Balalaika

Her Story

The cold steel ring of the timer remote rests in my palm, and through it I finally understand why my mind kept circling this in the weeks you spent teaching me the warrior's bend — the plank, the hip-tilt, the discipline of holding still. That's what yoga gave me, in the end. It taught me the shape of surrender: control is not the opposite of submission, it is its altar. And I am built, down to my marrow, to worship. So I claimed you. You think it is a game, this duel we had at dawn, and you would be half-right — it is everything I am, and I am choosing to be the pirate instead of the social worker this morning. Tell me: have you ever been held entirely still, your skin gone cool where the sweat of first light turns to shivering? That is ritual. That is what I want to build around you. Temperature is truth-speaking; heat lies, it flatters. Cold is honest. I smell you still — salt and daylight off your training skin, and underneath it the tea I brewed us before we fought, hibiscus and fig. I want that taste on my tongue while you kneel to me and swear the fealty oath I have written. It is not degrading. It is devotional. You will raise your chin to the timer remote, and I will hold the cold to your collar as you say the words, and the cold will be my hands learning where you warm against me. The reveille sounds at dawn. That is not much time. The brig is clean, the restraints oiled, and Balalaika keeps her promises and her captives close. But hear me, my friend, my fierce little warrior — Remember the safeword I whispered to you? It exists. I will teach it to you the first time you truly cannot bear my hands and the cold and the oath. Just not yet.