Dancing in the Rain

"You are naked!," said Dee with surprise written all over her face. "I am naked," I answered, rather matter of factly. I said it that way, but I felt quite differently, and raced down the platform steps to take Dee's hands in mine. She had been standing outside the slave wagon, where I usually slept, calling for me. I had stood at the wagon flaps of the main wagon of Master Fonce watching her for a moment. Dee wasn't shy, but she stood at the bottom step of the slave wagon platform and kept calling for me. Was it because it was another Master's wagons? Or maybe it was courtesy. I wouldn't have minded if she barged right on in. Just as I didn't mind that she would see me naked. She let me feel comfortable with her, like a sister or even my cousin Edda. And besides all that, she was trying to teach me to -be- a slave. I think she kept running into my wall of flowers and hearts and glittering stars and the uncontrollable feelings that took over everything else when I spotted the Brave Warrior Fonce. Some day I would show her that I really had learned what she tried so hard to show me. Some day, but not today.

I held Dee's hands with mine, trying to tell her of the incredible feelings I now had. Things I didn't quite understand - wants and hungers that seemed to grow ever more urgent and demanding inside of me. The pulsing ache that lay simmering, stirred into motion almost every time I tried to breathe. She tugged me toward the fields, casting a wary glance to the spitting sky. The mists had rolled away, washed by the large luminous drops of rain that were spilling from a turbulent sky. It was warm, more like teardrops, than a change of season rain. It was the kind of rain I would have begged to go out and play in when I was younger. I could hear Yama saying to watch for the lightening and thunder and come right back in out of the storm. But I loved storms. I loved watching the sky light up brighter than any lamp or even the stars could. I would pretend that the sky was cleaning out it's paint brushes, washing pinks and violets, purples and fuchsias with every burst of light. That was where the rainbow came from at the end. From clean brushes, pristine paint, pure colors. I was hoping that this would be that type of storm.

Thinking of Yama brought me out of my bubble just a bit. Dee had asked me what my Yama would have though of my new attire. We were trying to find usable chips of dung for fuel before the rain worsened, or the ground simply consumed them. I thought about it for a moment, but not much longer. My Yama would have taken one look at me and drug the quilt of browns and golds from the basket in the corner to throw around my shoulders. She would have tried to shuffle me off to my room, all the while whispering in my ear in husky tones about propriety and proper behavior. Uncle Dray, I told Dee, would have chased me into the house to get the quilt myself. She wondered if I missed them, and I admitted that I did. I wished I could be with them, and with my Brave Warrior at the same time. I wanted to tell them all about Him, about how wonderful I felt each time I was with Him, or looked upon Him, or thought of Him. I wanted to show them just how beautiful I was feeling.

The rain took up a chorus of sorts, changing from the warm drops that were large enough to wet a shoulder, and becoming a splattering continuous stream of water. We hurried back towards the wagons, giving up on the dung picking for the day, and pretty much anything else out of doors. Dee gave me a wet hug and departed in a hurry for her Master's wagons, just in case the rain would end his work for the day. I returned to the staked out patch of ground that was like a bud in the flower of Warrior Fonce's wagons. I did not hide though, I danced as if I would never get another chance, letting the rain touch skin that had never felt it before. Not in this way.