It is fable 90 in Gibbs

I’m feeling a bit like my head has doubled in size over night. So I don’t think I can think very well. But then, how would you tell?

Ok, I just read that last sentence back and I’m not sure I’m making any sense so I’ll get on with this and post a story.

It was written for a reading on Mayfest, and it went very well. I think I might have read a few bits of it slightly differently than it appears here, but I can’t remember which bits.

Sophia's Story
Among the bone coloured buildings and well worn pavements of Paris, France there lived a high class prostitute named Sophia.
Sophia had a single miraculous ability; every man who saw the blackbrown mole on her whitwhite skin that sat just beneath her left nipple fell instantly in love with her. As an exclusive French courtesan this was a very fortunate power to have. It did, however, have one drawback: Any man who slept in the same bed as her without engaging in sexual intercourse would fall out of love with her just as instantaneously.
The usual course of events went thus: Sophia and her prospective client would meet; they would chat briefly and if both parties were happy then he (or she) would ask Sophia to undress. During the undressing, the client would see the mole and become utterly enthralled promptly leading to sex.
The course of events normally got stuck on here for some time, but it would inevitably lead to the client being content to merely spend the night in Sophia's arms without requiring any other physical gratification, and poof!
They would wake and ask themselves, 'What am I doing here?' And the answer would always be to get up quietly, dress themselves in their expensive clothes, plant a single kiss on the sanguine cheek of the sleeping Sophia, and leave.
It was after one such goodbye that Sophia woke from one morning and decided to take a stroll, maybe to get some breakfast in a little café that smelt of fresh coffee and poet's cigarettes.
As Sophia walked (stepping on all the cracks in the paving slabs) she came across and old Gypsy woman, fat with time and dressed all in black, selling dried flowers that had been pressed flat in old books. Beside her sat a dog that was black and shaggy and lean and beautifully all at once.
Sophia bought a flower from the old woman, and as they were exchanging money she said, 'Your dog has such bright eyes.'
The old Gypsy woman laughed at this and said, 'he's not mine, he belong only to himself, and guards me because we have a legal contract.'
'I don't understand,' said Sophia, 'how can a dog understand a contract?'
'He understands because he is blessed with the mind of a man, but is cursed the body of a dog, and so is unable to either laugh or cry.'
'That's terrible' said Sophia, sadly.
'It's not so bad, he uses his mind to dispense advice to strangers.'
At that the dog began to nuzzle at the old woman's hip, and she bent down (with some difficulty) and the dog nuzzled further at her ear.
After she had straightened up she said, 'Aesop wants you to hear a story. He says “there was once a deer who fell sick, and all the deer's friends came to visit her in her pasture. To pass the time, the deer's friends ate the grass in the pasture as they chatted amongst themselves. When the deer finally got well again, she found that her pasture had been eaten bare, and that winter she starved to death.”'
Sophia though about this story for a little while, and then said, 'I think I understand.'
And with that, she left to find a man who wouldn't love her.