The pushing of her tent flap—an innocuous motion so light it did not call for even my limited strength—is enough to seal my fate for the evening. I was resolute in my determination to ignore the pull on this evening, disgusted with the ugly need I had bared for my godmother’s amusement, and pleasure, night after night out in these dull plains.

When I heard the stirring of my fellow mercenary in arms, Maggie Haine, I had acted with the mechanical, automatic movements of a doll pulled up on strings. Jealousy held the control bar hovering high above—lording too high over me to ever be questioned—and I succumbed to that black temptation once more.

Maggie sneered when I planted my roughened hand against her chest and thrust her back into her own musty lodgings. She would not have the satisfaction of replacing me, nor would I be forced to endure a night of drowning out their performance with my feather pillow. It was too much, hearing my awful Auntie Tav making another woman moan, and so the first time it happened I knew I was forever bound to this song and dance. A sufficiently appropriate fate for a doll such as I, one could suppose.

“Mmgh… white hair? Sit your ass down then, knew you couldn’t help yourself.” Tavia Durenburg sits in the corner of her tent, lamplight illuminating her smugness and the leg of lamb she tears into with teeth as deadly as a dagger’s kiss. When she notices me faltering, making a vain and feeble attempt to conjure appropriate excuse for entering that doesn’t wound me with shame, my godmother snaps her fingers and points at the empty space in the centre of her dim tent. “Don’t tarry, girl, ain’t like you’re my only option for the night.”

The words are grapeshot, disfiguring my already battered pride. My heart flutters as the snap compels me into obedience more strongly than my sceptic Auntie Tav could ever understand. By the time my thoughts are once again my own, I find myself sitting in my assigned space. Not sitting, kneeling; gravity pulls my legs into their proper place and my back straightens into perfect posture. It should horrify me, to be manipulated by invisible strings—ones contorted by a drunken and unwitting master—but I’m ashamed to confess just how comforting it truly is. The lack of control, the redundancy of consequence, makes me feel like myself again for just a little while—not this stranger named Anarres.

Without waiting for command, or permission, I begin to undress myself for my godmother. The gambeson has four buckles, and I undo them in a race against my former record, competing with a phantom of the past only 24 hours old. I like to think I win, every time, but I’m not a very reliable timepiece. I’m just a fucking doll, or I’d like to be, but I’m only allowed to enter this head space when it’s in service of wetting Tavia’s selfish cunt. Oh well, I’m not allowed to be picky.

The woman grins at my initiative, tearing meat from bone and chewing like she’s alone. Another strange comfort in my ailing little head—the idea that Tavia is the only real person in this tent, that everything about to happen is just a pent up merc playing with her property. Her sex toy. Her fuckdoll.

“Very eager to please me, try not to show this much weakness outside of this tent okay? It’s endearingly pathetic, I’ll admit, but you’re family and I don’t raise weaklings.” Her words are pinpricks in my skin, duller than the ones I miss the sting of. Tavia’s contradictory admonishment is designed to keep me under thumb, remove my worth as a person, to make me nothing but her thing to mold and manipulate as the moment strikes her. In a way, it’s exactly what I crave, but the need does little to stave away the bitterness that her teasing always brings. She can push my buttons even better than The Princess ever could, because she sees me as more than a doll and decides to treat me as such regardless. I hate her for legitimising the name I was saved from years ago.

“No, you only fuck them.” I spit. Legs slide out of mercenary clothing that turns my reflection into a stranger, like a kid playing dress-up, and I return to my dutiful kneeling position despite my resentful utterance.

A hand lightly coated in grease—and tough as leather hide—reaches forward to grip my chin roughly, manipulating me like a misbehaving animal. “Play nice, dollgirl, I never forced you into my tent tonight now did I? You’re begging for this touch, this treatment, and as the only person who still loves you like you’re my own damn flesh and blood, I’ve a responsibility to give you what you need.” Swallowing, Tavia rubs her thumb across my cheek slowly and I feel myself soften against her helplessly. She’s just so strong, and always knows how to put me back in my place. I curse this humiliating, throbbing weakness inside me, for I love it too much to deny.

“Mm… Auntie…” I’m beginning to sink into that floaty head space that makes me easier than a bitch in heat. I want to protest some more, but only to fuel her fire. All I really want is to disappear for an hour, let the Doll out; poke me enough in the right places, and I’ll begin to forget that I’m… technically a person. I need her to fuck the soul out of me again.

