered myself lucky for not having eaten anything that morning. Seeing as it probably wouldn't be in my stomach for much longer anyways.

I quickly retrieved some water from the pump and made sure they were all well fed and hydrated. Their tails wagged back and forth happily, as if they didn't live in cages, or just eat table scraps. Or maybe I'm just ungrateful. I'd watched some of the others do this job before, on the day of a hunt. There was an order to things, a method, a process. Apparently the dogs could tell when things weren't done right, I needed to stick to the routine.

The next few hours were spent pampering each and everyone of them, brushing out their coats and washing their tails. Most of them were pointers, but I noticed a few terriers and spaniels in the mix, the latter of which were a pain to brush, constantly finding small knots in their coats. It's not that they needed to look nice in order to hunt, rather an expectation of presentability and hopes of projecting a proper image to the guests.