“Welcome to your mind, Lucia.” The Domina’s voice makes the bright light shape itself into something more solid. All around us is white like a television set or a waiting room. There’s a soft-looking white sofa, but I’m kneeling on the floor. Sarah is on the couch, with her legs crossed at the knee. We’re both naked, but it feels so mundane to be naked in front of her - especially here.

She has control of all of my thoughts, all of my memories. She could make me remember myself wearing or doing anything. Naked is probably the most fitting, though. It’s how I feel.

“No, that’s not why you’re naked. I had nothing to do with it. It is because of how you feel, and if you don’t like it . . . change it! This is your mind. It’s factual fiction, or at least a reality where the rules aren’t exactly static. Want to have peach skin or be wearing a wedding dress? Just think it . . . but don’t blame me for this. This is a last ditch effort because they locked up more of you than they did me. No way I could unlock you before something went wrong. So, I have to play it the hard way.” The Domina sighs, and closes her eyes. “Please quit calling me that. The Domina. I’m sick of it. The Domina Argenti . .. what an arrogant name. Know what? Call me Silver, or Sarah. Okay?”

“Okay, Silver or Sarah.” I don’t know how else to show defiance. It makes her frown, so I must have done something right. Yanuka and Quillspawn want me to bring her back. I still can, if I can find a way to turn this situation around. The light filling the room is bright, but that’s not bad.

This reality is inside of my mind, and that means I can control it? I try to imagine all of my locks turning into gushing torrents of oil. If I can fill the room and drown her mind in pure, locked up obedience then there’s no way she can ever hope to break me away from my owners – our owners. She belongs to them as much as I do even if she doesn’t know it yet.

None of my locks tighten or drip at all. I can’t even feel or really imagine them. The concept of how it felt for them to tighten and drip, it just isn’t there. It feels like it’s hidden behind clear plastic.

Silver sighs and shakes her head. “Okay, maybe I need to elaborate. You may be able to dress yourself however you like, and if you want a chair of your own to sit on feel free . . . but you were right. I can feel your thoughts, I can control them, and I can control you. At the moment, I am being generous, but I am not being stupid. No oiling the Silver, okay? Not that you can, but just so you know.”

My feelings have been locked away, but here in this place I can feel everything. She makes me so angry! Just her being here upsets me, but it’s as if she’s trying to control me like an overprotective mother in my own mind! It’s my mind, she can’t tell me what to do with it!

It’s so hard not to think something just because I know she’ll know it. So what? She would be thinking these same thoughts. Thinking that doesn’t make me feel better, but maybe it will make her feel a little bit more boring or pitiful. I know I like the sound of that. She’s not reacting, but I don’t care. She can’t free me from my owners and that’s why I’m here. As smug and powerful as she might think she is, she’s as pitiful and weak as I am. She just took advantage of my weakness, and my underestimating her.

I’m always overestimating myself, and the one time I don’t I actually think up something to resist being controlled by myself? What the hell is that? This is even something a part of me has been waiting for since before I was born. How pitiful do you have to be to interrupt your own birthright when you can’t stop yourself from trying to shoot a mind controlling laser at the earth?

If we were sisters and not merely the same person, I would definitely be mom’s favorite.

“I know you’re still controlled right now, Lucia, so I’m going to be sweet about this as I can. Right now? You have all the rationality of, well, a five year old, with the logic of a cheerleader in an abusive relationship. Taking Aurora to Yanuka? She might have been able to seal you up, but what if Aurora doesn’t grow up the way she wants her? She used you to oil up Yunru and Yonva.” She pauses in her condescending rant and rests her hands on a knee before raising an eyebrow. I don’t see how she’s being very sweet. “Fuck, am I always this stupid? Do I really only listen to dominance?”

Bingo. She hit the nail on the head, and she knows it. If she thinks it applies only to me then she’s altering the events of her life to make herself feel better. Even her crowning achievement of independence, that shining space station of Sapphic seduction, was someone else’s programming.

