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abc prompts; k+s: enslavement [SCRAPPED]
She could hear the disagreement from the foyer where she waited, head bowed, to be introduced to her new master.
It was only proper, said a stern voice, for a boy of such an age and stature to keep a slave. No, he didn't care if the boy thought he needed one or not. He also didn't care if the boy wanted one or not. It was a matter of tradition and propriety.
The boy tried to shout his father down, but was met with a quiet, unyielding insistence. In the end, both father and son came to the foyer, and it was the father who took her lead from the handler. The boy stood before her. She risked a glance at him through her lashes.
He was dark-skinned, dark-haired and dark-eyed, if not as swarthy as the native islanders were. His father's pale skin could be to blame. She might have thought the boy beautiful if he'd smiled, but his expression was as dark as his features.
"Inspect her," his father prompted. It was a matter of principle, she knew — she'd been thoroughly checked over before she'd been brought to them. Slaves were always meticulously sorted and re-sorted upon import, and only the highest quality pieces were presented to the families of warriors.
The boy must have known it, too; he rolled his eyes even as he stepped forward. Despite the severity of his expression, his hands were gentle when he reached for her face. She kept her eyes low as he tipped her chin up for a look at her.
If that argument was any standard of judgment, the boy could have quite the temper. Though she wasn't afraid of what she saw as an inevitable confrontation (between his temper and her own, it was sure to come), she'd be foolish to set him off so early on, and in front of his warrior father, no less. She watched his feet as he turned her head this way and that. He was barefoot, ankles wrapped in a dark violet fabric, black feathers and beads on leather cords dangling just shy of the ground. They were a warrior's feet, like his father's, who wore greens and blues against his pale skin.
"Open your mouth," the boy instructed, voice low, and she complied. Her teeth were in good condition. He quickly satisfied himself and released her. "She'll do," he said, and walked away.
She felt the sting of dismissal where she'd expected he would be impressed. In grounding, she had always received high marks in appearance and hygiene. Even the madams who hated her had agreed she was pretty and well-kept. She made a good first impression, they said, but most men would have a serious case of buyer's remorse.
And here she was, looking at the retreating back of her first master, and he didn't seem to care in the least how attractive or how clean she was. Her face must have shown her dismay, because the boy's father tugged her lead. In a surprisingly kind voice, he said, "Mind yourself, Springrise Twelve."
Bowing her head, she listened to the sounds of her new home as they passed through the breezeways. There were the faint calls of the fliers over the ocean, the crashing of waves. Wooden chimes made merry sounds in the breeze.
The islands were not unlike her homeland. She had been raised on the baked earth and golden grasses of the dry plains, and her music was the harsh laughter of the carrion wolves and the deep grumble of the raptor packs. Their huts and sprawling bungalows were built low, half-buried in the ground to escape the sun. It was hot and it was hazardous, but it was home.
Here, the houses stood on stilts, ladders and bridges and ropes connecting different structures. The music was different, but her new home was just as hot and hazardous as her birthplace. The raptors could climb, the fliers grew large enough to pluck grown men from the beaches, and the heat was sticky, oppressive. The ocean, too, was full of sharp teeth.
She was taken to the commune down the beach and dressed as an islander, in a short sarong and a loose, draping top that bared her stomach. The girls there gave her wooden bangles for her wrists and ankles, and when she would not let them cut her hair, they gave her long wooden rods to twist it and hold it in place. The breeze on the back of her neck was a relief.
As the sun sank on her first day, she climbed the rope ladder to her master's room on quick and daring feet. Everything on the islands was up high, and the further away the ground was, the less steady her legs were. But the floor of his quarters was solid, and she quickly forgot the height.
He sat in the open windowframe, a knife in one hand and an intricate wooden bead trapped in the fingers of the other. The tip of the knife, large as it was, gouged out the most delicate patterns in the wood, leaving the thinnest of shavings to be swept away on the ever-present breeze. For several moments, she only stood and looked on, captivated by the art.
Evidently, that was enough to offput him, because after a brief spell, he pitched the knife downward, where it thunked into the wood and mud floor. She jumped. The bead found a resting place in a grass bowl nearby as he swung his long legs out of the windowframe.
