Owned

Owned

1

Dying

Owner, someone owning me, me! What a thought! But someone did own me now. Now there was a thought that if you had said it to me last springs I would have hit you repeatedly, with something hard, and heavy. I had had plans back then, big plans. My best friend Piper and I had put together a group much like the one I was traveling with now. We were going to be adventures.

That was a simpler time. This was the reality. By summer a war broke out. War meant that the beautiful people were more aware of their surroundings. That wasn’t good for someone used to making money by being ignored. Piper got caught, and the Count’s men took her hand. By fall, I barley had enough money save up to keep up with what that pig of a land lord charged me. He had offered other methods of payment… however I declined.

“Everything will be better.” I thought “With the harvest festival, people with too much beer and full bellies will be celebrating the victory and their boys coming home from the front. They will be easy, happy, fat and slow.”

Only there was no victory. The Count said that the battles had not gone well and that the men would not be coming back yet. As such the women did the harvesting as well as the daily running of their homes. With all of that the festival was somewhat… lacking. What should have been seven days of so much food even the poorest of people; which I now was one of, should have been stuffed, was only two days and almost no one attended, and there was no food to be begged.

By the time winter’s cold had set its teeth in, I had been turned out of every church and every boarding house in county, in favor of those that needed it more, wounded soldiers, children, and the elderly. I was “a woman who was into her third year of adult hood and who was perfectly healthy.” That was a health that did not last due to the cold and starvation. When I heard the beating of wings, my first thought was the C’talis had sent an angel for me.

When I opened my eyes a white skinned horned and winged devil stared down at me, I knew that I, Chloe small time pick pocket and sometime whore, would be dragged to the Hells where a thief like me belonged. Wakening in the world again never entered into my mind.

2

Rebirth

My first thought after that, the very first thing that came to my mind after “dying” was warmth, comfort, and above all something savory on my tongue. That could not be right. The warm broth held a taste I could not place. It soothed my throat as it rolled down. It soothed my senses to be so warm and safe. I felt safe. Good food, not cold, at that moment I didn’t care where I was so long as it lasted.

My stomach however wasn’t having any of this crap and rejected it immediately. Something, no, someone much stronger than I was, held me close.  They helped me with this vehement rejection, this betrayal of self my guts were perpetrating on the rest of me. The chill from the fever didn’t help matters. But they held me through the fever I had, they made me feel safe… even if my body hated me.

In my fever dreams, I was held and helped by an angel. He seemed to always holding me, helping me, at least most of the time. His skin soft and warm, and yet cool against my fevered skin. His words were however in a language I did not know. The tone soothed me I felt at peace. However other times I saw a devil, waiting just out of reach, always when the angel was gone. He was achingly beautiful. Skin the color of fine porcelain, hair like snow, with eyes of deepest lavender. All of these things he had kept from when he was serving as an angel to Lord C’talis. The horns on his face were marks of his betrayal and the resulting fall; as were the bat like wings upon his back, clawed fingers and legs like that of the hind legs of a dog. Yet even there the skin was still so perfect, so flawless.  The horns did not mar his face as I thought they would, three small things just above each eye ridge, and three down the middle of his forehead, nine in all. He wore a loin cloth, with a metal ring belt, the cloth was attached to it, and his tunic was of black fur, setting of the paleness of his body. 

In my fevered state I begged the angel when he was with me not to let that devil take my soul, pleaded, confessed every sin and asked what penitence I should do to avoid that fate.

These thought wore heavy on me when I woke in the furs once the fever finally broke. I was Chloe, a girl who had run from an orphanage of C’talis and turned to a life of crime in desperation. I woke to find myself in a body aching and weary from long bed rest due to sickness. I hurt far too much and in too many places to be in heaven, but the pain was not severe enough for me to be in even the nicest of the hells I was taught about as a child. The first thing I did was take stock of me and my surroundings.

