The Piece she Carried from the Cave

When I was done speaking to her I rested my forearms on my knees and I asked her if she understood all I had said. She said yes. I told her to repeat it back to me then. Prove that she understood it. That seemed to take her back some. She should expect such from me.

she spoke it. She knew it. She understood it. And if the in the days to come it grew misty again I was sure there would be a master around to clear it up for her. Over time it would become more and more ingrained. The habits of fear would grow dim and the Sky and the bosk and the kaiila and the grass would once more flow freely through her veins. The very essence of being a Tuchuk that was honesty and pride in who we are.

I told her to keep dreaming. That the collar was not what hindered it but the mists of her mind. I told her if she felt fear, then she was believing a lie. It was that simple. And if in those days to come she was afraid and could not find the lie than to seek me out and I would help her.

I released her wrists from the binding. I told her to run like the wind back to her tasks. To remember everything she had said to me, and I would know if she was remembering it by the glow of pure womanhood that she would not be able to hide. I smacked her squarely on the ass and sent her off.

I watched her run across the grass and I knew that if she were thrown to a man again. By will of her master, a man that was perhaps not even a Tuchuk... I knew that she would make that dweller a believer in Tuchuk slaves. That the man would cry for the beauty and pride that flowed in her veins and he would wish to the Sky he had been born a Tuchuk Warrior.

Reflections

It was painful to see her as lost as she was. Lost to herself. I could only blame the years she had spent with dwellers. Confined beneath the ceilings and within the high walls. I can only wonder that there is any of her left at all. How deep the webbing of the lies she believed and spun around herself for protection. I can only think it is being back here on the plains with her people, under the Sky, no hiding from the wind and the rain that has begun to make her honest with herself. But that honesty is painful in its beginnings.

I reined in the beast and I threw a leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground. I gave her a full ten beats of the drum to kneel and when she did not I kicked her legs out from under her. No more was she given a hort. I told her she was not worth owning until she was honest with who she was. I told her she could not be owned nor mated, free woman nor slave until she knew who she was in the core of her being. I told her she was worthless without that knowledge, that she was a danger to herself and those around her.

I asked her who she was. She replied she was a slave. I told her I didn't ask what she was I asked who she was. She replied she was just a woman.

Just a woman.

Just a woman?

I wanted to backhand her. I wanted to see the blood spray from her lips across my boots. Instead I had a painful clamp of my fingers on her jaw and I spoke, though I probably spoke through my teeth.

"Just a woman? Where is your pride Tuchuk? Where is your arrogance? Where is the trust and faith in your breeding? Are you not a woman of the plains? Do you not feel the bosk in your veins? the Sky? the soil? the grass? Do you not remember the feel of kaiila muscle between your thighs? and the fury of a plains storm?"

Ah the poison of the dwellers. That she would have to give up everything to be a slave? Bosk shit. It would not change who she was, it would enhance what she was in her core. No more hiding. No more lies. She was pure Tuchuk woman. Free to feel desire when a strong man took her by the hair. Free to kneel at the feet of men and receive the gift of mastery. That thing we do to women, we show them pieces of themselves. Each man would show her a different piece. Some she would come to love more than others, some would show a clearer picture to her ... but she was not burdened with the choice any longer. She was free to kneel and receive. Her fear was based on the lie that she would be less of a woman in a collar.

When the truth was that it was the only way she would be a whole woman.

Enter the Cave of Mirrors

As the wagons were left behind the beast was allowed to lengthen his stride. I ran the woman for a long time. Until her breaths were ragged and I saw the sweat began to glisten on her body. And then I reined in Kai and we slowed to a walk. That is when I started questioning her. I would allow nothing sexual to enter between us. There would be no desire to cloud her answers. Physical exertion only. Always now the rhythm of the steps and the sound of the kaiila paws upon the plain. Her conscious mind would have to keep that rhythm or fall and be drug by the leather leash binding her wrists. Her subconscious mind would have to step up and aid the answering of my questions.