The islanders' beds were hardly beds at all, she thought. They slept in woven rope nets suspended from the ceilings and trees, like animal traps. Back on the plains, their beds were roomy, shallow pits dug into the floors of their homes. They were sturdy and safe. She found herself apprehensive, watching him climb deftly into his net-bed. But she was expected to join him, so she swallowed her uncertainty — another of her talents — and approached.
"What are you doing?" he asked sharply, stalling her with her hands on the rope.
"I thought to join you, Sir," she said to the wooden bangles on her feet.
"Why?"
He sounded testy. She wanted to look up, but thought better of it.
"How else am I to pleasure you, Sir?" she asked instead. It wasn't meant to sound insolent, but she had a gift for that, as well.
He made a sound with his mouth, something that fell between baffled and annoyed. "You're not."
Then she did look up, brow knit. "That is my purpose, Sir."
To her surprise, he neither raised a hand nor his voice to make her look away. "I told my father I had no need of a slave. You heard that, didn't you?"
"Yes, Sir," she acknowledged, "and your father said—"
"I know what he said," he groused. "He may be the village chief, but he isn't always right."
She pursed her lips. More than anything — more than beatings, more than being starved, more than being run through the same groundings again and again — she hated to be idle. Her madams had learned quickly that the most efficient way to punish her involved no switch, no paddle. They needed only to sit her on her hands and force her to watch as the other girls worked. She preferred to feel useful, accomplished, and she resented the idea that her first master would have her sit by and do nothing, as her clever madams had done.
"What would you have me do, Sir?"
He waved a dismissive hand to the tiny clack of beads. "Sleep over there in the corner tonight. I'll get you a hammock tomorrow."
'Hammock' was the name of the rope-net she crawled her fingers across now. That was one question answered, but not the one she'd asked.
"What would you have me do," she repeated, looking back up at him impatiently, "if you think you are in no need of pleasure? I am not a labor slave; I am too pretty to clean your quarters. What would you have me do instead?" Too many seconds passed before she remembered herself. "... Sir."
Many more seconds passed as he scrutinized her in the falling sunlight. She knew she should look away, but the longer he was silent and critical, the more defiant she felt. If he would beat her, let him. At least she would have some bruises to show for her perseverance.
"Our House employs many domestic slaves as pretty as you or prettier," he remarked finally. "I don't think you're at all too pretty to clean my quarters."
Her back straightened with indignation. "I am not a domestic slave, Sir—"
"You're not a pleasure slave, either," he cut in. "In fact, you bring me the opposite of pleasure."
"Sir!"
"Go," he ordered, his voice finally hard enough to make her flinch, "lie down. Tomorrow, you clean. Everything."
Head bowed and feet scuffing sullenly, she retreated to her corner and curled up there. The floor was cool, the walls rigid, but she was surrounded on three sides and she felt much safer there than she would in one of the islanders' animal-trap nets. It wasn't long before the sounds of the wooden chimes outside put her to sleep.
The next morning, she awoke from a sound sleep to the alluring scent of an unfamiliar fruit. The while morning sunshine was ambient in the room, which faced the western coast of the island. In the window, half in shadow, perched a long, lean, brown figure, ankles wrapped in sage green, beads clanking softly. He was the very picture of the island's warriors: taller and lankier than her master, bronzed skin kissed darker by the sun. In the palm of one of his broad hands was a large reddish bowl that seemed to be a hollowed out fruit of some kind. It was filled with glistening red and orange orbs of its own flesh, and the fragrance, carried on the breeze, made her mouth water.
"Have you eaten?" he asked when he saw her roused and attentive. She shook her head mutely, then remembered herself.
"No, Sir."
He held the fruit bowl toward her, and now she could see a thin wooden skewer piercing the top edge of the bowl, threaded in and out of the curve like a needle through cloth. It was meant as a utensil, ostensibly; its application was simple enough to imagine. Her hesitation was not born of confusion, but the fact that her master had not bidden her to eat — and, indeed, wasn't there.
Her stomach growled loudly in an attempt to sway her decision.
