Emily boarded the train at 14th. By the third stop she was beginning to sweat. She'd already bagged her hat - a black cloche cap - while waiting on the platform. She was more reluctant to lose her scarf - not just because it covered the heavy collar locked around her neck but also she hoped it might prove a last line of resistance against recognition if she happened to run into someone she knew. Someone who might ask where she was going with her full makeup and heels. She would be passing through the university district, after all, and Emily was something of a socialite. That was until maybe two weeks ago - life had become more complicated since then.

She'd changed at the 9th - the only change. She'd heroically kept the scarf in place but by the time she boarded the second train it was gone. She faced the blackened window, trying not to look down, avoiding the eyes of her fellow travellers in the reflection. Then she heard something that made her heart sink: signalling error. At once the train halted and the almost cool breeze from the interlinking doors had ceased. The announcement optimistically said five minutes - the tension made her forehead prickle.

Her overcoat was a little much for mid-March - now coming on April it was starting to draw unwarranted attention, although the lingering rain storms gave some flimsy pretext to the excessive cover. It wasn't that she didn't have options; a mid-length dress with a jacket was the spring transitional outfit she'd been assigned before summer with sun dresses and low-cut tops. The thought made Emily faint - better to sweat for now.

Still, she unbuttoned her coat as far as she dared, and tried to expose enough of her thigh above the stockings before it started to look too much like an invitation. The train started again, and despite her mounting discomfort she drew the scarf back around her chin and made for Stephanie's flat.

Within five minutes she was at her friend's door. For a few moment's she dared not knock - she knew Stephanie had boyfriends, and acquaintances Emily was currently extremely anxious to avoid, but Emily's trust had few safe harbours, and she couldn't waste time. Not any more.

But as she waited, trying to gather the right words, the door opened, and Stephanie appeared. Emily was so relieved she abandoned caution and hugged her.

Trying to sound casual, she opened: "Hi Stephanie - sorry I've been off the radar. Assignments have been hell. I don't know if you got my text but I was hoping to chat."

There was a pause that made Emily's heart freeze once again, but this was only momentary as Stephanie broke a smile and the faintest hint of an eye roll, and ushered the girl inside.

"You know Emily I was just thinking of you, too. Come on, I've got tea and a movie if you've time" - Stephanie reeled off some passing details about the evening she'd had. But once the door was closed she stopped and tuned to the girl who now stood, blushing, at the threshold. Locking eyes with Emily her tone adopted a hint of something more stern, and she completed her thought: "but you know Emily, I think it's time you were honest about why you're here." Emily's eyes widened, her instinctive pout now fully pronounced.

They stood like that for a heavy few moments, then suddenly, and for the first time that evening, Emily smiled. Her hands dropped to the belt of her coat that she hastily unbuckled, and began hurriedly fumbling with the buttons. As she did so, Stephanie came over and pulled at one end of her scarf, letting it fall away from her bare neck and the collar it concealed. She slowed, unfastening the last few buttons and sloughing off the heavy garment with evident relief.

Letting it fall to the floor she looked up once again, as if beseeching her friend for approval. Stephanie took it in from the ground up - the cute patent heels, the stockings, the cage that held her struggling dick tightly confined. Her pierced belly button and nipples puckering in the sudden cold of the hallway. The collar, locked in place for the two weeks since the last time she'd cum. Then her face, the permanent pout, and open guileless eyes.

Those eyes met hers again, and held an expression of quiet longing. This time Stephanie did not indulge her, but broke off suddenly and walked past her down the corridor. Emily turned her eyes to the floor, suddenly aware of the trouble she was in, and the prospect that even with Stephanie she might not be able to expect the mercy she'd previously assumed was a given. She heard her coat being lifted off the floor and taken to a nearby cupboard, heard the sound of a key being turned and removed to somewhere secret. Then she felt a hand on her wrist guiding her up the stairs towards her friend's room.

***

Lit by the glow of a desk lamp and the glow of her computer screen the room felt dark and cosy, and Emily was able to relax, just a little. She lay down in the position she had found most comfortable since she had been locked into her pink plastic prison two weeks prior; reclining on her side, her upper body propped up on a pile of cushions - one leg drawn up beneath her, the other stretched out towards the end of the bed. Stephanie dressed still in the blouse and skirt she'd worn to class that day seemed content to sit cross legged on her office chair, eyeing her friend with firm consideration.

