Thread: Paradise Isle  (Fades & Good Girls)

It would be difficult to overstate the allure of paradise. From the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder to those few who controlled the wealth of a vast percentage of the world in nothing more than their two hands, everyone sought the same basic needs. Comfort, happiness, to see their personal desires and drives fulfilled. The idea of having all the time in one's life to dedicate to their own pursuits, without need worry of income, of an accident in the road causing metaphorical and literal traffic jams, of being beholden to the pressures of a world that put everyone into a neat little box, that was worth an amount of money that no laundry list of zeroes at the end could hope to pay for. If there were four women here today who had given into that allure, the idea that each of them sought the same paradise was a mad one. The press could and would say what they liked about the charitable givings, the ease of simply shuttling off to a private island away from cameras and expectations, but they could never truly capture what paradise was for the women who gave everything to reach it today. Emilia -- she who had once been Emilia Clarke, she who was now and always simply Emilia, unless the owner of her body, mind, and heart found it pleased him to have her answer to another call, as stipulated in so many formal words among their peers on the contract which bore her signature -- didn't find paradise in her pain. She didn't find it in the promised garden, nor did she find it in the merest touch of comfort or the searing promise of pain that his touch could bring to her. But when her brilliant blue eyes fluttered closed at the glide of his warmth across her naked back, both highlighting the glitter of tears on her lashes and cheeks as well as sealing away any illusion that she was truly bereft in her choice, she found paradise in his breath in her ear and his hand on her skin. This is the first time I've been the real me, she whispered back to him, her words and voice as tight in practice as her throat felt in action. A woman without expectation, of career, of family, of society. He would expect much of her, she had no doubt, but equally doubtless in her mind was that his expectations were going to be her purpose. They were going to be who she was, the real her. She had dipped her toes in, circled the idea, twisted around the considerations, flirted with the apps, read the books. She had teased out, bit by bit, month by month, who she was. Fierce wasn't the word she herself might have chosen, though she smiled and understood how he meant it to distract her from the agony on her flesh. It looked fierce she was sure, though she hadn't the mind to currently gawk at her own tit and how it, and the rest of her, belonged to him now. Paradise was submission. It was the garden in which she grew. And now, after as much water and sunlight as she could have thought to give the truth of her submissive nature, she had finally been given the fertilizer in which to allow it true bloom. Few got to answer their calling, should they have even realized it, but going through a trial of iron and fire proved to Emilia beyond the shadow of a doubt that she had made the correct choice. Even if .. Even if there may have been a few thorns in the garden, so to speak. Oh, if it were a problem , then as she had said there was absolutely nothing to stop her from walking off the stage and out the fire exit even before she had ascended the stage in the first place. Thorns, after all, had their place in any and every garden, and it was not the other flowers that needed to be wary of their cut. Which honestly made the entire analogy a bit dodgy, but well, she couldn't much interrupt the number of camera clicks going off or Jeffrey's lovely reiteration of purpose by asking if anyone had another set of similes that might have been more like what she was after regarding the understanding that she was not to be the sole bonsai in his care. She'd known there would be others from the very beginning, and she was determined to be alright with that. There was after all still quite the chance that her pain might well have shaken another of them to her core such that her feet were too cold to trot out in front of the press today. But being alone in his gaze, his embrace, his lone recipient of such bolstering words whispered with warmth and masculinity that dripped so perfectly down her spine made her realize all the more starkly just how wonderful it would have been if this was the end of the day. And it wasn't. And she would keep her eyes from turning green, god help her. If his paradise involved more than her, it was not then nor now her place to question that. She would -- she would simply live hers to its fullest. And be his most favored for it. Yes. Emilia smiled most warmly, having at the very least contained her pain, and remained in the poised posing for the press as though no force on Heaven or Earth might have made her balance sway or falter. But as a wise woman once said thank u, next . If Emilia had walked to the stage like she was ready to accept an award, gracious and understanding of both the attention and the prestige and the lunacy of what was to be expected of her, Ariana strode from beyond the dark edge of the curtain as though each and every one of them had arrived there to see her and her alone. Not out of any misplaced sense of arrogance or pride, nor even with the same wistful hope of being the one in the way her soon to be sister-in-servitude might have gently desired, but with the confident presence of a girl who had known how to keep a crowd on the palm of her hand for over a decade despite barely having even spent more than two on this Earth. After all, a certain brunette spent most of her time in front of cameras, going through wardrobe, talking through downtime