The Pissed Princess in the Lepidopterium (fragment)

On winter evenings, when the dark seems to fall like a cold wave, and the stars glimmer dimly through the city’s haze, she abandons the roof terrace early and often seeks warmth and comfort in the palace’s lepidopterium. Built by her father when the steam heating system was installed, the broad, high ceilinged space is always in a state of semi-gloom, with a thick, moist atmosphere derived from the vents that connect, via copper duct pipes, to some steam-powered contraption in one of the palace’s sub-basements; somewhere down there, hundreds of feet below her, in the levels that she has never seen - nor wanted to see - there must be a final stone floor, beneath which there is nothing but rock.

Her half-empty wine bottle makes a faint ringing sound as it brushes against the stiffened fabric curtains that form the entrance to the lepidopterium as she pushes her way through, having waved away the attentions of the flunky who had stood waiting to open up the gap for her. She refers to the lepidopterium (inside her own head; she can’t ever recall saying the phrase aloud) as the ‘moth room’. Formerly the room had been brightly lit by the new electric lights, but after the palace devolved to her she had given instructions that the collection of exotic, vibrantly-coloured butterflies be removed and replaced with the biggest, darkest, prickliest moths known to the Imperial Zoological Service.

And so it was that the moth room’s shadowy spaces were thronged with heat, moisture, and the fluttering of dark wings at the periphery of vision.

She takes her usual seat, leaning over to place the bottle and the glass carefully on the stone floor before pulling the flaps of the suit of lights up over her shoulders and lap, and pushing her arms into the sleeves. She can feel the weight of the electric wires and insulation that run through the suit’s fabric, and the moisture that has cooled and condensed out of her sweat from the last session; but she doesn’t care - the slight tackiness against her skin and the imagined scent of her residual dankness is all part of the pleasure.

She pours the rest of the wine into the glass. After the flunky has taken away the empty bottle, she gestures to the attendant to turn off the room’s main lighting and to switch on the the suit of lights.

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