Collared
Your train of thought is brought to a sudden, sharp halt when you feel a gentle weight around your neck, you lift your paw to feel of it, only managing to scratch at it with your claw. You find a dressing mirror in a guest bedroom a few rooms down and find that you have a collar now, an elegant black leather collar with a gold clasp with a tiny ankh-shaped charm hanging from it. You bat at the charm with your paws like a kitten. It seems familiar somewhow, you try to think back but the gaps in your memory are spreading farther, swallowing more and more of your former self up with every moment that passes. You try to remember earlier in the week, when you woke up in the mansion and the Mistress rubbed your belly and told you what a good sphinx you were for guarding the house. But that wasn’t right, you were sure it wasn’t right, but it was the only thing you could dredge up from your muddled head.
Then you hear the door in the foyer open, then close. Your keen nose picks up a small note of a familiar perfume, but you don’t know where or when you became acquainted with the smell. You pad down the hall in the direction of the visitor, unable to stop yourself from purring like a housecat. Then she approaches you, a tall woman with ebony colored skin and silky black in a neat medium-length bob. She is wearing a white linen outfit halfway between the robes worn by ancient nobles and a slinky evening dress. That dress and her gold jewelry, bracelets and a tiara, make her look like a Nubian queen. She smiles at you and you find yourself sitting in front of her. Now you know who she is. Mistress, the owner of the house and the one you are sworn to serve and protect without question, without mercy for those who would fail to solve your riddles.
She runs her long-nailed hands over the fur on your neck and you can’t help but purr like a housecat.
“ Hello darling,” She says in a soft, yet authoritative voice, “any trouble while I’m gone?”
Written by feder on 16 April 2017
