Dream Lover

TEN

Elle took evasive action. Her younger brother hadn’t always taken her aversion to Saturday morning chores sitting down. The unspoken agreement was that if he could keep her out of bed she’d get up and get started earlier than later. She didn’t win all the time, but she slept in more Saturday mornings than she didn’t.

She rolled her body into a ball and began trying to gather the ends around her head while still keeping her grip on the sides. She thought she had a good grip on all the pieces she needed when he had her at about a 45-degree angle with the mattress. He kept pulling the blankets upward and she couldn't help but to giggle at the silliness of it all, but she held her ground inside her cocoon.

By the time she was nearly on her head, she was laughing hysterically. He gave the sheets one good shake and she popped loose and went tumbling out on to the bed.

"Alright, I need to borrow some pants." She said it between waves of laughter. Byron was scowling down at her, but she thought she caught him smile when he turned away to get her one of his extra pairs of pants.

It took some creativity, but after tucking the shirt in and folding the waistband of the leggings he'd thrown over her face while she held her stomach and tried to breathe normally after laughing so hard, she managed to get the pants to stay up.

She managed to impress Byron a moment later when after she refused to put his laundry in the same bag he had carried the dead pig in yesterday. She turned one of his shirts into a laundry bag that would carry the rest of them.

"Where are your dirty pants?" Elle asked when she noticed his entire laundry load was shirts.

"You’re wearing them" Elle frowned in disgust. Thank god for panties. She tried not to comment on it and failed shortly after they’d climbed down from the tree house.

"In the future," she began "when you run this scam on the next girl, don't let her climb into your dirty trousers with her lady bits exposed."

"Why’s that?" Elle raised an eyebrow.

"It could cause a particularly nasty infection for one and depending on what’s swimming in the crotch of your pants you could be looking at a miraculous birth." She had his attention now, but she was busy in her own mind falling down the mental rabbit hole of explaining a sexless conception in a dream. She’d probably be committed.  Byron was studying her curiously, but Elle only shook it off.  

“Don’t worry about, even if that happened, you’d be fine.”

“Why is that?”

"Because you're a man"

"What’s that got to do with anything?"

“Hm…” Elle considered the effort it would take to explain a semester’s worth of Women’s lib, instead she tried a slightly different route.  “Every culture has an ideal citizen. If the ideal citizen is a rich, landowning male then the members of society who exhibit similar traits are viewed as more ideal and more trustworthy than those who don't."

"What makes you think the ideal citizen here is male?" 

"Oh, little things," Elle said. "Like your threats of a brothel as punishment. You did that because you were sure I was beneath you and it was your right to sell me."

"I did it to keep you in line"

"No, that's not exactly true. You threatened me with a humiliation that would have been topped by another and then another until I died or escaped. You wouldn't have threatened a man that way. You would have used violence, or prison, or both, maybe even death. All of those are preferable to a lifetime of r**e don't you think?"

The cool way she assassinated his character, as if it was casual conversation infuriated him. It angered him more that he cared at all what a strange girl he wouldn’t see passed the next day thought of him.

"You must not think much of me."

Elle turned wide eyes on him. "What makes you say that?"

"How could you? If you believe I think that way about women?"

"The reason I believe you think that way is much bigger than any one man, and I don't think only you think that way, but most men here, and a few too many where I’m from as well. Besides, you had plenty of opportunities to try to carry that threat out. Instead, you took me in to your home, forced me to clean it, and then let me share your bed. Given my experiences with men in this-” Elle trailed off realizing that she hadn’t quite determined if this was a very strange lucid dream or something more real. In either scenario, she thought calling someone a figment of her imagination right after hinting at some misogynistic tendencies was a little much in one conversation. After that brief mental detour, she ended with, "kingdom?” and breathed a little easier when Byron nodded. “Of all my experiences with men in this kingdom so far, you’re the best one I’ve met.” Elle thought. As Byron looked to be digesting her words, she decided he didn’t need to know exactly how low that particular bar was set. She’d spent a long time in the mirror before work earlier today convincing herself that her brain was using some extreme and horrifying metaphor to process something in her day today. After a long moment went by and he was still quiet, she asked. "Is all forgiven?"

"Yes"

"Good," she nudged him with her elbow, got him to smile at her.

            Byron’s smile hit her a little harder than she expected, it sort of took her breath away and made her eyes sting as if she’d just accidentally looked into the sun.

"What was your other encounter with men here?"

Elle couldn’t help the flinch when she was reminded of it, and then the shiver when she thought of how it ended.

"Oh, we’re already here!” Elle exclaimed awkwardly then rushed forward as the riverbed came into view. There were other ladies washing there and she sat hugging his shirts and studied them closely. "You go off do the manly hunting and gathering, I'll stay here master the domestic." She said still watching how the women moved clothes in and out of the water then the precise way they rung it dry. "Try to find some vegetables to go with the meat.” She reminded him. “They're good for you and you don't have to chase them down. They just sit and wait to be eaten."