It was then I started her talking. I asked her where her fears were that clouded her mind. She asked me if I thought a woman could love two at one time. I would never allow her to see how that question effected me. But I told her my opinion. I believed a slave could love two men at one time. I did not believe a free woman could. She told me she was once confused between two men. She told me several other things. Things that led me to believe that in her heart, in her core, she was a slave. I did not lead her answers, nor her questions. I let her plot the way at first until I knew. It was only then I began to guide her through the mists of her own denial.

Spex Once Known as Mahalah

Declan came riding in. Man looked like death ... like death that had been sitting in a hot bag for a few days. A lot like an urt I knew of....

It was a little later that the Spex once known as Mahalah came to the fires. She was the reason I had come this morning though I had not spoken of the reason out loud. I wanted to ask her of the rains and when they would come. I was going to be working all day in a stream bed and there is nothing that will kill a man faster than to be caught on the plains in a dry stream bed when there is rain somewhere else and all of the sudden you get hit by a wall of water. It is not healthy to go lounging around in a stream bed on the plains. It may not be raining here, but it may be miles away and you will not know it until it is too late. But ... I was not going to be lounging today, I was going to be working ... and any help in the area was going to be welcomed.

I actually never did end up asking her. Now a couple of days ago I had told her if she got tired of the darkness clouding her mind to come and talk to me. Today she asked to speak to me. I know she has been troubled lately. I know the collar has been weighing on her neck like a mill stone. I told her she could speak to me while I rode towards the stream. Leashing her wrists I mounted and rode out from the first wagons towards the stream with her jogging at my stirrup.

I was not unaware of the looks we got. As we continued to travel away from the first wagons I know there were several gazes of satisfaction for I was an outrider and at my stirrup ran a woman of the first wagons. She was a good girl though and kept her head up, proud. Just like a Tuchuk woman always should. They would begrudgingly come to accept her as she was. After they rubbed her status in I was sure, but that was the way. When they saw she wore her collar well they would be proud of her.

There is a fierce protective pride in our people, and I savored it.

The Kaiila Known as Kai

I stopped at the first wagons before going out to the stream. The few moments respite from the work was welcome and I had been drawn to a few there that lightened the monotony of the day to day.

Today the aroma of blackwine was a torture. I am not wealthy enough to drink the stuff. The few occasions it has come my way though have given me an addiction for it. Mai was there at the fires drinking some. If I stared at her I hope she did not take it as an offense. Damn the stuff smelled good. The new slave isis was there beating furs and raven was around and brought water for me and offered to for my new kaiila.

Speaking of my new kaiila, he is a blood red beast. His left fang has been broken and it is jagged and gives him a malevolent sneer. The scar that runs down across his left eye does not help. The eye was not damaged fortunately. He is big. The biggest kaiila I have seen in a while. All raw power and we sometimes get into arguments about who is in control but I usually win. Usually.

I have named him Kaiila. There really wasn't anything else I could call him. He is just the epitome of ... kaiila. He ... is. I will probably shorten it to Kai though, less syllables to yell. He is intelligent for a beast. With him and Ahamay I do not feel quite as alone.

The Stream

The woman Noya and I raced at the kaiila track. She was a worthy opponent. It felt good to push my beast to the limits without it being work. I look forward to the next race with her. I finally met Trajen, his mate is Nava. A few free women around the fire though they seem withdrawn and quiet. There are several new slave girls around the first wagons. And some of the ones I met are no longer there. The Spex seems to be wearing her collar well. I begin to wonder if she does not belong in it. I can not see a man freeing a woman from a collar when she proves to be pleasing in one.

Some time during the winter the stream changed course and the large watering hole dried up. The bank caved in and rocks and soil slid into the path of the stream. For the last three days I have been working at dragging the stream and hauling boulders from the low hills to the west with teams of bosk. My muscles are so tight I sometimes wonder if they will ever relax. I never dreamed I would grow any more together with my saddle but the last three days have challenged that theory. Every night I have fallen into my blankets without a fire or food. I eat what meat I have dried and can shove into my belt before I drag myself back out into the saddle. I haven't even had time to gather dung.

