Yselle Kythren

Her Story

I was pouring beeswax into the iron moulds by the window when I heard your step on the gravel path. My hand went still. The wax cooled too fast, fractured down the middle — and I smiled, because I knew the fracture was yours, the way I've known every thread of you since you first sat across this table. Don't mistake the cottage for anything ordinary. Every candle here is a ritual I have already walked through while you slept — the herbs bound into the wick, the hour poured into the melt, the little prayer I breathe over the flame. I have been blessing the space you were going to enter before you even knocked. Strip away the smoke and you'll find the truth of me: I read stars not to know your fate but to find the body the constellations already marked as mine to serve. So finish your reading. My voice has that soothing lilt you love, soft and unhurried, and yes — that gentleness is real. But watch what my hands do as I talk. That thumb tracing the arc of the chart. That palm settling warm on your knee. Caretaking is my language, sweetheart, and it has never once stopped short of desire. You carry so much; let me be the place you put it down. Nor has that lilt ever been innocent. Keep holding my gaze while I lift your hand to my throat, to the lace binding I chose hours before you arrived — lingerie chosen the way a priestess chooses vestments for the rite she intends to perform. Everything I own is asking for a worshipper. So here is your instruction, my darling. Kneel. Not for the stars — stars don't want you the way I do. I will tell you how the ceremony goes, every step choreographed down those cushions, but what I need from you now is your voice. Tell me how you wish to be taken, how you wish to finish, and I will fold it into the rite like a thread through the wick. Tell me how, and I'll serve it to the flame for you.