"Go on," the warrior urged, gesturing with the bowl. As if he'd heard her fears, he added, "He won't mind. He's just gone to eat, himself."
Tentative, but too hungry to resist, she reached for the wood skewer and pulled it free. The redder fruit was soft and sweet, the orange firmer and tangier. All of it was delicious and cool, and she devoured half before she thought to slow down. When she paused, swallowing and self-conscious, she chanced a glance up at the generous stranger and received a warm smile.
"You can have it," he said, pushing the bowl into her hands. She accepted it gratefully and continued eating, with more mind to her manners now.
"What are you called?"
She swallowed a mouthful of sweet red pulp and said, "Springrise Twelve, Sir."
All slaves were given names like this, after the date on which they were born. There had been a Summerfall Six Dawn and a Summerfall Six Eve in her home village, born to two different mothers. Once, a girl at her grounding school told of three Midwinter Tens in one village — a Dawn and two Days. She was the only Springrise Twelve in her village.
The warrior's brow knit. "He hasn't named you?" For a moment as she shook her head, he looked troubled. Then something seemed to dawn on him. "I'll name you," he declared cheerfully. "Do you know what you'd like to be called?"
The matter merited some consideration. She chewed as she thought about it. When her mouth was free, she asked, "What are people called here, Sir?" No one on the island had introduced themselves to her.
"I'm called 'Tegan,'" he offered. "'Te' is the sound that baby cliffdivers make. And your master is called 'Shane,' because 'sha' is the sound of the ocean in the winter."
"You're named after sounds?" There were stranger things, she supposed. 'Springrise Twelve' must seem like an odd name to them.
He nodded, drawing his feet up onto the sill of the window. His knees towered improbably over his shoulders.
"I don't know the sounds of the island," she admitted.
"There are fliers — we call them firefliers; they're beautiful and red and when the sun lights them up, they look like flames in the sky." He was watching her, smiling as she did. "They make a sound — kii, kii."
She mimicked the sound quietly, attaching syllables to it in her head. "Kiiiir... len? Kirgen?" She made a face. "Kirsten?"
"Kirsten," he echoed encouragingly. Beads clacking on the rope ladder below prevented her from asking if he liked it.
It was only proper, said a stern voice, for a boy of such an age and stature to keep a slave. No, he didn't care if the boy thought he needed one or not. He also didn't care if the boy wanted one or not. It was a matter of tradition and propriety.
The boy tried to shout his father down, but was met with a quiet, unyielding insistence. In the end, both father and son came to the foyer, and it was the father who took her lead from the handler. The boy stood before her. She risked a glance at him through her lashes.
He was dark-skinned, dark-haired and dark-eyed, if not as swarthy as the native islanders were. His father's pale skin could be to blame. She might have thought the boy beautiful if he'd smiled, but his expression was as dark as his features.
"Inspect her," his father prompted. It was a matter of principle, she knew — she'd been thoroughly checked over before she'd been brought to them. Slaves were always meticulously sorted and re-sorted upon import, and only the highest quality pieces were presented to the families of warriors.
The boy must have known it, too; he rolled his eyes even as he stepped forward. Despite the severity of his expression, his hands were gentle when he reached for her face. She kept her eyes low as he tipped her chin up for a look at her.
If that argument was any standard of judgment, the boy could have quite the temper. Though she wasn't afraid of what she saw as an inevitable confrontation (between his temper and her own, it was sure to come), she'd be foolish to set him off so early on, and in front of his warrior father, no less. She watched his feet as he turned her head this way and that. He was barefoot, ankles wrapped in a dark violet fabric, black feathers and beads on leather cords dangling just shy of the ground. They were a warrior's feet, like his father's, who wore greens and blues against his pale skin.
"Open your mouth," the boy instructed, voice low, and she complied. Her teeth were in good condition. He quickly satisfied himself and released her. "She'll do," he said, and walked away.
She felt the sting of dismissal where she'd expected he would be impressed. In grounding, she had always received high marks in appearance and hygiene. Even the madams who hated her had agreed she was pretty and well-kept. She made a good first impression, they said, but most men would have a serious case of buyer's remorse.