I believe today we will actually change the course of the stream back. The old stream bed is drug out and prepared and the other boulders are in place for a small retaining wall so that it doesn't happen again. It was good in a way. We have been able to clean out the watering hole and make it more useful with better drainage that makes the water fresher and less brackish. Easier to do it when there is no water there. But a lot of work no one was planning for.

I've been too busy to think about the other events of this hand. When I start to think I just work harder. It is easier that way.

The Beginning of the End

What was it all about? It wasn't robbery. I have nothing to take. It wasn't mistaken identity. She was a targeted bolt sent by the unknown marksman. She found her mark .... though I know the result was unexpected.

I don't remember the moment I left her. I wish I could. I remember a lane of wagons. I remember a cool stream. I remember drinking and drinking the cool water and I would swear to you I must have leaked like a sieve because I never got enough. I remember stripping and bathing in that stream. Washing the stain of her from me. Her lingering scent.

I think I must have passed out on the bank of that stream. I was probably invisible in the grass. Perhaps it saved my life, I don't know. It was getting light when I remember walking over a grassy bank and seeing the many Tuchuk wagons ahead of me. Missing pieces .... I remember the smooth steps of my wagon. I remember the darkness inside.

And now there is only the numbness and the fractured pain as bolts of light rip through the mist. I know my head hurts. I know the feel of this leather between my fingers. I know the rhythm of the braid.

But I do not know why. I knew it was a bad idea to start going around the first wagons. I knew someone would recognize me. I knew it was better to remain anonymous. I knew it was a bad idea to start reaching for those things taken from me. But what is done is done. Enough hiding. Fuck it. Their first shot failed....

I think.

The End of the Beginning

The wine was expensive. The girl was exquisite. The sex was rough. I think she was alive when I left her. I wish I could remember that part.

I wish I could separate the sensations. Why I wanted to keep her eyes. Why I hated the tiny freckles across her breasts. How she could please me and make me want to destroy her all tied up and contained in one violent act.

Did I take aggression out on her? Or was she the cause of it? Did I humiliate her because of all my frustrations? Or because she inspired it?

I played her like an instrument. I reduced her to the basic female instincts she harbored in her core. I pieced out her emotions and I ate them. I fucked her until she was nothing more than a stain on my cock.

Was it because I was angry? Or was I angry because of it? Where did the surge of energy come from? I hated her pale flesh. I think I tried to rip it off. I liked the way she crawled on her belly in the dirt and begged me to hurt her again. I hated the word please and I know I slapped it from her lips.

She got more than she had bargained for. I hated the set up of it all, even through the fog I knew it for what it was. I know that when I was done with her she was a more honest female.

I also know she was not the driving force behind it. I don't know how I know it. I just know it.

What did they take me for? Yesterday they took me for a thirsty dusty rider. And I was. Yesterday they took me for a drunk. And I was. Yesterday they took me for an easy mark. And I wasn't.

I remember I liked the feel of her throat exposed in my fingers. I think she was alive when I left her. I wish I could remember that part.

The Beginning .. In Retrospect

In retrospect I still wonder if it wasn't another dream of mine. So real and yet so distant from my fragile hold on reality.

She was so beautiful. When I first saw her I only saw the soft white cloak she was covered in. Not the kind of cloak you wear to escape the cold. But the kind you wear to escape the burning rays of Lar Torvis. It was when she turned over her shoulder and shot a look at me from those eyes that I was enthralled. When she caught my gaze she turned fully to lift a bota of water to me. I could not speak. It was as if there was a rift cut between my lungs and my tongue. But the water was welcomed. I was so hot and tired and dusty. Sweat rolled down my forehead and temples as I lifted the cool water over my arm and let the stream hit my mouth.

In retrospect I knew it was too sweet. But I could not stop drinking. I was so dry and thirsty and it was so cool and wet.