“Look at you. A little rough around the edges, sure, but one of the prettiest young things I’ve ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes upon. Your lecherous godmother can’t help herself from being a little greedy, you understand?” Her confidence is a net, catching my breath before I can.

Nodding into her hand, more eagerly than I wish to for the sake of this chipped armour of pride I wear—as ill-fitting as the rest of my outfit—I shuffle closer on my knees and resolve to die against this coarse hand, large enough to eclipse my entire face. “I… I won’t tell.” Fuck, I’m falling under her spell so quickly, there’s typically more of a back and forth but I can feel my loins screaming at me. My entire body buzzes in approval of this depraved scene between a surrogate parent and her broken child. Her hand is dulling my consciousness, and her words are lighting a fire between my thighs.

“Good little fuckdoll.” Tavia gloats, as she is wont to do, and I melt a little more quickly into her heady miasma of mead and sweat—meat and sandalwood. Her musk is something I’ve unwittingly trained myself to obsess over, her animal magnetism compels me to undress not only my body, but my reason. The name she uses for me in private makes me clench my thighs together and daydream; I’m a drooling bitch of dreaming, floating to a fleeting Nirvana that will not let me stay the night. I am not immortal in these clear blue skies, I am nothing but a fuckdoll ready to be used. Pleading and worthless and addicted to the pleasure as much as I am the loathing.

_{“Thank you, Auntie…”}

“Speak up, Anarres, or I’ll begin to suspect you really are nothing but a doll, too weak and precious to lift your sword. Maybe I’d have to keep you in my chambers, in shackles if it’d leave a masochistic slut like you wet and ready at a moment’s breath.” Her hand cups my cheek and pushes a thumb into my mouth. I taste animal fat and my sight begins to fail me, blurring in an oblivion of submission. I’m blushing so hard, and overheating elsewhere, thanking gods I don’t believe in—or much respect—for my present nudity. Breathing has become a manual challenge, the room stuffier than my oft imagined burial; I craved the coffin, for a while, before I realised I didn’t deserve such easy outs. Dolls don’t put themselves back in the box, they have to wait for their owners to be done with them. I feel that I’ll be waiting until I’m naught but skin pitched to bones in the same manner this tent is propped up.

“I’m your Doll, Auntie.” I do not choke out these words through my usual veil of embarrassment, I speak with a nostalgic air of serenity that calms my heated little breaths into steadier rhythm.

Tavia Durenburg’s eyes widen, and her nostrils flare like a wild dog’s. She’s hooked on my relapse, having been the one to drag me kicking and screaming out of dollspace only to go flush at the sight of it returning just for her. I’m not fully there yet, only one foot in the dream, but if she continues to poke, to indulge in my lack of autonomy, I’ll bottom out into something utterly malleable in mere moments. Something endlessly cherishable in the eyes of a Princess, and endlessly fuckable in godmother’s glinting stare.

Strong arms reach under my own and hoist me up into the horny giant’s lap. I’m turned—roughly—until I find my back sinking into the furs covering her breasts. My hair splays over her shoulder like ivory blood. I’m sinking so deep into subspace that I can barely react at first when her strong hand takes hold of my breast. When I can react, all I do is whine like the prey I am, and sit there like a wet towel.

“Is this what you like, my Anarres? To be played with like you’re little more than an object in my possession? A tool for pleasure? Such weakness, but I won’t tell. Just be good for me, okay fuckdoll?” Her husky breath in my ear makes me feverish, sweating against her helplessly as I get lost in the shameful fantasy of my former dollhood.

“Y-yes Auntie… I’ll be good. Fuck…” My voice is breathless and wilting. I’m succumbing too quickly to keep up with, loving how it’s me in Tavia’s lap and not those other second-rate whores who can’t commit half as well to getting lost in this. I’m anything my godmother wants me to be, I’ll let her defile every inch of my body and mind for just another hit of dollspace; I’ll let her keep raping my pride until I’m well and truly spent, it’s the Báncourte Guarantee!

“Good. This is what you want, yeah?” Tavia raises my arm with the hand not presently groping me like she’s attempting to tenderise meat, lifting it above my head and bending it until I’m holding my mess of white hair. When she releases, I instinctively know to hold those pose if I’m to keep entertaining her. The byproduct of such an act is how deeply it pulls me under, making this one’s mind click into that of a poseable Doll.