Every muscle in my body was sore, a dull ach that comes from being in one position for too long. However I was warm, a glorious condition I had not known the last time I could think through the wool that had wrapped itself around my mind. I felt and smelled animal fur, a deep brown coat laid before my eyes when I opened them. One was below me and another above, with the smoothness of a properly tanned hide against my skin. That and the lack of the smell of urine and refuse was further proof I was not in the alley that I had collapsed in due to the cough and fever. My lungs no longer burned or rattled with each breath, and though I knew my strength had yet to return, I also knew I was no longer starving. My insides did not feel as cold as they once did, and the numbness and emptiness were gone as well.

I turned my head and looked around to be greeted with unfamiliar sights. I expected to be inside a home, or a church, I mean someone had obviously took me in from that alley. Instead I was inside a womb of hides, which was very comforting in a slightly disturbing way. It was a half dome made of sticks and poles with stretched taunt hide keeping outside out and inside in. It was tall enough that an Orc could reach up and brush his fingers tips along the ceiling and could lay down with its feet at the center and brush the round sides, yet somehow it felt, cozy. Not small or confining at all, kind of homey and close. To one side was a strange collection of stick frame work and rope to make a hammock, but one with three points of contact at the top making for two V like cuts in it and one point at the bottom. The entire thing frame and all had the look of folding down for easy set up and easy carry, one big piece of moveable furnishing. Other than that was a central trunk of a tree, it was not the center post of the place as it was not attached to the roof, but it sat there. From it hung iron pots and cook ware, a back pack of a strange design, as well as staff and a medallion and the source of light in this new world, a lit lantern.

The floor was covered one end to the other with furs over various colors and of various thicknesses of fur and their length, from the close fur of the deer, to the shaggy pelt of an unshorn sheep. Though the pelts were thrown around there was defiantly the suggestion of, well, taste. Like the owner of the furs was worried about them clashing with the décor. I had seen high society people in town worry of such things, but to find it here in a barbarian’s hunt was strange.

That brought me back to the here and now. Someone, obviously a barbarian, a wild man of some sort, had found me and had brought me here. They came into to town to trade, it happened all the time in all seasons and they came from all over. Mostly from the north, that much was true as that way had more wild lands with no government, well not to speak of anyway. The barbarian’s clamed however that further up was the Empire of the Five Races. They said this in such a way as if it was a fearsome force and something not to be taken lightly. To hear them it was a land ruled not by men or law, but by monsters. They said always that breaking the law there is a death sentence; however they also always claimed to be treated well there, better than most people treated them outside their own tribe at least.

The priests were proud to point to these men and their lack of civilized behavior. They always treated me well enough, but I had to admit, their ideas on sex, as well as how men and women should interact was most distressing. And their modes of dress were somewhat freighting. Armed women were nothing new to me, but their women often acted and dressed like men. And the men drank more, fought more, bleed more, and were always looking for the next wenching even if they had their wives along with them. The stories I had heard of how the women of these people like to lay with dogs and stallions for the feel of something large in them.

I had to shake my head. If tasked with it I had to admit there were times after some of my male friends were done with me that it didn’t seem a too bad idea. At least then I could understand the lack of actual connection.  But it was just that an idea not something to ever do.

Now I found myself in one of their tents, owing my life to them. If half of what I heard was true, one of the hells may have been a better option, at least I would deserve what I got there.

The flap that acted as a door way opened. As soon as I heard it I dived and grabbed a frying pan off the post. Sitting there clutching the weight of it, I knew it had been a very long time since anything of weight had been in my hands. What was once light and easy to hold now made me feel like a small frightened child. My arms almost immediately started to tremble. Part of that may have been the terror griping me in my stomach. Terror is a funny thing, it can make you much stronger than you actually are, or it can rob you of your strength.

A dark outline entered from the day of outside, light flooded the near dark interior. I lost sight of whoever it was. Come on! I mean how long had it been since I had seen natural light? I was completely blinded!