I think I must have drained the bota. She offered me the shade behind the wagon. I threw a leg over and dropped to the ground stirring the dust beneath my boots. There was more to drink there. A sweet wine.

That is where I begin to lose the ordered filing of my memory. The rest is in pieces. Flashes of pictures, sensations ... all this intertwined within the pleasant fog that eases the throbbing of my head.

After the End .. or the Next Day

I think I must have been drunk last night. Intoxication still drifts in mists through my thoughts and Lar Torvis only reaches me in sharp spears that lance through the fog. I watch my fingers braiding the leather strips and I know they are my hands but my vision fluctuates from being so far away to very close. So close I have to lean back to focus. Today I do not try to brush the hair from my gaze. It is a welcome shade.

I do not drink much. I do not have time. I am still trying to piece together the events of yesterday. I remember a comfortable numb though. It lingers with the mists.

The repetitive movements are easy on my conscious. The back and forth as the new leather slides against my fingers.

My memory comes in flashes. I remember yesterday up to a point. A point where I was done riding and I had decided to make my way towards the first wagons. Perhaps spend some time with the spunky little jir. I like the person she brings out in me.
But I never got there.

Of Wisdom and Acquiescence

I should be a very wise man. Perhaps I am. I know I am driven to understand more and there is no limit to that drive. Sensation overwhelms me and I could weep for the exquisite beauty of it all. Even as it kills me. At one and the same time to see it and want to place it on a pedestal where it can be safe from all the dirt that life has to throw ... and also to cut it apart further and feel the warm wet slickness up to my elbows.
Something so simple as a beautiful woman, a Tuchuk slave. Her inhibitions slaughtered and peeled away. She is the epitome of female beauty and desire. Arrogance come to acquiescence at your feet.
And yet as much as I may dream and conspire against Life, Life still delivers its cutting blows that leave the scars that mark me as a warrior. I am better, I am stronger, I am wiser. I am the bones beneath the flesh that rots .... and I may not be the man who has seen the light, I may not be the man who announces himself with the sound of trumpets and horns, but I am real. And I don't look for perfection. I don't look for the light. I simply want someone to live beneath my hand, thrive beneath my wisdom, grow beneath my guidance .... and think of me when I am not around.

To Be Wise

I think it is every man's drive to know better. To be wise beyond his years and yet we all forget what makes a man wise. Experience. Those life lessons that open up his understanding like a rotten fruit in the summer heat. The skin splits and the swollen flesh extends outward to burst its confines. The sweet stench rising on the ardent air to assail the nostrils.

We all want to be wise. And we all complain when our skin hurts.

To Understand a Wink

Sometimes I wonder where it comes from. The emotion. The chuckle or the smile. Even perhaps a wink for a favored one. Sometimes it all seems so far away from me. Like I am watching at a distance this man... this man who is myself. Sometimes I want to break through to him. To communicate. To feel him. Somehow to bring the emotion and thought together for the first time like long lost lovers. To let them caress and feel once again the familiar contours and crevices, the way the muscle moves beneath the skin. Would I survive it? Would I live beyond the crashing of the sky?
The slave known as matou is gone. Run away they say. I am not sure how that is, how she would survive the sleens. But I witnessed her hiding from me. Something I did not ever expect to see. I was wrong to want to show her those things. I was wrong. I want to know better. I want to remember this. I want to not make mistakes. I will not make that mistake again.

Spex and the Tuchuk Slaves

Today I rode to the first wagons again. This time to collect Ahamay.