Emily was nervous again. She tried to focus on the pervasive softness of her environment - the sound of a bath filling in the room down the hall, the tea she held steady with one hand, the mutual compassion she had enjoyed from her friend those last few months. Everything that might make what she came here to ask seem less daunting. But her thoughts were cut off as Stephanie pre-empted the question.

"You cut a deal with Queen Anya - you knew what this would mean"

If she had the kind of introspection she'd known only a few weeks earlier, she may well have challenged this statement. A lot about her relationship to Queen Anya was not clear. There were a handful of semi-certain things about their association. Anya was from the theatre society, at some point Stephanie had introduced Emily to her - very likely at some kind of summer function given the weather. Anya was also the girlfriend (she was sure) of a boy she'd had her eye on all term, but that at some point they'd arranged a date for mid-April after he returned from Europe. Emily wasn't clear on how that had happened.

It wasn't that it didn't make sense, exactly. Rather, everything about the arrangement, with Anya, with the boy, with the handful of friends she spoke to about these things, seemed to be happening on a different plane of existence. She attended classes still, and socialised where she could - these were familiar experiences that she understood. Beyond that, in her private moments - that seemed to be ever blurring with her conversations with Stephanie and others - her life was governed by a series of compulsions. 

She never fully closed her mouth, she made herself up to go out for the most mundane things, and every time applied rouge and eye shadow and more blusher than she really thought wise. She expressed her thoughts and emotions with a kind of knee-jerk honesty that kept her mind - like her body - in a state of constant near nakedness.

And she did what she was told. That was the strangest thing. She picked from a series of outfits, letting her modesty navigate the ever more impractical recommendations she received from her friends. Those friends included Stephanie, of course, and also Kirsten from the archery society, her classmate Veronika, and Queen Anya. And while they all had their suggestions, Queen Anya's always seemed to hold the most weight.

Naturally Anya had insisted on the clothing rule, and the chastity device to be certain. Emily remembered that instruction clearly. It had been at a party about two weeks ago. She wasn't sure of the room exactly except that it was warm and dark - very likely the rehearsal rooms for the theatre society after hours. Of course, Anya had been wearing her outfit from the production - a gleaming regal thing that even in the dark seemed to glow with an internal brilliance. The others were there - Veronika, Stephanie and Kirsten. They were less ostentatious in their black body stockings, but their faces were visible. Rehearsal was long over but they had stuck around and opened a bottle of wine - a very sweet one. Emily had cautioned against staying but Anya had assured her, in her sweet, clear, well-trained leading girl voice that it was fine. She had the key after all.

A light had come on somewhere, and had glinted off the key – held out, now, towards her. Queen Anya - standing behind the proffered object - seemed to blur out of focus. The other girls appeared to dissolve into the shadows but Emily was sure they were there because she was being held down. She felt the warmth of their hands on her body - her thighs and shoulders and waist - her skin. But they applied only the smallest force - they needed little more; Emily was paralysed. Paralysed but unconcerned; because in that moment Anya had been the queen. Unlike everything else in that moment, that was hard to ignore. Not some character on a stage, or figure on a chess board. But an aetherial, majestic presence who seemed to know every secret and possess power over life and death. Someone whose boundless benevolence could easily accommodate a crush on some Arts major - as long as certain conditions were met.

***

But now it was two weeks later, and the tone had changed somewhat.

"I just don't think I can do it. I've been working up the strength for three days but it's"

At this Emily paused, struggling to come up with the word...

"It's embarrassing and..."

"And?"

"I wondered if you could help me. I can make the appointment, I can sit through getting lasered - that's normal.

"Yes, and you'll need to be shaved first, don't forget"

"I mean, it's a lot, and maybe more extreme than most of their clients. But they'd have to unlock me first and to do that I'd have to explain everything. And - you know - it's been two weeks, what if I..."

Stephanie smirked at the implication - she knew this was a distinct possibility. If not a certainty. But she didn't have time to tease just now, so instead she pressed; "If they don't already know you’re locked, how do they have a copy of the key?"

"Anya sent it to the clinic in a letter addressed to me, I have to tell them when I come in and..."

"I see - well how do you think I can help?"

Until that instant Emily's explanation had come in a flurried stream of consciousness, undeterred by Stephanie's gentle barbs. But faced with an actual question, Emily froze.

