Delicious Ironies

originally posted August 28, 2006

I was already missing my friend, Lucius, last evening as I thought about our short stay in Lara. I was enjoying a repast of fish and buttered suls beside the fire. Six Girl cooked. While it was actually quite good, I, of course, informed her how it might be better. Before the food has a chance to cool, during the final stages of cooking, one seasons it. For example, the suls might have benefited from a pinch or so of pepper and definitely from a salting. The food was, despite the minor criticisms, certainly edible. The girl even thought to squeeze a bit of fresh tospit over the fish to liven the taste a little. It was during the initial sip of wine that I noticed the lightly audible clatter of wooden beads about the ends of Portia's twisted plaits. They were painted black. It took only a moment to put together the meaning of such.
"Black Bina," I said. I knew that Lucius would have gifted her with them and, likely, took pleasure in fixing them in her hair personally. She has requested, and been granted, the role of Bina in 'The Bridge of Twenty Lanterns.'
"The master said it was a delicious irony," she informed me with about as shy a smile as a girl like Portia is capable of mustering; which is to say it was only slightly less blatantly lewd than per usual.
In time, I called Sandal forth to the light of the fire. She was bathing herself and, so, by necessity as she had been summoned, came to me nude and a bit damp of skin and hair. It still amuses me to imagine the Earth girl, her or the others I own, behaving so shamelessly on an alien world. I remind myself, however, that Gor is no longer the world which is alien to them. The planet Earth, I think, they would find utterly foreign past a few fond remembrances. They wish for things, often material things that are irrelevant on this world and sometimes, understandably so, would see the loved ones they left behind or, more accurately, were taken from, but I do not doubt that each of them are Gorean girls. Only one, I think, silver-maned Naked Slave, would offer argument as to why this is not true, but I think even she knows, in her stubborn, oft recalcitrant heart, that it is. She wonders and debates with her sisters the mantle of 'slave' and being quantified as an 'object' or an 'animal', but it is a matter of semantics, truly. As the Ubara in a classic Tallux production once opined, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Of course the Ubara in the play was commenting on an actress in a play that was, unbeknownst to her, a characterization of herself. A rather complicated business about a play within a play. Intrigue. Assassination. Rather weightier than a mere slave girl pondering her existence, but I think it is not entirely unrelated for, truly, the slave girl doth protest too much, methinks.
Of note, aside from Sandal, Black Bina and Six Girl, Elise was curled up close in our group beside the fire last evening. I mention it to call attention to a thing. Since replacing the retaining wires with the weighted, steel hoops, she has undergone a transformation of sorts; rather like an awakening. It is a curious thing to see how something as simple as proper earrings can affect a girl. Some find them, understandably, an enhancement to their beauty and enjoy displaying them to whomever would care to notice. Others are mortified, at least for a time, as they understand it is, more than the collar and brand, equivalent to a life sentence of slavery. A collar may be removed. A brand, by some, might be overlooked. The visual representation of penetrated flesh, marked forever in a woman's lobes, is undeniably alluring whether she is permitted to wear adornment or not. As far as Elise is concerned, she is not mortified. She is amplified. She crawls more. Her femininity is, somehow, more obvious to her. Men did this to her. I did this to her. Her lobes are weighted. What she cannot see for herself, she can feel and, thus, is aware that others have no difficulty in seeing it.
Were we to march directly, we would be a few hands, somewhat less than a month, from Ar. When one embarks on a journey of such length, one is both eager to return to the comforts of home and, too, rueful of the ending adventure. I confided this to an auburn-maned girl within the confines of my lamplit tent after I retired for the evening. I have achieved much on the journey, made an unexpected and delightful acquisition and have shown a chainful of women, eight of them, the world outside of the gates of Ar. Some of them, of course, have seen places. Joy and the Six Girl, for example, are well traveled. Naked Slave, too, has been owned by fellows that were not of the city. Generally, however, the world outside the gates of the city in which they serve, even to those fortunate enough to have traveled abroad, remains an exciting, dangerous mystery. They know, now, of Thentis and of the environs of the Sardar, but do they know of Schendi? Can they speak of Turia? What of Port Kar, Torvaldsland or the Barrens of Gor?
We will not march directly, I think. I yet have business upon the road to conduct. I have decisions, still, to make with respect to my return home. I am eager, as I told a girl, to see the gates of my city, but I am rueful to leave the road.