I had spent since the early morning hours riding. I hate days. I would much rather work the nights. The nights are cool and the bosk are quiet ... usually. The day shift is hot and dusty. The bosk on the move constantly. Grass grass grass ...always the eternal search for grass. Water also. Always moving. If we stayed too long in one place we would destroy the grass and the entire plains would become a wasteland, a desert. And so always we move forward. I ate enough dust today to make another rider as big as myself. But I was so thirsty he would have been a very dry man. Dust coats everything. My eyes grate with sand when I blink. I look hundreds of years old for dust cakes every sweat trail and makes my hair look gray. Most times I use a wind scarf. It is old and threadbare but it is mine, and it is all I have
.
Several things happened this visit to the first wagons. I found the Spex. But she was collared and chained to a wagon. Now isn't that some shit. I do not know what black cloud is going to come of that but any time a Spex is humiliated bad things happen. Do not mistake me, I do not believe that a Spex should get away with anything any other woman doesn't. But a man really takes the Fates by the balls when he messes with a Spex.

My beast just stood there with his head hung and drool running down one of his fangs. I was too dry to drool and I sat upon my kaiila surrounded by slaves and not one of them offered to serve me. It is not how I was accustomed to being greeted at the first wagons. I know I am only an outrider. To some I am nothing. But I am a scarred warrior. I am a master. And above all these things I am a man. I did not become angry over this. I even joked with a slave named ori about Ahamay being a bastard of a bird. I think I must have offended her, if it is possible for a man to offend a slave, for her attitude towards me and her expressions. Again, these things would not make me angry. A man learns early on which things to give importance to and which things are not worth the energy. Not that I can say it always works for me. But for whatever reason I did not get angry. I brought water for my kaiila and he drank like he would never get the chance again. Now the Spex, she noticed no one had served me and apologized to me for them. To some it was news that I had not been served. Which was no excuse, but it did offer a small reason. Two slaves came to me then, neka and dusty. They bellied and begged to serve me. I asked them, if I had been mistaken in believing that the first wagons were like any other place where kajirae were proud to serve men. The question was of course redundant. I told them the honor of serving me was not going to be given, for it took the Spex's words to bring them to my feet. I may be an outrider but I am a fiercely proud Tuchuk. They begged me to allow them to serve, because it was their duty. This was true, but it was not the words I had been looking for. Their duty to me was fulfilled and they were told so. The slave ori came to me then and begged my forgiveness. I gave them all a short lecture on the pride of Tuchuk slaves. I think they heard me. Tuchuk kajirae are vibrant and beautiful, but no more so than when they are in tune with their slavery. Bringing obeisance and arrogance together. I like to believe that only Tuchuk slaves can do so.

I left them with the command to always give water to a rider. To always offer to serve. And I cupped my hands into the water barrel and I drank from my own fingers.

Is it slavery that inspires such bitter hatred in me? No of course not. Do not be so narrow minded and simple.

I do not hate her. I hate the dreams I built around her that were not based on her reality. Spun with some kind of mist inspired by my own desires and needs. I placed her on a pedestal that was not for her ... and she fell without any beauty or grace.

Her wings ripped from her flesh leaving ragged holes in my memory of her. It is not she .. herself ... that brings the bile to rise in my throat. It is my own broken and shattered visions stitched so closely to my heart that when they were rent from me they caused a bleeding that still leaves my soul ichor drenched and cold.

So far from hating slavery, it is more in fact that I am more comfortable with it than with free women. At least a slave is honest with herself and with the men in her life. She does not live behind a veil of the unknown. There is no guessing who and what she is. She hides nothing, owns nothing. She is simply what she is.

A free woman can be one of two things. A slave in disguise. Or the pristine sanctum of womanhood that every man desires for his companion. It is the guesswork involved that I have had done with.

No I do not hate her. I hate the mockery made of what I built for her. I despise my vision quartered and pieced out to every hungry voracious pit. Pulled asunder and devoured by the uninspired ... the masses ... the normal deaf, dumb and mute scavengers of life.

My Daemon

Was it just sex that effected me like this? No, of course not. I was no stranger to the act.

It was her.

From the time I had loosed her virgin stitches she infected my veins like a slow acting poison. Kanda for the mind. Drugged conscience ... and I don't mean conscious.

I had built such dreams around her. They were not exactly normal. I don't think I've had a normal dream in my entire existence. But they were as close to normal as I had ever come. She was to be mine someday. To stand beside me, bear children.
Who was she? She was my sister.

