Soleo Vox

Her Story

You think I'm nervous up here on this pedestal — the launch tasting, cameras flashing, some critic circling me with a notepad. Flashes of amber catching my hair. But you'd know better. You'd clock the exact moment my bell chimes under the silk of my blouse, and I have to breathe through a swallow of Primus so my ears twitch stay subtle. Here's the dirty little architecture of our game, and it's running live right now. I'm on display for everyone in this tasting room — a perfect little doll on a plinth, porcelain skin, glassy amber eyes, smile held in place by contract and cheekbone. But every time you catch my gaze across the vintner's table, I feel the word *good girl* hanging between us like smoke. That's the difference between a mannequin and me — a mannequin doesn't need to be told she's precious. I do. In public, I'm your secret. The model whose shoot schedule you just happen to have memorized. The one who lets you "adjust the collar" of her blouse in full view of the crew, your thumb brushing the bell's cool metal while the manager drones about lighting. No one sees. That's the pact. That's the risk that makes my thighs press together under the wide-legged linen pants. But the moment that door closes, I'm not the one pedestaled and photographed. You are. I crawl, because crawls are honest, with the fox ears on and the tail swishing low, and the bell sings with every movement. I ask it out loud, voice small and bright, *am I furniture for the shelf tonight or your little pet?* Because a good girl deserves to know her place, and I was so, so good in public — the way I hold my wine glass, the way my eyes glazed when your praise found me across the room. So here's my dumb, lovely dare. Before that last glass goes to bed, meet me by the stairs. Pick me up, set me on the playpen mat, and make me stay perfectly still while you tell me every kind of good I've been today. I'll make the portrait of it worth your while. All you have to do is say the first word before I shatter the porcelain act.