The date was two weeks away and Emily had been landed with a laundry list of things to do. Some were easy enough - the haircut and styling appointments for example. She'd need to explain that the collar needed to stay and a coat was out of the question so whatever she wore wouldn't cover much. But others - a trip to the beauty spa, and a full lower body laser treatment - presented a number of practical challenges.

And while Emily ruminated over her staggering lack of options, the thought of disobeying Queen Anya, maybe trying her chances with the boy herself without some demigoddess matchmaker's involvement; that was definitely not among them. And neither was opting out.

So this was how Emily found herself, naked, caged and nervous, at eleven PM the night before her booking, about to ask her friend to find some way of removing her cage.

"Well, I don't know - suppose you could get hold of the key. You could go to the clinic with me and pick it up and then find me somewhere. It'll be as if nothing happened."

"I don't think that's really necessary"

"Because... wait I don't understand – why?"

"Because I already have a key"

At any other time Emily's dumbfounded, whole upper body registering of surprise would have drawn a laugh from Stephanie, but tonight her expression remained resolute.

"That's not the point. I can't do anything - do you not remember what Anya said?"

Emily sipped her tea and looked down for a moment. She remembered very well what Anya had said. The words echoed in her mind with the same preternatural clarity they'd held when spoken for the first time. The chastity is functional but it's also symbolic - if you're to take the date then you must be everything I would expect you to be. And that means sweet and polite - and that means chaste. Everything else you need to do to prepare yourself can be accomplished in the week or so leading up but some things, the beauty regimen, the outfit compliance, and especially the chastity; that has to start now and continue with only the briefest interruptions until it's time.

Emily remembered, Emily understood. And Emily did what she was told. And that usually worked. Although it seemed that "doing what she was told" left some unexpected leeway, and a sometimes cunning mind like Emily's was, it turned out, able to attempt some minor manipulations of its own. Very minor ones. Even so, her next pivot shouldn't have been possible, and Stephanie knew it.

"But do you do everything Anya says?"

The implication was clear, to Stephanie if not to Emily. The idea that some version of the mental control Anya currently exerted over Emily could extend to herself made Stephanie rankle. But unlike her companion, her emotions, like her body, were ones she was still capable of holding in check. And besides, there were more practical concerns. Letting the idea settle even for a second was a challenge to her implicit authority that threatened to undo everything. So when Stephanie turned on her friend it was with a restrained severity that made Emily gasp.

"Emily, you're staying caged. And that's not on my authority or on Anya's. This is what you chose and that includes declining an opt-out clause. Now just because you don't want some clinician - a professional who deals with girls just like you every day - to think you're a slut or an exhibitionist then that's on you."

Emily held her friend's gaze for a moment - the longest she could bear - before looking down, her eyes prickling with tears. Stephanie let silence hold sway for a minute before deciding that was enough. Emily felt a gentle hand on her chin, and looked up. Her friend's expression had shifted to a reassuring smile.

"We'll figure something out - this has to work after all, and it's better you came to me rather than try something silly."

When her tears finally began to fall, it was relief rather than shame that loosened them, and she managed a small smile. In that moment her fears were subsumed by something else - a kind of indescribable warmth. The mixture of adoration and exquisite vulnerability she'd felt in the company of Anya and the other girls around her. It was what had made those hours at the auditorium after dark feel like a dream - and it was what had guided her to accept the terms Queen Anya and her consorts had set.

She had not seen Anya herself since that night, but being among her companions - the three girls in the entire cosmos besides Anya and herself who knew her secret - she felt reflections of it again and again. Building on her steady resolve and softening the embarrassment that lapped at the back of her mind like the swell of a dark sea. 

Stephanie wiped her friend’s cheek and the two embraced.

"Now, I've run you a bath. You can pick up a fresh towel from the closet and finish your tea in there. You can sleep here tonight."

As Emily all but skipped down the corridor to the bathroom, Stephanie quietly pushed the door closed behind her, and after a second's consideration turned the lock. Sitting down and swivelling to face the screen she closed the paused video she'd been watching and pulled the sticker off the red LED of the webcam that sat on a shelf above her desk.

Anya's voice sounded before her face appeared out of the darkness of the screen - that perfect, leading girl intonation; "that was well handled."

Inwardly, Stephanie felt a guilty stirring of relief that was all her own.