Voyeur (A Series) Part Two - Listening

Offers to assist Shel were finally rewarded with a request, an allowance, to clean a soot blackened basket of tattered old cloths. It would be no easy task, for it seemed like the rags had been saved for a long, long time and I doubted they would see bleached white cleanliness with a mere swish in the pond. I did not mind, not really. I was glad for the work, but bothered by the atmosphere surrounding it. My mind began to pick it apart and analyze it, pros and cons, good and bad points, examining the whole meeting with a critical searching eye.


I arrived at the nearby stream without much knowledge of how I had gotten there, consumed with the replay of events and the conversation I was having with myself over the odd feeling inside my chest. A hole was there, or a tear that would lead to a hole, or a nick that would render a tear that would lead to a hole. Something. Heavy and unfamiliar and thick. The sudden cold water of the stream stopped the spiraling interior journey long enough to assess my surroundings.

This was not my regular time to visit the stream. Usually by this point in the day I was long gone to a favored scenic view, mending or sewing, or otherwise occupied. My wash was already half damp, half dry and the regular faces of my day had all been spotted, greeted, attended to. This was an unfamiliar group of women...mostly slaves...that ordered their day differently. I glanced around soaking up the atmosphere much in the same way all those dirty cloths soaked up the chilly water.

The voices splattered over me, lapping at recognition and telling me the story so that I could catch on. A blushing beauty knelt next to me, sinking a dark tunic hesitantly into the bath. It was almost...with regret..that she fed the dark cloth to the consuming liquid. I realized she was the object of the loud voices that trilled over the others. The teasing, in a way that women have of doing, that hid the pokes, prods and truth beneath a pleasant layer of compliments. In a sudden moment of inspiration I glanced aside, meeting a shy smile with my own and offered a place along the stream that I knew of that spilled calmer over the rocky bed beneath.


She was very agreeable.



They call her pot. An odd name that had me look at her twice, but the reasoning was sound, if not tinged with cruel humor. She always washed the pots...and kettles...and pans and whatever else grew grease and goo encrusted during the day.

"It is all about the rhythm, the pattern," she said as she told me of her Master. He preferred the woman with the hair as dark as a stormy night. Almost every evening she pranced out of the wagon with a smug smile back to the others before she disappeared into the embrace of His arms. Occasionally he plucked the brunette from the tangle of legs and arms in the slave wagon, guaranteeing that sparks would fly the next day between these two women. The energy was often expelled in grand achievements of chores, extra attention paid to His every want and desire, and a meal fit for the Ubar himself...for her Master resolutely opposed the physical marking of His property by beast. He had never chosen the quiet girl sandy, saddled with a dweller's name. Nor had he ever looked in pot's direction.

Until last night.


Her cheeks bloomed right before my eyes as she took a breath, the slow smile of remembrance chasing every other thought out for a long while. Who couldn't help but grin along with her. She was just that..touching, and touch she did..all those places where I held intimate memories. The other girls didn't quite know what to make of it all...and really...neither did pot. I enjoyed her flustery enthusiasm, her sharing of little bits and pieces, for I understood she was holding on to all those treasures for as long as she could. I think we found a friend in that moment, in each other. For how long...only the skies would know.

I sat smiling for a long time after she left. But I also started thinking about the condition of Brave Warrior Master Fonce's slave wagon....what there was of it.