And here she was, looking at the retreating back of her first master, and he didn't seem to care in the least how attractive or how clean she was. Her face must have shown her dismay, because the boy's father tugged her lead. In a surprisingly kind voice, he said, "Mind yourself, Springrise Twelve."
Bowing her head, she listened to the sounds of her new home as they passed through the breezeways. There were the faint calls of the fliers over the ocean, the crashing of waves. Wooden chimes made merry sounds in the breeze.
The islands were not unlike her homeland. She had been raised on the baked earth and golden grasses of the dry plains, and her music was the harsh laughter of the carrion wolves and the deep grumble of the raptor packs. Their huts and sprawling bungalows were built low, half-buried in the ground to escape the sun. It was hot and it was hazardous, but it was home.
Here, the houses stood on stilts, ladders and bridges and ropes connecting different structures. The music was different, but her new home was just as hot and hazardous as her birthplace. The raptors could climb, the fliers grew large enough to pluck grown men from the beaches, and the heat was sticky, oppressive. The ocean, too, was full of sharp teeth.
She was taken to the commune down the beach and dressed as an islander, in a short sarong and a loose, draping top that bared her stomach. The girls there gave her wooden bangles for her wrists and ankles, and when she would not let them cut her hair, they gave her long wooden rods to twist it and hold it in place. The breeze on the back of her neck was a relief.
As the sun sank on her first day, she climbed the rope ladder to her master's room on quick and daring feet. Everything on the islands was up high, and the further away the ground was, the less steady her legs were. But the floor of his quarters was solid, and she quickly forgot the height.
He sat in the open windowframe, a knife in one hand and an intricate wooden bead trapped in the fingers of the other. The tip of the knife, large as it was, gouged out the most delicate patterns in the wood, leaving the thinnest of shavings to be swept away on the ever-present breeze. For several moments, she only stood and looked on, captivated by the art.
Evidently, that was enough to offput him, because after a brief spell, he pitched the knife downward, where it thunked into the wood and mud floor. She jumped. The bead found a resting place in a grass bowl nearby as he swung his long legs out of the windowframe.
The islanders' beds were hardly beds at all, she thought. They slept in woven rope nets suspended from the ceilings and trees, like animal traps. Back on the plains, their beds were roomy, shallow pits dug into the floors of their homes. They were sturdy and safe. She found herself apprehensive, watching him climb deftly into his net-bed. But she was expected to join him, so she swallowed her uncertainty — another of her talents — and approached.
"What are you doing?" he asked sharply, stalling her with her hands on the rope.
"I thought to join you, Sir," she said to the wooden bangles on her feet.
"Why?"
He sounded testy. She wanted to look up, but thought better of it.
"How else am I to pleasure you, Sir?" she asked instead. It wasn't meant to sound insolent, but she had a gift for that, as well.
He made a sound with his mouth, something that fell between baffled and annoyed. "You're not."
Then she did look up, brow knit. "That is my purpose, Sir."
To her surprise, he neither raised a hand nor his voice to make her look away. "I told my father I had no need of a slave. You heard that, didn't you?"
"Yes, Sir," she acknowledged, "and your father said—"
"I know what he said," he groused. "He may be the village chief, but he isn't always right."
She pursed her lips. More than anything — more than beatings, more than being starved, more than being run through the same groundings again and again — she hated to be idle. Her madams had learned quickly that the most efficient way to punish her involved no switch, no paddle. They needed only to sit her on her hands and force her to watch as the other girls worked. She preferred to feel useful, accomplished, and she resented the idea that her first master would have her sit by and do nothing, as her clever madams had done.
"What would you have me do, Sir?"
He waved a dismissive hand to the tiny clack of beads. "Sleep over there in the corner tonight. I'll get you a hammock tomorrow."
'Hammock' was the name of the rope-net she crawled her fingers across now. That was one question answered, but not the one she'd asked.
"What would you have me do," she repeated, looking back up at him impatiently, "if you think you are in no need of pleasure? I am not a labor slave; I am too pretty to clean your quarters. What would you have me do instead?" Too many seconds passed before she remembered herself. "... Sir."