with her co-stars, and not hearing the raves or the jeers until months after her filming was finished and pre-production finally gave way to premiering. Miss Grande had been doing it live for years. She took time, if not more than a few seconds that she could stretch to feel like they had lingered for a few more, to hit the corner of the stage and give both herself and her appearance to the waiting press and cameras that had been anticipating her. It hadn't been practiced, because none of them had truly been able to practice in front of the crowd they were going to be performing in front of, and yet she was quick to give them any number of ready-made images to use for their sites and their stories without needing to comb through a reel of frames that might as well have been footage. Brilliantly standing out beneath the lights in nearly head to toe white, it might have been easy to forget for a second just how bite-sized she actually was given that her co-star on the stage was scarcely but a pair of inches taller than herself. But then, she was on her knees, and Ariana was on heeled boots that more than made up the difference. Kissed in lace from the flare of her blazer, and equally kissed in lace of her hair both teased out and twisted up, Ariana Grande was homage and original at once, somehow all the more appropriate for coming to the stage second. She started as far from the podium as she possibly could, and when she spoke to those in the audience, there were those she responded to with words that could only be heard by those nearest to her. Yet she even recognized a few, her memory sharper than her bubbly appearance sometimes lead people to expect, and was able to greet them by name. And if they really wanted a photo op? The leather at her knee creaked only the tiniest bit when she went down on one, artfully showing the skin of her thigh without letting any one camera go beyond time for that enough soon and threw her arms around Emilia's shoulders to give her a big sideways hug and a peck on her earlobe. Oh my god I don't know if you made me more nervous or more excited or more horny, she hissed into Emilia's ear with girlish pitch, the words practically all coming out in one breath, and never to be known by anyone but the two of them. She had been very careful to not even so much as hint at brushing her sleeve anywhere near her brand. Emilia caught her grinning teeth in the corner of her eye even before she fully turned her chin to give her a smile and pat her elbow encouragingly before she returned to her pose and Ariana gracefully returned to her feet. Alright. Paradise didn't need to be all that lonesome. She lifted her eyebrows slyly at the younger woman, and then gave them a singular, saucy little wiggle. They were in this together it seemed, because she had most certainly not been scared off by her own crying and carrying on over the most searingly pointed moment of this introduction, and knowing that didn't resign Emilia to her realizations so much as it helped her cement her decision that even if she would like to be a favorite, there might not be such a thing as the favorite. And none of them would be here if they weren't deserving, right? Ariana's lace tickled between Emilia's shoulderblades as she moved past her, which got a little shiver out of the brunette and an amused titter from the few who were focused on her rather than the picolla songbird who continued her sweep of the front of the stage all the way up to the podium. It took her less than thirty seconds, even including time to hug and thank and commiserate with Emilia, to go from the curtains to smiling at Jeffrey with eyes as clear as Emilia's had been, even if her lips were far more made up with glittery pink gloss and the sparkles in her eyelashes were placed there artfully rather than by the onset of agonized tears. She plucked a handheld microphone off of the podium, flicking the switch up with her thumb and letting her little finger ever so briefly caress up the underside of the flared head of it while being a very good girl and maintaining eye contact in the process. She spun on her heel with such neat quickness that had she been about a foot taller, her ponytail might have even slapped him playfully in the face rather than briskly brushed the other side of the podium, as how dare he think an improper thought about what she could do with her little hands. Oh yeah, he's ready for me to take it off too, she said into the microphone, the warm silk of her voice both hitting every part of the room and seeming as though she was only talking to herself without any concern for the he in question, much less the audience, overhearing her. She got at least enough of a laugh that, well, mission accomplished, and it fed all the way into her beaming, confident, tight-lipped smile when she took center stage and held the microphone at her core in both hands, her matchingly-glossy pink nails standing out against the mic. She waited patiently, even if it wasn't clear what she was waiting for. Because again, she knew a live crowd. And by doing nothing but waiting , even for just thirty-one seconds, it was going to seem like an eternity compared to her entrance to the stage and Emilia's eased introduction. People were going to start squirming in their seats. They were going to think that she was, in fact, too nervous to actually begin talking now that she was face to face with the choice she'd made. They might have even started asking questions. But more importantly, they were going to sear those thirty-one seconds into their memory as surely as if they'd all gotten kissed by iron, so that her taking to a stage for the final time wouldn't be entirely forgotten by everything that was going to come after. What a diva , a huff huffed. Well if that isn't the pot, the murmur murmured. I'm not mad . Just taking notes , the response responded.