Someone gently took the weight out of my hand before I even realized anyone had moved. Not that I could have really done anything with it, but it felt good to have the illusion I could protect myself. Maybe I could drop it on their foot and crawl away very fast. Then finally my eyes adjusted, and my mind went numb. No thought, no ability to think. Before me stood the devil that I had dreamed of! His skin still shown like porcelain, his eyes still as beautiful, but when he spoke his voice was that of the angel that had held me, nursed me back to health.

“Vanti Dawn,” he said softly, then again in highland “Clam, peace. No Harm do I mean to you.” His smile was warm and his words warmer somehow. I could smell him; smell his breath and a scent of lilies were coming off of him.

This was no dream and my mind could not come up with a nightmare like this. I realized how screwed I was. This wasn’t a devil. It would be better if it was. I was alive; if it was a devil it would just kill me. Maybe not fast, maybe do horrible things to me first. I knew this for certain. But this was going to be worse than anything I could imagine. This creature was not one of the devils of legend, but one of her mortal followers, one of the monsters of the so called Empire of Five.

“I know you not know my tongue, but might I know yours. Speak and let us see if my trying studying has paid off.” His words were soft and its voice was a voice meant to sing songs to loved ones on cold nights. This could not be happening, this couldn’t be real.

The words softly escaped my throat unbidden, two of them. They were both a muttered curse and a prayer of salvation from the path before me. A prayer I did not know if even C’talis could answer.  “Leather Wing…”

3

Talking with a Devil

“Ah good! This language I know, and it is a full and rich one with many fine ways of speaking.” A Smile spread across his face showing dainty little fangs, four of them on top and four on the bottom, the canines as well as the tooth directly behind them. They looked wickedly sharp.

“Now to begin explain to you. I am in your debt!” He said this as proudly as if he had just announced that the Count had picked him to lead the men off to war.

Ok, that was not something I expected to hear, not at all. Hold on, this guy must not be as good with Trade Speak as he thinks he is.  There was no way those words could make any since within the contexts of what had happen.

“What?” Not the greatest comeback I know, but come on, this guy just said that water was dry, well the equivalent anyway. And he worshiped and served Lunavner. He saved my life; I was in debt to him. Not that I wanted to be mind you.  But the absurdity of what he said kind of took some of the fear out of me. He smiled wider. It was as if he got joy from my confusion.

He proved that point with his next words, “Your life, I have saved. Now I must feed you, cloth you, see to your shelter, teach you, make you comfortable, fulfill you, and make you happy.” With each word he seemed to vibrate. Such joy he had, it was infectious and despite the fact that I still had no frame of reference for this, I felt myself smile.  The absurdity of it all, of what he said. Seeing him was like seeing a small child on darkest morn, who just knew he was getting exactly what he asked for from Chrisdaclaw. With that how can you be afraid? So it was strange. Might as well find out why this made him so happy. The priest had lied to me about everything else in my life.

“You mean you are going to take care of me, in all things?” Disbelief still filled my voice, but hay as a kid I had often had dreams of someone coming and taking me away to a life of ease and grace. Hadn’t we all? At this point I didn’t really care if it was a Leather Wing.

“As if you were my most prized possession.” The relief on his face was comical, as was the joy I saw there. This guy was going to be playing prince charming for me and you would think it was all he ever wanted to do with his life.

“All right, what do I have to do?” No offer this good came without a price, so better to ask now than find out later.

“Mind me, do what I say. Do chore I give you. Learn what I teach, and for seven years I will do these things for my slave.” Again he beamed and his pride was where I could see it, pride at what he said and what he offered.

Two problems with this; one was Slave and the other was Seven Years! “Sev... Seven years? Slave? Have you lost your mind?” Not my day for witty comebacks. But come on, I just went from dwelling in the palace, to cleaning the dungeon. It’s a lot for a girl to take in. And ok, it also pissed me off.

“Yes, no… um…” His confusion seemed very real. “Seven years, um, twenty eight seasons, 91 moon, um, sorry, I do not know how many weeks, my math is not that good.” Gods did this guy think I would like this offer or something?

