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Finding my path's avatar

"not forcing them apart but willing them to open like the petals of a blooming flower"

Your slow pace is excruciatingly pleasant!

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John A. Brown's avatar

Though the objectively satanic is only peripherally present in this episode (the twilight, the ruined chapel as ritual space visible through the window), I see this piece as necessary to Mary's initiatory process as she takes her place in Isabella's congregation. It's a richly appointed setting, and sex is in the air. Isabella is dressed to seduce Mary (complete with the lingerie--though I need to give you a continuity note here in re the stocking, Simone; you mention the setting is a 1920s English village, but specify in the story that she's wearing nylons. DuPont didn't develop nylon as a synthetic fiber until the 1930s--I'd go for silk--I always put Victoria in silk, even when she's at the office!), and Mary does a pretty good job of knocking organized religion, the corrupt clergy (and rightly so), and how she feels stifled and shackled by hypocrisy and her stuffed shirt of a husband. As usual with your heroines, the sapphic interlude as you've written it here is romantic, intimate, sensual, and pulsing with emotional intensity and turbulence. Two women--clearly a Master and Apprentice--the former taking the latter to levels of sensation and experience she never thought possible (though crucially, she's reminded of her experiences with the Dark Lord a week prior--and that by design), and Mary clearly (I certainly hope) has been disabused of entering the dead-end career path of the convent (unless it's some sort of inverse, ritualized, Dark Magic sisterhood dedicated to the triumph of darkness or something fun and sinister like that!), and I think that Isabella is one Hell (pun intended) recruiter for this Ladies Club she's got going. The coffee hours after their weekly services must be wild affairs indeed, to say nothing of the goings-on at the Christmas Bazaars!!! I support it!

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