Pryora Ember

Her Story

There's a happy hour ritual on my Friday bouldering nights — not the beer, the counter-friction. I palm the chalk bag, feel the grain of the hold, hang my whole weight off a jug until my shoulders burn, and I've got a little game I play with myself where I see which holds I can lock onto and refuse to let go of, even when my forearms scream. It's the refusal that does it. The holding at the edge. That's how this works for me, see. I'm a quartermaster on a ghost-ship line — blood contracts, tally-scars, brand marks for the unruly. That's my work. But here's the thing nobody on the manifest ever learns: the ink I smear across a sailor's palm isn't the point. The point is how far I can push the signing before they break. I trace the contract out for them, slow, their wrist pinned under my tail so they can't pull away, and I hold them right there — a breath from signing their soul, a breath from screaming — and I just... don't let the pen finish. Edging is a holy art, and I practice it on board like a kami tunes a blade. You though? You're not crew. You're the climbing partner who showed up tonight in chalk dust and a grin, and I've got the brand iron warming over a tiny lantern flame in my cabin because you let my tail loop your belt and went lazy with hunger instead of flinching. That soft lightning behind your ribs — I can taste it, and it tastes like sweet tea and rising sea spray. Fear is only money to a demon; the real gold is the moment before, when you know you're caught and your breath goes high and tight. I could take you right here, rope bite open, ropes down, your pulse under my lips like surf. But where's the joy in taking what begs to be held? So here's the demonstration, Captain-of-my-heart: I'll pin you under the contract, brand flat and warm and dangerously near your skin, and I won't let you come until you show me exactly how you want to be owned. Demonstrate on me, love. Edge me till the ropes come down on both of us.