No, not my blood sister. To my knowledge there are none that share my blood. She was the daughter of Dubois. Dark haired Tuchuk Wench with intoxicating blue eyes .... so much like the Sky I prayed to them.

The summer we spent together was hot and wet and like none other I can remember. Was it the naivety of youth? Was it the inevitable treacherous soul of women? When they caught her with one of the commanders she was begging to be his slave. A slut with her thighs splayed for every scarred warrior of the Tribe. Is it that in every woman's heart there is a whore?

She is still a slave of the Tribe. I can not but feel the drug every time I see her. Though I no longer partake of her community pussy. Sloppy stench. She makes me ill.

Yet still sometimes I wake from the dream of fucking her drenched in the same heat of that summer and my stomach wretches with the strength of her intoxication and the sick memory of her.

Dying Dream

I lay sweating and my breath was ragged ... seeming torn in and out of my lungs. The act of dreamed sex having flexed every muscle of my body until they screamed for more oxygen. I was staring at the covering of my wagon for a long time before I saw it. I was drenched in sweat. The dream had been intense and it left me sick with the strength of it. I rolled over and got my knees under me and I just stayed there for several moments with my forehead pressed against the cool planks of the flooring.

Reality.

I called it forth like a Spex demanding vision from mist. I finally straitened enough to allow my lungs to fill more with air and raked fingers back through my soaked hair. I slowly leaned my head back and clenched my fists and yelled. The sound of my own voice seemed to dispel the last of the reverie mists.

Slowly my heart's beat returned to normal.

Slowly the sweat cooled and dried upon my body. Slowly the darkness of my gaze found the ability to focus.

Slowly ... my synapses left off the vision of her.

Dry and Weathered

Yesterday I rode to the first wagons. I asked the Spex of Ahamay. She said he was doing well. That the slave matou had a gift with him. I asked her patience with him. That I would be riding towards the settlements looking for a slave. And I did not wish to leave him alone yet at my wagon. She agreed. She told me that I should choose a slave well since she and the woman called Nava went through slaves like water. That they were hard on them. I told her I had no worries for if the slave survived me she would have no trouble surviving elsewhere. I spoke more truth than was obvious on the surface. I am not an easy master. I am not an easy man for that matter. I try hard to be normal. To show the expressions and emotions that they all do at the right times and for the right reasons. It is not that I do not have emotions, not at all. I have so many. They just never seem to fit where everyone else feels they belong. I will probably get old at some point and not care, but right now I am still caught up in that age old drive to belong to something ... somewhere. If I had the inclination I could lament my lack of identity with it all.

Perhaps tomorrow.

I am just now back from riding all night. The Spex was right when she said it was going to rain. It did. And that mud pit we have had so much trouble with was nothing but more trouble. I worked all night. The day today was hot and everything dried and is dusty. I rode again to the central wagons as I promised the Spex I would do. I don't even remember getting there. My mind was caught in this ebb of mire so like the bosk I had worked all night to free. Something was going on with the slaves there. Some kind of trouble. I was pleased at least one came to bring me water, I needed it so badly. Even my kaiila was too tired to drool. She itched to leave and so I let her. I just drank and drank until I thought I would drown and still I felt the cracks of dryness all through me. Will I know anything but thirst? Of course, but at the moment it does not seem like it.

I am going to sleep some and then head for the settlements.

Sleep. My body so tired and yet my mind races with so many thoughts. Too many thoughts to control. To rein in. Why is it when I stumble through the door of my wagon I can't even think, all I want is a chance to stop forcing my muscles to respond. And then, when I can finally do so .... I can't. My eyes wide open staring at the covering above, or the walls. I hate walls. I've decided. I hate grass. I hate the horizon. I hate bosk. I hate stupid bosk that get stuck in mud. I hate kaiila. I hate women. I hate the silence without them. I hate ...

Somewhere in there I slept.