The Doll smiles, phantom Princess standing by the tent’s exit compelling it to do so. A Doll’s smile is pristine and unfaltering, such an easy expression to hold while flooded with such pleasure. Anarres falls away like a mask.

“Yes, Godmother.” It replies candidly, body arching desperately into touch that makes it feel so special and loved and used.

“Good slut.” The woman snarls, her previously tit-obsessed hand snaking lower to push between the Doll’s thighs. Her other arm wraps around the younger property’s front, pulling herself closer and digging her face into the thing’s underarm—left wholly accessible by its current pose. “Mmgh… I can dress you up like a merc, even put a blade in your hand and teach you the ropes… but fuck, girl, your body is so erotic.” Auntie Tav drags her tongue across the hot slip of skin that Anarres still instinctively runs the razor on, insatiable tastebuds moving coarse over lightly stubbled skin. She gorges herself on her goddaughter’s heated body like a true glutton, pushing ringed fingers against the Doll’s moistening entrance and chuckling proudly. “Can Auntie go inside?”

Doll shudders, bucking against those fingers with a whimper of need it tried and failed to snuff. “Yes, Auntie Tav… I… this one would love to be of service.” The words feel so impossibly good to say, Doll losing itself completely now that it has committed vocally to its new position. Put in its place, shelved upon a slab of lean meat called Tavia.

Her question was simply a tease, those practised fingers working at the Doll’s wet lips while her thumb lifts higher to touch her plaything where it really matters. “If Yvette could see me now, I think I’d give your poor mother a heart attack ahahaha.” Auntie’s voice is so powerful, comforting, a pretty rock-face of a voice that shields Doll from self-reflecting. It can just be Hers. “What do you think, Anarres?”

“I’m just a Doll… your Doll, o-okay?” It does not want to be Anarres. It does not need the humanity right now. It needs to be warm and wet and willing, Auntie’s living hole. That way—only that way—it can incinerate the shame of its nightly visits to The Princess back at the keep.

“Right you are, fuckdoll.” Tavia’s lips reach the Doll’s ear, brush against it as her voice lowers to a whisper of cruel and seductive intent. “Bet your mother is turning in her grave right now, seeing what a weeping cunt for family her eldest daughter has. It’d ruin her, you know? Have you no shame, girl?” Her chuckle is a parasite entering its brain, turning Doll’s thoughts into a host for the most deplorable, white-hot lust it’s ever experienced in all its days of service. The thing drools from its lips to its chin to its chest, the build up of saliva eventually settling on her stomach in a reflective sheen of ejected shame.

“No, Godmother. It’s just a Doll… you’re its owner… so this is normal. Natural.” The weak thing opens its legs wider, pushing up against Auntie’s hand like a rutting beast. Everything feels so good right now, this is a Doll’s reward.

“I’m not your owner, slut. Gods, you’re such a nutcase… you were a bright young girl, once, I loved watching her grow. Now you’re just this, and you’re lucky for old fealties. You’re used goods, Anarres… Doll… fucktoy… you’re nothing special at all. You’re as ruined as women get before they’re hauled off to places you don’t wanna hear stories about.” Her words are so mean, but the Doll feels endlessly grateful in hearing them. The words are more comforting than Auntie Tav could know, because they rob Doll of Anarres—at least until the woman sobers up and clears her head of darkly arousal. She never apologises, but she acts fond again, and that’s just as disappointing.

“It’s worthless… nothing… so lucky to even be used.” The Doll nods with a drooling smile, fucking its superior’s hand like that’s the only way to keep its heart beating.

“That’s right, pretty.” Tavia’s fingers ram into Doll’s cunt like a siege engine breaking through fortified gates, filling and stretching it with just enough lubrication to keep the Doll from waking the entire corps. The woman pulls Doll’s head back by its hair and exposes its neck—a new battleground—leaning close to leave painful suckling kisses across the subordinate mercenary Doll’s sensitive skin. “Mmh… you’re such a fucking pain to look after, truth be told, all of you are. So this is the least you can do for your Auntie Tav.”