Even mine, laying Olivia down and impregnating her, was something Yana planned. She was just a weak shell of a witch and she could do that to me. I can’t wait to feel what Quillspawn will do.

“No! No, that was not your biggest moment of independence. It wasn’t by a long shot. You’re just seeing it like that because it reinforces what you want to see right now. We are so good at lying to ourselves. That, is part of why we’re so easy to turn into pets. We want it. We really, really want it and . . . you even told Mind Bore that, or at least one of the illusions she beamed into your head. Remember that? You have a fetish for being a cherished pet? And as long as you can convince yourself that you’re living out that fantasy-“

“-No!” As tightly as possible I close my hands over my ears. I know she can make me hear her anyway, but it’s all I can do. Running is futile. Attacking her is futile. I don’t want to fail Yanuka and Quillspawn. I want to succeed. I was so close. “Stop it! Stop it now! You’re just trying to confuse me!”

She sighs. I know she’s amplifying it past my hands since I can hear it so clearly. That, or my own belief that she would, makes it happen. I feel so dizzy. My mind feels fuzzy, but we’re having a tea party in it so I guess that means that everything is going about as well as it should. I need to get out of here. She doesn’t understand! The reason that we always get like this, that we always try to stay with the women who enslave us, is that we were waiting for Yanuka to grab us up! We were waiting to be good little witch toys. How were we supposed to know on instinct precisely what that meant? We only knew we needed to obey.

There’s no way I can make her understand. I can see and feel her resistance to the truth. Slowly, I crawl closer to her and nuzzle against her leg. She makes a soft sound and I can feel her body shake as I slide my tongue up along the tender curves. Maybe she’ll listen to this. I look up to make eye contact with her and she closes her eyes. Her legs uncross as she runs fingers slowly through my hair.

Maybe if she can feel how happy I am she’ll start to understand. She shakes with the sweetest gasps as I trace my lips delicately up her leg. I never sound like that. She must have learned a new way to moan.

When my lips reach the highest point on her thighs her hands force my face to look up to hers. Our eyes meet, and hers look so sad and worried. Doesn’t she see I just want to make her, and everyone else, happy? It would be the best for her, for Valerie, Alyssa . . . Sylvia and Aurora especially. “No, Lucia. You don’t get it . . . I’m not trying to confuse you. I’m trying to care for you . . . I’m trying to help. If we’re really meant to just feel dominance, then well . . . it won’t be the first time I’ve felt bad about doing this.”

Her thumbs start to rub over my temples again and again. It feels so nice and I can feel the light her thumbs force into my mind. Everything gets slowly brighter and brighter as she rubs, her fingers gently rubbing into my scalp. My lips curl into a lazy smile and I sigh as her thumbs reach down and gently press my eyelids shut.

The light melts into me through my eyelids, Like clouds moving across the sky I can see shapes in the bursts of light. It makes me feel so young and tender to be so easily lulled, even here in my mind where I should be in control. This has always been where I’ve been weakest.

I feel her pulling me up into her lap, and the warmth of her body against mine is almost as soothing as the light her body tenderly melts into mine. Every second that I rest against her I feel like I’m melting into her. There’s something indescribable about just mewling and feeling your own fingers stroking over your body, filling you with bliss. I couldn’t pull away from her if I wanted to, and I don’t. She’s making me feel so good. I wish I could make her feel as good and make Yanuka happy, but if I can’t . . .

“Lucia . . . Little Lucia . . . Melt into me, just sink here with me. Stay in this moment with me . . .” One of her hands grabs one of mine, resting it on her thigh. “Feel the light, the warmth there. It’s for you. Like those cotton pink legs that used to wrap around your mind, these shining silver thighs are here . . .”

Whimpering, my toes curl and I can feel her leg so firmly under my hand. My fingers gently knead and I feel the texture at my fingertips rubbing against my thoughts. Shining silver thighs . . . cotton pink legs . . . spiraling down and nuzzling up against pretty silver thighs, feeling them clench, making all of my mind so weak and helpless. Her other hand keeps stroking my hair while holding me to her chest. Her skin is so warm, and her leg feels so strong. With such strong thighs clamped around my head there’s no way I can resist.

