RP Notecard 7-07-19
Oh those words had been bitter on her tongue "la kajira", forced to utter them and yet still having some odd hope that this was not happening. It was little things that she clung to, insignificant on the whole but enough to hold on to; She still wore the temporary collar.... She had not been stripped of her name, or stripped of anything but a piece of her pride and dignity....She had not been taken immediately to be branded... She had not been tied to a post and whipped...She had not been thrown to the ground and mercilessly used, in fact she still had the metal belt on. Among the gaggles of free women so often gathered in living rooms and private places, thoughts about what was done to a woman when she was enslaved were a frequent topic of forbidden conversation, fueled by the tower slaves who would tell them of their first nights of slavery. Of course, few of them had ever mentioned the slave goad, so who could really say. Her hand ran down her thigh at thought of the goad, touching the place he had made contact with her flesh.
She had been taken out of the slaver's office and thrown into one of the hay-strewn cells on the first floor, not even the one in the corner where she could be unseen, no, it was the first one, with the fewest walls and most bars - ensuring anyone who came in could see her. There was not even a chamber pot, just a bowl of water, a bowl of gruel (yeah she was not about to eat that, and it grew cold and congealed during the night), and the hay.. as if she were to relieve herself like an animal.
She moved to the back corner of that cell and curled up, sobbing, scared and hungry. Had those two awful women actually been responsible for this? Or had his slip-up, before he blamed them, been the truth? Did it matter? Yes, it did matter on some level. Petty jealousy sending her into slavery or had he at some point met her and plotted this? One of those options appealed to her secret vanity, the other enraged her. Vanity... he had said she was beautiful, too beautiful to remain free. That thought slammed into her and she could not identify the sudden feeling it sent through her body. She blocked it out, refusing to explore it or even try to figure out what it was, she was not ready for that.
She realized, sitting there on the ground, she was the lowest of slaves at that moment. Untrained, unopened. Yet he had left her bedecked in the lavish gold adornments she had worn the night she was taken as if she were a high-caste free woman. Not that merchants were considered a high caste, unless you asked one of them of course - after all, such wealth one could amass as a merchant certainly opened many doors. It made no sense at all to her. For long ehns she stared at her hands and the rings of gold, wondering if she could trade them for her freedom - it had not yet sunk in that they were no longer her own.
She was a mess, left alone, with only her thoughts during that night. Thoughts that kept skirting around the fear of what the morning might bring, tangled with a mourning for what she knew deep inside was now lost to her. What was that he had said to her just before he left? She was not just "a kajira" but "his kajira", what.... did that mean? Here she was, locked in a cell, in a kennel, like any other slave who would one day be hauled to an auction block and sold for profit. Her belly clenched, and not in a good way. She pitched forward on her hands and knees and everything in her body tried to forcefully expel, but.. she'd not eaten, there was nothing but frothy bile to vomit up on that hay. She had become... what she feared and despised. No, not yet. He could still be persuaded, right? No, she sensed he was a man of purpose and confidence, not the sort who could be swayed from what he wanted. Back and forth her mind raced between realizing her position and refusing to accept it, seeking any way to undo what had taken place. "Oh Kings", she thought, her hand moving up to her ear-lobe... "what if he pierced my ears? I'd never be able to gain my freedom" she whispered into the empty cell. She scattered some of the hay over the puddle of bile and leaned back into the corner, her back against the cool rough stone.
Ihns turned to ehns.. to ahns and her eyes finally closed, exhaustion winning out, but no respite was found in sleep for her mind continued to play over what had happened.. visions of what she feared would happen, and those things he had said, such as being on a display post, left for anyone to touch her as they pleased. As awful as her nightmares that night were, she could likely not even conceive of the reality that stretched a lifetime before her, of just how awful the things he might do to her could be. So too, she could not fathom there might come a day she would eagerly run to him, sinking to her knees to kiss his feet. She was a canvas upon which only scribbles had been drawn, the whispered words of slaves who told stories to scare the free women splashed across the pristine landscape - and yet the man had a full palette of colors, for which she had no words to describe, with which to repaint that canvas, and the talent of an artist, a Master wrapped in blue and gold, to create the picture he desired.
What would the man find in the morning, when he walked by that cell and saw her curled up in the corner after a night of being so afraid and alone, fitful sleep and hunger? What would she look like, would he find a broken woman or one who's steeled spine was still lurking within the mess she currently was? Could he sense what ways in which he could torment and twist her, use her to his own delights, or was she merely a piece of meat for profit?
~Rowena~
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