Thoughts of a Younger Me

originally posted May 9, 2006

Perhaps I knew Elise as a younger fellow. If I did not know her, I certainly knew girls like her. As boys become men, they start to notice women. All women. Even the free women. I was no different. They smell differently. They move differently. They are soft.We kept a comely, little kettle girl in my Father's house. She was often my moaning victim, thrilled to be thrown into a dark corner of the domicile or, even, right over the low table beside my dinner plate. I have spoken of her before. I was deeply infatuated with her. She was the first woman I sated myself with. Often she would be beaten for dallying in getting her chores completed. It could not be helped. She could scarcely dust shelving and mop floors pinned beneath my eager rape. Such lusts are not discouraged in young fellows. Often, a young fellow might be scolded for keeping a slave from her duties but he is winked at in the same moment. Once a larl tastes meat, you cannot expect him to graze. I would have first encountered Elise, or girls like her, at the open air Markets in places such as the Sul District on Teiban Street. Curious women, many of them high caste, covered from head to foot. Even their fingers were gloved. I did not have my cynicisms about the higher castes at that age. I did not understand, then, the insidious ways they discouraged the populace as a whole from knowing certain truths about the world around them. Accordingly, I did not see much difference in high castes maidens compared with girls of my own ilk. Certainly, a craftsman's daughter, the young girl of an Artisan or Poet or Painter or what have you would not be so richly robed as the scion of a Builder or a Warrior, but they would be robed. And veiled. Perhaps she would sally forth from her domicile with but three veils concealing her countenance, whereas a Physician's daughter would not do so without a minimum of five and perhaps as much as seven. What does that mean to a young Poet, hefting a red fruit in his palm, whiling away the day? Not much. They were all curiosities. None of them were equal to the kettle girl waiting for him on her mat, perhaps scratching at the tiles around her, but they held a definite fascination. Occasionally, one of them would step out of line and find herself face-stripped, her robes cut from her body as she was forced to her knees. Oh, the whiteness of their shoulders. If I had seen but one she-tarsk revealed as the veils were stripped and the brocade was ripped, perhaps it would have squashed the fascination, but that never occured. Also, it was not often such a thing happened. I think twice in my recollection. One of them, I recall, was a thief. In Ar of all places. A thief in the robes of a free woman. She was courting the collar. I assume she is splendidly happy at the moment as there is little doubt her throat is still encircled by obdurate, locking steel. I remember speaking to Elise for the first time, detecting the lilt to her voice. I knew, almost instantly, she was either the daughter of a pretentious Merchant or, more likely, of the higher castes before falling to slavery. It brought my mind back to my youth, the afternoons I spent wondering about the many veiled, robed girls at market. Occasionally, one of those girls would allow an 'inadvertant' misalignment of one or more of her veils as she pretended not to look in my direction. Now I had one before me without the benefit of her veils to inflict her coy torture. I could, if it pleased me, have her completely nude before me. She was called Jelly. A fitting name for a slave girl. It indicates that she is sweet and easily spreads. Both true. From nearly the first time I spoke with her, however, I called her Elise. She surrendered the name of the free girl who fell to the Slaver's noose to me. I put it upon her then. I keep it upon her now. I own her. I paid handsomely to own her. She is learning to dance the Sa-eela. I am not displeased with her progress.