All I can do is slowly surrender and melt away, no matter what I might have wanted.

Her lips press to my forehead and I let out a slow sigh. “That’s a good Lucia . . . So much stronger than you want to be . . . But that’s okay . . . You don’t need to be strong right now. Right now you can be weak . . . you can be weak for me. You can just feel my leg, feel it inside of your mind, rubbing your worries and control away . . . Let me guide you . . . You’re so exhausted from being strong . . . let go.”

It feels like her words pull out the bottom brick and the wall of my lingering resistance crumbles into dust. The clouds that swarm through my head are easily brushed away by her hand stroking through my hair. I feel defenseless, open, and yielding. It’s always my favorite feeling even when I’m scared and struggling.

“Good, good little Lucia, just melt, just feel all of your worries, all of your thoughts so far away . . . Now what we’re going to do, is dig deep into your mind, and find that moment when you were at your strongest. We’re going to find . . .” She pauses, and I can feel her light searching through me. It feels like my mind is a rolodex and she’s flipping through the memories for the right phone number.

Whatever she’s looking for, it must be near the back. I don’t care how long it takes her to find it. A part of me hopes she’ll never find it so I can stay like this forever. She’s so warm and I feel so safe here. Maybe if she can’t find what she’s looking for then we’ll have to stay like this forever.

I wouldn’t mind that one bit.

My head tips back and her lips lightly press into mine. “Sorry sweetie - that’s not going to happen. Our mind isn’t that complex. You want to obey, remember? Now my sweet little melted self . . . We are going to explore the moment you truly seized independence. When you became Silver Girl mom tried to fight you tooth and nail to stay in Coredelia . . . but it was when you became Patina that you truly became independent. You had no powers, and you could have stayed with Lida and Susan . . . Tell me, my obedient little sweetheart . . . why not? Why become Patina? Why take the hard path?”

“I didn’t want . . . I didn’t want anyone else to have to grow up with only one parent like I did. I wanted to make the world a better place. I wanted to make Lida proud of me, but I really just . . . it was what I wanted to do with my life. I couldn’t be Silver Girl, but I could still make a difference . . .” I feel so small and weak being held like this, and I love it. It’s so sweet, it’s so perfect, it’s . . .

She’s right. That was the moment where I was the most independent. So much of me wanted to take the easy path and be normal. It would have been the easier thing to do, but I made a new identity for myself and I stopped so much. I helped Pandora. I brought down The Argentum Project.

That was how I met her, how I met Olivia. If I’d never tried to bring the Slut Squad to justice, I never would have shut down the auction ring. I never would have met Olivia. Aurora wouldn’t have been born.

Aurora . . .

“That’s right, Lucia . . . I can help you break out of your locks and free yourself from Yanuka and Quillspawn, but only if you work with me. Do it for her. Do it for Aurora and Olivia if no one else . . . They love you, and right now they’re counting on you. I’m counting on you. You are counting on you, whether you realize it or not. Just try to find the light, your light, the one that matches the one I’m filling you with . . . That’s all.” She sounds so worried, so desperate, so afraid . . . and I realize that I feel just as afraid.

I became Patina because of things like this. I wanted to help make people happy. I didn’t want people to have to face what Aurora will face if I don’t break free. The witches would use her, manipulate her, do who knows what . . . she’d never be free.

They wouldn’t be able to raise her as one of their own. She might want vengeance if she ever found out who her mother was. I can’t let that happen to my daughter. I need to pull through!

Lips press into mine again and The Domina lets out the softest little sigh. “I knew you had it in you, sweetie . . . Sure as hell makes me feel a lot better that I was right. If you have it in you to pull out of something like this, then I do too. Come on, I’ll help you find your light, then we can fix up Valerie and Alyssa . . . We have some tables to turn.”