Many more seconds passed as he scrutinized her in the falling sunlight. She knew she should look away, but the longer he was silent and critical, the more defiant she felt. If he would beat her, let him. At least she would have some bruises to show for her perseverance.
"Our House employs many domestic slaves as pretty as you or prettier," he remarked finally. "I don't think you're at all too pretty to clean my quarters."
Her back straightened with indignation. "I am not a domestic slave, Sir—"
"You're not a pleasure slave, either," he cut in. "In fact, you bring me the opposite of pleasure."
"Sir!"
"Go," he ordered, his voice finally hard enough to make her flinch, "lie down. Tomorrow, you clean. Everything."
Head bowed and feet scuffing sullenly, she retreated to her corner and curled up there. The floor was cool, the walls rigid, but she was surrounded on three sides and she felt much safer there than she would in one of the islanders' animal-trap nets. It wasn't long before the sounds of the wooden chimes outside put her to sleep.
The next morning, she awoke from a sound sleep to the alluring scent of an unfamiliar fruit. The while morning sunshine was ambient in the room, which faced the western coast of the island. In the window, half in shadow, perched a long, lean, brown figure, ankles wrapped in sage green, beads clanking softly. He was the very picture of the island's warriors: taller and lankier than her master, bronzed skin kissed darker by the sun. In the palm of one of his broad hands was a large reddish bowl that seemed to be a hollowed out fruit of some kind. It was filled with glistening red and orange orbs of its own flesh, and the fragrance, carried on the breeze, made her mouth water.
"Have you eaten?" he asked when he saw her roused and attentive. She shook her head mutely, then remembered herself.
"No, Sir."
He held the fruit bowl toward her, and now she could see a thin wooden skewer piercing the top edge of the bowl, threaded in and out of the curve like a needle through cloth. It was meant as a utensil, ostensibly; its application was simple enough to imagine. Her hesitation was not born of confusion, but the fact that her master had not bidden her to eat — and, indeed, wasn't there.
Her stomach growled loudly in an attempt to sway her decision.
"Go on," the warrior urged, gesturing with the bowl. As if he'd heard her fears, he added, "He won't mind. He's just gone to eat, himself."
Tentative, but too hungry to resist, she reached for the wood skewer and pulled it free. The redder fruit was soft and sweet, the orange firmer and tangier. All of it was delicious and cool, and she devoured half before she thought to slow down. When she paused, swallowing and self-conscious, she chanced a glance up at the generous stranger and received a warm smile.
"You can have it," he said, pushing the bowl into her hands. She accepted it gratefully and continued eating, with more mind to her manners now.
"What are you called?"
She swallowed a mouthful of sweet red pulp and said, "Springrise Twelve, Sir."
All slaves were given names like this, after the date on which they were born. There had been a Summerfall Six Dawn and a Summerfall Six Eve in her home village, born to two different mothers. Once, a girl at her grounding school told of three Midwinter Tens in one village — a Dawn and two Days. She was the only Springrise Twelve in her village.
The warrior's brow knit. "He hasn't named you?" For a moment as she shook her head, he looked troubled. Then something seemed to dawn on him. "I'll name you," he declared cheerfully. "Do you know what you'd like to be called?"
The matter merited some consideration. She chewed as she thought about it. When her mouth was free, she asked, "What are people called here, Sir?" No one on the island had introduced themselves to her.
"I'm called 'Tegan,'" he offered. "'Te' is the sound that baby cliffdivers make. And your master is called 'Shane,' because 'sha' is the sound of the ocean in the winter."
"You're named after sounds?" There were stranger things, she supposed. 'Springrise Twelve' must seem like an odd name to them.
He nodded, drawing his feet up onto the sill of the window. His knees towered improbably over his shoulders.
"I don't know the sounds of the island," she admitted.
"There are fliers — we call them firefliers; they're beautiful and red and when the sun lights them up, they look like flames in the sky." He was watching her, smiling as she did. "They make a sound — kii, kii."
She mimicked the sound quietly, attaching syllables to it in her head. "Kiiiir... len? Kirgen?" She made a face. "Kirsten?"
"Kirsten," he echoed encouragingly. Beads clacking on the rope ladder below prevented her from asking if he liked it.