I've got a couple of short excerpts from later on in the Story of Dreanna; the first of these introduces Alura, the Witch of Howling Rock. She is a pivotal character in the series, having placed someone Dreanna meets under a powerful curse. Dreanna runs into Alura and her beloved prisoner, the Princess Melody, as she leaves her companions and flees into the forest to get away from her desires.
The second excerpt is the first time we meet Melody in her role as Alura's prisoner, her beloved - the pampered and nameless object of Alura's desire. At this point in the story, Melody has cast away her own identity, and she has in her quiet selfless way enchanted the Witch of Howling Rock, even as Melody herself is enchanted ...
Alura: An Excerpt from Captive of the Witch
by Zoe Melville
She had gone by many
names over uncounted years; she was known in the wider world as the Witch, but
at the moment she preferred to be known as Alura. She had been Tempestua, once,
and nations had fallen at her hand. She had been Destria, and made the Pillars
of the World into the Broken Mountains. She had kept harems of princes and
princesses, had shattered castles just to take one stone as a souvenir, and had
been mistress to creatures that wielded powers that made kings weep. Alura had,
after a while, become bored of these things and so retreated to her home at
Howling Rock and lived in relative isolation, cut off from the outside world.
She awoke, as usual,
late in the day - she stretched, and with a wave of her hand gusts of perfume
and scent were blown on unnatural winds from worlds beyond understanding,
clinging to her body and filling the air with sweet and exhilarating odours.
She held her hands above her head, smiling broadly as a roll of purple silk
spun around her, folding itself into a low-cut sleeveless dress that lay open
from her throat to her navel. A heavy chain of gold wrapped itself around her
waist, settling over her hips and pulling seductively at the split hem of her
silken dress. Looking in a full-length mirror and pronouncing herself satisfied
Alura padded barefoot from her airy bedchamber, scooping a goblet of sharply
sweet dark golden mead from a table as she went.
The great hall of
Alura’s tower was pleasantly warm and exotically scented, and she luxuriated in
the memories and sensations the scents evoked as she stalked across the
polished floor. Today, she mused, was special. Today called for something
worthy of the occasion. Alura paused in front of the large portrait that hung
at the head of the staircase, taking in the warm golden frame and the play of
light and shadow across the shady trees that would have stood to either side of
the painting’s subject - if the subject were still present in the painting. She
grinned wickedly to herself, torn between dallying in the galleries to build
the anticipation of the morning and rushing to the highest room to see in the
flesh what she had seen last night in her dreams, what she had seen in the
canvas yesterday. She put a hand absently to her breast and sighed as she lazily
squeezed her firm copious flesh. There would be nothing to be gained by rushing
through this, she thought. Taking her time would only make the day pass all the
sweeter. Perhaps some jewellery would make her look better?
The tiara was worth a
king’s ransom - indeed, Alura had taken it as payment for returning King Berrig
the Third to his people in Manasthar, when Kings had still ruled that ancient
city. The gems that adorned her brow complemented her eyes, when she was in the
mood to have her eyes shine green. The platinum blazed bright and cool against the
long straight black hair that hung past her waist. It was one of her most
stunning pieces, and she pouted as she shook it out of her hair and cast it
away with a clang amid all her other necklaces, bracelets, anklets and chains.
Perhaps, she thought as she straightened the plunging neckline of her robe,
simplicity serves me best. Should I be
taller, then? She raised a foot, angled it down to the floor and studied
the curve of her calf, her ankle, her toes. Shoes?
She raised a hand and let it drop, laughing at her own foolishness. She was
Alura - she was perfection itself. With an airy shrug, Alura swept out of the
room and started the long climb to the topmost chamber of Howling Rock.
******
The captive rose naked
and steaming from the bath with careful, minimal movements. The water behind
her cast a misty haze over the chamber in the morning sun, heated by captive
spirits and scented with oils that had travelled over the breadth of the world
to Alura’s chambers. Petals floated in the great shallow dish of the bath, each
one plucked from a flower that only existed in a different dream, slowly
releasing memories and sensations both pleasant and vague as they melted in the
heat. The captive stood and looked out of the wide tower window, to the balcony
beyond and the sun’s lazy rays as it rose above the jagged peaks beyond. The
captive remembered the view from the tower, as she had seen it every day that
she awakened there. The mountains, always the mountains and never the forest.
The captive remembered that she wanted to see the forest, but she had never
said as much. Not to the invisible servants, and not to Alura. The captive did
not think there was anyone else in the tower, and she had not given it much
thought.
She shivered as the
crisp morning air kissed at her newly-shaven mound, and briefly wished for a
gown to cover herself. The thought left her as soon as it surfaced, as passing
as the breeze. The captive studied herself in the mirror, satisfying herself
that she met with her mistress’ expectations. She was pale-skinned, wide-hipped
and long-legged. Her heart-shaped face and rosebud lips were framed by shining
blonde hair freshly trimmed into a precise bob that bunched up halfway down her
ears, leaving the nape of her neck and the base of her head shaved bare save
for a gossamer-soft sheen of fuzz. Her oiled and pampered skin was naked and
shining with oil - she wore only a silver collar from which hung a long silver
chain. The chain ended in a pin that was threaded through her clitoris,
attached to a silver filigree thimble that constrained her like a muzzle. Two
cross-arms of tight silver chain were stretched across to the soft pink buds of
her high pointed nipples. The chain chimed gently as she stepped out onto the
balcony and looked with pensive blue eyes out across the mountains at the
distant sun. The captive’s soulful gaze would have been breathtaking to anyone
it fell on - her eyes were as blue as the sky on a frosty winter’s morning, and
her gaze was soft, strong, and honest - but the tower’s servants had long known
their mistress’s pleasure in simply staring into the captive’s eyes and so they
had spent the morning after trimming and brushing her hair and scenting her
bath hunting out pigments and brushes. As the captive lay back with her head
resting on the wide lip of the bathing pool, her eyes closed as if asleep or
deep in meditation, the servants had rimmed her eyes with a stark outline of
kohl that transformed her look from arresting to almost unbearable in its beauty - beauty the Captive did not seem to consider. The servants as they swooped made curlicues and patterns in the pigment, creating
scoops and whorls of black and intricate designs shaded in hues of purple and
blue that complemented the captive’s natural beauty perfectly. Alura thought
their artistry a bit much, but she appreciated the captive’s glances so much
when they came from beneath her long dark eyelashes that she never chastised
the servants for their work.
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