“Anything… it’ll do anything for Godmother, be anything. Please don’t wake it up again…” The Doll squeezes itself around Tavia’s fingers and attempts to make itself as docile and pliant as possible for the woman, exposing its neck further with a needy tilt that has shame exhaling from its well trained lips.

“You don’t make requests of me, you ungrateful shit. You’d be an orphan if it weren’t for my warmth, I get to decide how best to keep you now don’t I? We need Anarres to front, this doll crap is amusing but if I’m seen entertaining it full time it’ll be my sanity questioned next. Besides… those scornful eyes you look at me with, that bitterness you try your best to save just for me… it really gets me going, girl. You try so hard to hate me, and come the end of the night you’re sneaking into my chambers and begging me to make you mine. It’s currently my favourite thing, turns me on like nothing else. Everyone else feels like a cheap fuck by comparison, not that I’ve got to earn it with you either. It’s just… more depraved, how completely gone you are after acting so tough.”

It’s just a stupid Doll. Auntie’s fucktoy… its pride gets stuck on the way in, torn off as quickly as that gambeson it made short work of. Doll loves being reprimanded, degraded, talked down to until it feels small enough to sit snug in the other woman’s palm. It obsesses over this at dinner, idly pushing around potatoes with its fork while assuming false personage to blend in. It daydreams about her husky voice in its ear, her cloying musk, her cruel kindness. Princess can no longer command it, and there’s no more tincture, so the only comfort in nothing is with the woman it can goad into making it such.

Anarres is nothing; I am nothing.

Doll is nothing; it is nothing.

All is nothing; and nothing is everything.

And so we dream, searching Nirvana for a nothing that can stick.

As Doll is pushed against the tent floor, Auntie’s body smothering it in touch that feels so good it hurts, a dream begins to manifest. A hand spans the entire right side of Doll’s head, grinding it down against the ground while the woman bites and grinds and gloats.

Doll’s right eye scrunches shut, and so opens its left—a lying left eye, which only shows it dreams. It pierces the flapping tent door and takes Anarres outside to play make believe with its favourite dreamtoy.

“You really know how to keep a girl waiting, hmph… I’m still your better you know? Our living arrangements may have changed but I’m possessed of royal blood, touched by the magic of whales… the bishop told me that once, before I had him killed for a sermon designed to make my eyes shut!” Princess giggles and grabs onto my arm, hooking into me like the needy charge she is despite her words.

This dream is whalesong—a what-if I torment myself with often. Right now, though, why not indulge? Who says the life I’m left with isn’t just a nightmare, right, so what’s the harm in entertaining a dream?

“You really need to be careful what you say out here, around these shitheads. Okay, love?” I hold her cheek and tilt up that pretty, pouting face of hers. She’s such a nuisance sometimes. Often times.

“Then choose a name for me already, it can’t be that hard can it Dolly? I mean, Ana.” The white haired femme groans and timidly laces her fingers into mine. Sometimes I’m not sure how to receive affection from my former tormentor, abuser, but then I reconcile with the fact that we both became something new in that blueness. Our hair says as much, shows the difference in our beings.

“You’re such a brat.” My roughened fingers enjoy her well-kept softness, and with my other set of five I mess up her hair—just a little. “Need your mama to name you, is that it?”

Princess turns a red so dark I worry for her circulation, resting her head in my neck to hide it. “Mm… what’s a name against this face, hm?” She’s still rather shy, has been since she woke up. We’re working on it, but paranoia’s a tough nut to crack.

“Yeah… blasphemous to put into words.” We’re not exactly the god-fearing type, though, and we both know it. We look as sisters, and if I’ve any agency left I’ll make damn sure we live like fucking pigs.

“Ana, you never finish naming me before your godmother finishes using you.” Speaks The Princess with a knowing, mischievous smile that she shows me by lifting her head from its hiding place.

“I know, I know.” I can feel myself clenching up, every muscle in my body twitching in delight as the woman pounds me into a puddle on the tent floor with her wooden implement. Striking me until red handprints make a pretty, pathetic picture of a Doll well used. Beaten and adored, for it really can endure so much.

“Maybe next time?” Princess tilts her head, and I find myself wanting to lean in and kiss her. I don’t, because I haven’t gotten permission. Deep in dreams, half awake, I experience the softness of my forbidden lover and the roughness of my current keeper. They coalesce into a completion of nothingness.

“Yeah. Next time.”