Cut Flowers

The house began to change and the Dissonance began to notice.

Wren hummed. She hummed while she moved through the rooms, while she knelt, while she sat on the bed with the notebook. The humming was not loud, was not performance, was the sound a person makes when they have forgotten anyone is listening. It was in tune with the house. Largo began to harmonise with her, matching her phrases. Pip trilled when she entered the hallway. The Dissonance heard this and told herself it was physics, a tuning fork near a string, and the firmness was load-bearing.

Wren brought in more flowers. Purple from the courtyard, something white and starry from a crack in the back step. The house kept them all blooming past their season, and the keeping was the house choosing, was the instrument doing something the musician had not scored.

On the sixth morning the Dissonance found herself in Wren's room without remembering deciding to go there. Wren was on the bed with the notebook and the humming stopped when she saw her and the stopping was a small silence and the Dissonance felt the absence in her chest, which was not where she should have felt it.

The window sticks, Wren said. In the afternoons.

The Dissonance fixed it with a note. The wood relaxed. October air came through and Wren made a sound, small, unguarded, the sound of a person who was warm and was now less warm and was glad. The Dissonance left quickly. She did not like the sound. She did not like what it did to the wrong note in her chest.

She caught herself arranging things on the seventh day. A blanket moved from the linen closet to the foot of Wren's bed, because October was cold and the resonant was thin and did not ask. She moved the blanket and stood there and the revulsion came back. She was the woman who broke things putting blankets on beds. She took the blanket off. She put it back in the closet. She went downstairs. She came back upstairs. She put the blanket on the bed again. The crack in her sound widened.

That afternoon she left Wren with a gift.

A stone. Small, smooth, dark, humming with a low sustained note the Dissonance had shaped herself. She put it in Wren's hand and the stone pulsed once against her palm and the pulse traveled her arm and her chest and sat between her legs and Wren's breath caught.

Inside, the Dissonance said.

Wren lay on the bed and her hand went between her legs and the stone was smooth and warm and the hum intensified as it slid inside her, settling deep. The Dissonance could feel it. Through the bond, through the collar. She could feel the stone inside Wren the way she could feel her own hands, an extension of her will, and the feeling was control from across the house.

Kneel, the Dissonance said, and left.

Wren knelt on the third-floor floor with the stone inside her and the collar on her throat and the clamps still on her nipples from the morning. The stone was silent and the silence was worse than the hum because the silence was waiting.

The stone pulsed. One pulse. Low. The vibration went through the inner walls and sat in the swollen place that was already tender from the collar and the pulse was a match to dry tinder. Wren gasped and her thighs clenched and the clenching made the stone shift and the shifting made the hum resonate differently, a higher note that sat in the nerve endings and did not leave.

Silence. The stone went quiet. Wren knelt. She was wet, the slick running between her thighs, and the stone sat inside her, present, heavy, silent. The silence was the not-resolving. She wanted to move. She wanted to rock her hips, to find the friction. She did not move. She had not been told she could move.

The stone pulsed again. Longer. Three seconds. The vibration built and Wren's hips bucked and the bucking was involuntary and the clamps pulled on her nipples and the pulling was ache and the ache and the vibration and the collar all met between her legs and the meeting was building toward something and the something was not hers to have.

The stone went silent. A full minute. Wren knelt and shook and the clamps hummed on her nipples and the collar hummed on her throat and she was swollen and wet and the stone sat inside her, silent, heavy. The silence was the answer. No. Not yet.

Please, Wren said. To the empty room. To the woman downstairs who could hear her through the collar.

The door opened. The Dissonance. Wren looked up and the grey eyes found her on the floor, shaking, wet, desperate. The assessment ran and the lip moved, the ghost of a smile, and the ghost was cruelty.

The Dissonance carried rope. Not sound-bonds. Rope. Silk, dark, humming faintly with resonance. She crossed the room and her hands went to Wren's wrists and the rope wound around them, slow, deliberate, each wrap a note, each knot a rest. The binding was ritualistic, was the slowest thing the Dissonance had done, and the slowness was a tenderness she would not name. The rope hummed against Wren's skin, adding its own frequency to the collar and the stone.

The Dissonance bound her wrists above her head, tied the rope to the bedframe. More rope around the thighs, pulling them apart, and the pulling exposed her, the wetness visible, the stone inside her visible, and the exposure was the being-seen.

She knelt between Wren's legs. Looked. The looking was the listening concentrated into two grey eyes, and the wrong note was in the air between them, finding the wetness, the swelling, the need.

