"Meet me at the door with the cane."

Saturday was Daddy's day. A reunion, after my week-long road trip north. And the first time we had been together since he carved his initial into my left butt check with the back of the blade of his green-handled folding knife.

I really didn't know what to expect. It's best not to make assumptions. We have been discussing his multiple facets, and even he doesn't know who will turn up at my door and who will leave at the end.

Would it be my Daddy, with the sweetest, warmest smile any little girl could ever want? Daddy is affectionate and nurturing even when he needs to spank me, or to warn me that if I don't do exactly as I'm told he will do those bad things to me.

Would it be any of the incarnations of my teacher? My mentor? The sadist? All of them would guide me, would lead me through the day's lesson, would require me to administer to his cock's insatiable needs. Each of them would elicit a different honorific, or one after the other, changing as the visit progressed. Such as Sir. Or my Lord. And then usually, these days, flowing back into Daddy unless I have been specifically ordered to call him something else. When I am feeling closest to him, I always call him Daddy.

Or would it be the beast? The beast whose name I know now. The sadist briefly opened the curtains on the beast Friday night a week and a half ago, while I was away. He wrote me about the beast, and some of his adventures, in a way he so rarely allows himself to do but seems to sometimes need to do. I should be horrified by those peeks he gives me, but I end up loving him more.

I end up wanting to cradle his head in my arms and protect him.

I'm a silly girl.
It's not safe to walk trusting into the lion's cage.
Especially when you don't know when he had his last meal.

In any case.

My housemate was going away for the weekend. Leaving early Saturday morning. The fiend would come sometime later that morning.

I love when he comes on the weekend. It usually means he can stay a little longer. Already, since I'm not working, I'm freed from the strict half hour time limit and spared having to rush back to work still carrying the physical, emotional, and endorphic (is that a word?!) effects of his visit, giving up the luxury of wallowing in whatever state he has left me.

I admit to having been a little nervous. What bothered me most was that being away from him, even with e-mails and texts - including one extended texting conversation last that Sunday night as he sat outside on his porch, drinking and listening to music - had left me feeling... How to describe it? Perhaps as if a high were wearing off. Not completely gone, but not so immersed. My feelings were the same, I still loved him and was committed to him and all, but... I think I am always more or less in some version of subspace, but by the time I came home I couldn't find my way back.

And I knew it. The day before I was coming home, he had told me to try not to think about him. Of course, it was impossible to completely avoid thinking about him. But I could declare off limits the long periods of immersing myself in memories and speculation that normally fill much of my day, even while doing other things. Especially since I was needing to give attention to other people.

Perhaps that is why I fell so far out of my permanent residence in subspace. Because I was with other people so much of the time I was away, and needed to interact with them. Normally I spend so much of my time alone that it is easy to live in that place he has established as my home.

The next day, the day after abstaining from thoughts of the fiend, the day I was driving home, I was supposed to feel his pull. And I couldn't do it. I didn't feel it. And driving back, my mind was on all sorts of other things, not letting itself sink back into thoughts of him.

I was uneasy.

He knows everything.
He perceives everything.
From a word that is said,
from a word that is missing,
he knows everything.

Somehow,
he knew I wasn't really there.
I wasn't really back.
I wasn't really curled up
at his feet
in the well of his desk,
thinking of nothing
but being
whatever
he wanted me to be.

So that morning,
last Saturday,
the morning of his visit,
he sent the following instructions:

Arrange my chair in front of a TV; turned on, sound low, tuned to the ball game.

Meet me at the door with the cane.

I read his message
and in and instant
I was there.

I was home.

I was home
and I was worried.