The color red

I have many thoughts about the color red. I have never been one to wear red. I don't think it compliments my coloring all that well, nor did it match well enough with the browns and dusky colors I did often wear. To me, red belongs with black or gray. Red coupled with white is all right, but certainly doesn't have the impact of black. Those two speak of passionate, intense, dramatic effect to me. Red belongs in poignant art, decorating and drawing the eye to a simplistic moment. Things in red stand out to me, and usually I am amused by the particular article's posturing. A red cup or bowl makes me grin with the bold implication, and the unexpected hue. I like unexpected, and I like surprises.

Most of the time.

I found myself down at the bend of the stream where the waters dashed and hurried to a small fall into a larger creek bed. This was my usual spot for rinsing out the dyes from batches of fiber. It was far enough away from the ordinary spots of usage - either bathing, filling botas, or doing laundry. The water hurried away from such areas as well, so there was no danger of contaminating the fresh clear liquid upstream. Nya sauntered by with a few slave girls in tow. Nya and I have reached a sort of truce. She finds me an unresponsive target, and I have begun to search her words for the humor that tangles among them. I always find humor in the sassy bits and pieces.

Taking handfuls of fluff, I dunked it into the cool wash, listening to the girl talk going on around me. The dye water was a deep dark tint from the stems and leaves of some of my own plants. I expected the bath water to be the same, fingers of wetness beseeching the excess color from the soft clean wool. What pooled into the stream, however, was not a nutty brown or hunter green. Brilliant against the blue green of water was a crimson halo. Blood red pooled, rippled, and floated lazily away from the spot where it should have been some other color. I closed my eyes, only to see a lifeless body, it's eyes closed in eternal slumber, stroked by the soft insistence of persistent water. I gasped, though it must have been much louder than I realized, for the slaves nearby came over to see.

They were all wearing the uniform of many in the camp - the black leather and red cording that set off the rounds of hips and slim line of waist. Now in closer proximity to me, they could not only see the reddened water my hands whisked through, empty of bodies and containing only dye and verr fiber, but also the thinning shift draped around my own curves and valleys. One of them remarked that my tunic was fast becoming a ta-teera, while another exclaimed that the dye bath color looked much like paga hot red. Dumbfounded, I asked what both things meant.

One explained that in the city they once lived in, a city with walls and towers and a name I hoped never to learn, had slaves that wore ta-teeras, which was a nice name for a slave rag. Skimpy and hardly more than shreds of cloth, it was decadent and alluring. Decadent. I liked the word, the sound of it, and the way it formed against my lips. The meaning wrote itself in hot color across my cheekbones, drew my eyelids to half mast as if the lashes had suddenly grown heavy, and inspired me to lick the dryness off my lips.

The other turned out to be a color most often seen on the nails of 'love slaves'. Both women gave emphasis to the word, taking it from a mere adjective to a whole other class of person. Whether I still looked dumbfounded, or a more familiar dreamy look had taken it's place, the women found reason to explain that further too. They spoke of women, cherished and adored, who's only purpose in life was to pamper themselves into perfection and readiness for the moment when their Master beckoned. Hair brushed to a high shine, cut to invite a fist to hold. Lips stained a deep kiss me off color. Soft skin, oiled to a satiny sheen. And nails, long and perfect and ...red.

Paga hot red.

Like I said, things in red stand out to me.