The Dissonance's mouth went to Wren's inner thigh. Kissed. Bit. The bite was a note and the note traveled inward. Her mouth moved higher, to the wetness, and her tongue found the stone inside and traced around it. The vibration of the stone and the vibration of the tongue were the same frequency and Wren's back arched and the bonds held her.

The Dissonance's fingers joined her tongue. Two fingers pressing inside, beside the stone, and the double fullness was a sound Wren had never made before, a high keen that broke in the air. Two pressures inside her, the fingers and the stone, and the combination was overwhelming, every note sounding at once. The Dissonance fucked her slowly with her hand, the fingers moving against the stone, the stone shifting with each stroke, and the shifting was a different angle each time, a different frequency. Wren's body did not know which to follow and the not-knowing was the freedom, was the not-overthinking made physical.

The rhythm built. The Dissonance's hand went to the clamps and pulled, all at once, and the ache was a bright line from nipples to the place where the tongue was working and the line met the fingers and the stone. Wren broke. The orgasm moved through her in waves, her body clenching around the fingers and the stone, and the Dissonance felt it and the sound she made was low, guttural, a sound Wren had not heard from her before, a sound that had nothing of precision in it.

The Dissonance did not withdraw. Her mouth kept working, slower, drawing the orgasm out, and the warmth of the Dissonance's breath and the wetness of the Dissonance's mouth and the stone inside her and the clamps on her nipples and the rope on her wrists all sat together and the sitting-together was the being-held.

The Dissonance moved up Wren's body. Lay beside her. Her hand went to Wren's stomach, the flat of the palm, warm, and the warmth was the care. Wren's bound hands pulled against the rope and the rope held and the holding was the cage and the cage was the freedom.

The stone hummed. Low. Keeping her on the edge. Not letting her come down. The Dissonance's hand on her stomach and the stone inside her and the rope on her wrists and the clamps on her nipples and Wren was held, was full, was the instrument resting but not silent, humming, waiting for the next movement.

You are different, the Dissonance said.

You made me different.

I did not make you this. This is not what I made.

No. This is what I am when the noise stops.

The Dissonance looked at her and the thing behind her grey eyes was fear. Not of Wren. Of herself. The fear of a woman who had built something she could not unmake.

On the eighth morning Wren did not kneel when told.

She stood. Hands at her sides. Collar humming. She looked at the Dissonance and did not kneel. The Dissonance went still, the dangerous patience, and the room went quiet.

Kneel, the Dissonance said again.

No, Wren said.

The real word. The contract word. The Dissonance read it and the no was real. She did not push. Wren was not flinching and was not shrinking and was standing with her chin up and her real voice in her throat.

Sit, then, the Dissonance said. A concession so small it was barely a breath. Wren sat. Legs crossed. Hands in her lap. A different shape. A shape she had chosen.

The Dissonance knelt in front of her.

The room changed. The instruments went quiet, all of them, because the Dissonance was on her knees in front of the resonant and the house did not know what to do with that. The Dissonance on her knees was a wrong note in the wrong place and the wrongness was terrifying because it meant something had shifted and neither of them had scored it.

She touched Wren's face. Not the jaw, not the grip. Fingertips on Wren's cheek, light, careful. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to Wren's forehead.

The kiss was not sexual. Was not cruelty. Was not testing or mapping. It was a thing the Dissonance did not have a category for, and Wren felt it in the place where the wanting pooled, except the feeling was not wanting, was warmer, was the thing she had no name for.

The Dissonance pulled back. Her grey eyes were close and the crack was wider and Wren could see the moment the Dissonance understood she was falling and the understanding was the most frightening thing Wren had ever seen on a human face.

She stood. She left the room. Wren sat on the floor with the stone still inside her, humming low, and put her hand on her forehead where the lips had been. Largo began to play, low and mournful. The flowers on the table had three blooms. The stones on the sill hummed.

That night the Dissonance came to the bed and Wren was awake and the Dissonance lay down and Wren put her hand on the Dissonance's shoulder and the Dissonance did not move away. They lay in the dark and the stone hummed low inside Wren, a lullaby now, not a torment, and the Dissonance's wrong note was quiet, almost gentle.

Wren did not sleep. She lay with her hand on the shoulder of the most dangerous woman in the city and felt the fearlessness settling into her bones, and the settling was hers, was the thing she was building from the silence and the ache and the want and the new unnamed thing.

The Dissonance breathed against her in the dark and Wren held her shoulder and did not let go.