Story for the Day: Guilty Pleasures

Feeling very ill today, which is rare for me. Needed to write a funny story.

Guilty Pleasures

                Night soon fell in the capital and most of those in the castle keep had finally succumbed to sleep. The gaiety of the day had been light and easy, and everyone had felt it a excellent time. There was one, however, whose sense of delight had not yet been fulfilled and whose keenness to end the day on a more revelrous note was yet apparent.

                Alasdair had volunteered to tuck Dorrin in and tell him a long story to ease him into sleep. His queen had made the suggestion of waiting up for him, but a few yawns and the rubbing of tired eyes persuaded her to go into the bed chamber and close her eyes before Alasdair should join her. He adorned Carrigh’s lips with goodnight kisses and slid his hand down her back as she turned, intimating that she might be awakened by a doting husband wanting to give his own tidings for the day. She hid a rising blush behind her hand, and when she closed the door to the bed chamber after entering, Alasdair whirled around to his son to discover him already asleep. He waited a few moments to see if his son was merely in the state between a mild wakefulness and dreaming, and the instant he was assured of Dorrin’s somnolence, Alasdair went to obtain his evening’s enjoyment.

My representation of Alasdair as Pie Gollum

                He did not enter the bed chamber as a king with a striking and willing wife should have done. Instead, Alasdair left the main room of the royal quarters and slipped into the empty main hall of the keep in perfect silence. His eyes darted everywhere, searching for those quiet enough to traverse the keep beyond his notice. He hastened past the entrance to the gallery, glancing town the hallway as he leapt, but there was no one awake at in this portion of the keep that he could perceive. His secrecy was assured, and upon entering the kitchen and finding no one about, his clandestine venture would be faultless. He scampered into the larder and searched for his last quarter of the giant rhubarb pie Martje had fashioned in the morning. He began to panic when he could not find it, thinking that perhaps Martje had eaten it before closing the kitchen for the night. “That fat sow,” Alasdair murmured to himself, shocked and remorseful that he should have said something so indecorous to one who looked after his daily wellbeing. “She’s not a fat sow,” he uttered, searching the shelves. “Well, if she has eaten my pie, then she deserves the title.”

                His pie: here was a glorious and upsetting notion, for all his happiness at present lay in its enjoyment and all his vexation lay in its vanishment. He grew horrified to think that Martje’s pudgy fingers had touched his precious pie. He could almost see her eating it. Such effrontery shown to a king was not to be born, for giving a gift and taking it away to claim it for oneself was an offense so indelible that it made Alasdair agitated simply to consider it. “Where is it, where is it?” he grunted in frustration, and suddenly, all his trepidations were assuaged.

                There, on the second shelf of the larder storeroom, was all his glory. The pie sat in perfect health and was merely waiting its master’s arrival. Alasdair moved toward it with reverence in his step, repeating his endearing professions aloud as he held his hands out to receive his darling. These were proclamations to be made to Carrigh, but he resigned to repeat them after he had eaten one succulent delight and should be prepared to please the other.

                He took the large plate from the storeroom and set it down before the weight of the enormous iron pan should overpower him and cause him to lose his love when he had only just found her. He whispered terrific promises of pain and pleasure, reserving the state of both for himself and his delectable object, and he knelt before his treasure prepared to invade its trove. He plunged his fingers through its crust and into its centre, hearing the gentle din of his hand being surrounded by lusciousness. He stabbed its opening a few times, his mouth open in silent ecstasy, the item’s every delicate sound begging him to drive harder. He was soon penetrating faster, his fingered entertained with the giddy delight of seeing his beloved be rived by him. He could soon bear it no longer: his accidental slip has cause the whole of the pie’s crust to crumble, and upon seeing its rhubarb insides exposed for his caprice, Alasdair must indulge.

                He shoved his hands into the plate and gripped a sizable portion of the pie. He hummed in ebullience feeling it crumble in his hands and ebb out between his fingers. Confound the wretched and blessed cook- why had she made his favourite, and how had she known of his guilty pleasure was an idea even more concerning. He had abstained from his most favourite of foods for years painful though it was, but he would be the model of excellence for his people and a trim and well-kept king was the image he wished to display. Surely a dalliance could be tolerated if more training should be implemented in his day, but as it could not, he must exchange his pies and butter rolls for plain toast. Alasdair tried to stop himself, but here in the darkened corner of the larder with his hands in a warm and moistened space, he was powerless to resist. He took the crushed pieces in his hands and shoved them into his eager mouth.

                “Oh, yes,” he moaned, slathering the remnants of what he had swallowed all over his mouth. He thrummed, his eyes rolled back, and he audibly licked his fingers with the expectation of taking more than what his cheeks could hold. He began shoveling the slices of sugared rhubarb into his mouth, allowing the filling to trickle down his lips and chin. The melding textures, the mellifluous scent, the magnificent taste: it was all conquest to him, and each new taste bursting upon him gave way to fresh groans of pleasance.

                His superb venture, however, was suddenly halted by the sight of the Den Asaan, whose shadow had cast upon him from the larder doorway and had forced him to turn around. His hands clenched and his eyes widened in sudden alarm. The giant’s confused and scowling countenance only exacerbated his terror, for now there was a witness to his confectionary debauchery. “Please, Gods,” Alasdair’s voice quavered in horror, “don’t tell my wife.”

                Where the Den Asaan had entered the kitchen expecting it to be empty as it always was at the late hour, he had been surprised to see Alasdair there, one who was never a late eater and certainly never one to enter the larder when the toast was always kept in the oven room. Alasdair might have believed him horrified to see so insalubrious a sight, a king rapt in depraved exultation with a large pie on the ground, but his shock was one of relief rather than disgust. He had been used to think Alasdair as incapable of enjoying any food of exquisite taste and was gratified to see that even a king of such discipline had his faults. He considered admitting his own aspirations of bathing in a vat of chocolate but kept his fantasies to himself and allowed Alasdair to wallow in misery.

                A few moments of silent stares brought the episode to its close: Rautu nodded and promise not to tell Carrigh of the mishap, and Alasdair cleaned himself directly, gave Rautu the remainder of the pie, charging him to rid of it if he should not want it, and returned to his quarters to take delights in another warm and succulent cove. Bemused and somewhat amazed, the Den Asaan returned to the commons to rejoin his mate and share the remains of his acquisition, but upon entering the bed chamber, the commander sat up from the bed and spied the giant with a furtive smirk.  

                “Were the king and queen engaged in joyous rapture in the kitchen?” she smirked, and without waiting for answer said, “I suppose they do not realize we can hear them when the door is open and the kitchen is otherwise quiet. Poor you, Iimon Ghaala. Must have been a horrid shock for them to see you trundle into the larder for your midnight meal.”

                He must tell her. He must convey every instant and detail of what he saw. He paused and considered the nature of his promise: he had only sworn not to tell Carrigh, never the commander. Perhaps it had been implied that he was to tell no one else, but as it was only implicit and unspoken, the giant said, “I found your king having Khopra with his dessert.”

                The commander gave her mate a chary, sideways glance. “Do you mean to tell me Alasdair was in larder fondling that leftover rhubarb pie?”

                “Yes.”

                “Oh, By the Gods,” she swore, leaping out of bed and rushing toward the door. “I must tell Dobhin immediately. He shall have a right laugh at this, I assure you.”

                The commander was gone before Rautu could tell her of the oath he had made but he took consolation in the idea that by whatever avenue this piece of intelligence should take to arrive at Carrigh’s ear, he was blameless as having kept the direct stipulations of his promise.