The slaves in town were feed, housed, and looked after. Suddenly the possession part of his stamen made since. He thought he owned me! And more over he thought I would be happy about it. The outrage of it!

         “Now see here” my voices raised itself with all of the fear and furry I felt.  This was not good, and I wasn’t going down without a fight, or at least giving him a piece of my mind. “I am a free person, in no debt, beholding to no one! I am Chloe and yes I am a poor but you have no proof I have broken any laws. I belong to no one!” Sadly two things happened then, one the beast of a man looked horrified and startled. He understood he had offended me and from the looks of him that was not his intent. He looked on the verge of tears! How could a guy who just announced he was going to throw me into a life of servitude as less than a person make me feel bad because I broke his heart?

Second my legs gave out.

I hadn’t realized I had stood up. Pride had driven me to do so, pride and outrage. It also kept me from feeling the pain that standing brought with it. Fire raged through my legs, my muscles started to pull themselves apart, to pull one bone from another. It was a good reminder of how much I was at this devils man’s mercy.

As I fell, he gently caught me up into his arms. I swear the lily smell wasn’t cologne; it was coming right off of him. He took me back over to bed of furs and laid me in it like my mom used to do when I was sick. He was saying something, but I could not make it out, the pain was like a sound in my ears. Or maybe I was screaming as he massaged my legs. The sound of it however soothed me. His hands were tender but insistent that the knots I had tied my legs in was coming out. If you never had someone with soft hands work on a cramp in your leg I highly recommend it, much as I recommend everyone take a rock to the face. There was no venom in his words as he talked to me. I mean I just about made the poor boy cry, and obviously this wasn’t going as he planned it, but still I heard no sting in his tone. Of course he could have been calling me a whore or worse for all I knew. So this is what it feels like to be a dog? 

A look of genuine grief and concern sat upon his face the whole time. He massaged my legs until the pain subsided, then he brought me water. As soon as I could uncurl however he left me, alone with my thoughts.

It hit me then. What I had told him was no longer true, at least not the first part. I did owe this stranger my life. And in that, at least as far as I was concerned, meant I was beholden to him. “But I’ll be dammed if I am going to be some slave. I’ll work it off.” That muttered phrase was the last thing I said before sleep caught me. However as I was drifting off what I heard was a second voice, a woman’s in the same sing-song tongue he had used. Great, there are more of them.

4

Five Laws

I woke when he came back in. Night had fallen outside. If you are used to it, you can smell the difference. I rolled over and set up looking at him. A sadness seemed to be about him, that and frustration. 

“Look” the word sounded more of a sigh than I had meant, so I took a deep breath and tried again. Strength was needed here, a firm hand, but I had to be careful not to make it an attack. I still had no Idea where I was.

“Look, I appreciate what you have done for me, really I do. And yea, even in my book it means I owe you a lot. But I don’t relish the idea of being in chains.” Good start; make him look me in the eye. If you are being robbed if you can make the person doing it look you in the eye they might back down. It reminds them you are a person, not just someone in an alley. Since I was being robbed of my freedom I hope that would work here. “I will work off whatever fair debt you think I owe you. You let me go, and I will fallow you. I will take care of my own food and shelter.” I didn’t want to owe him anymore than I have to after all. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you” I stopped for a moment, and thought.

I decided to go with honesty.

“I don’t trust you. But I don’t eat other people’s table scraps and I don’t even want to think of myself in a situation where I can be forgotten. I don’t like slavery. I think it is wrong to treat another person as property. I am not yours to own.” Now I was on solid ground. He hadn’t hit me or threatened me. Maybe I could make good head way here after all. Slavery may be legal in the kingdom I grew up in, but I completely disagreed with it. Sure I would steel stuff, but only from people that didn’t deserve what they had. And I always gave to others if I had it. The only thing that kept me talking to this guy was the fact that he had obviously treated me very well and that counted for something damn it. I knew all too well about people judging you before knowing you. I knew too many people that had been just dismissed because they were of a different race, Piper being one of them. And I would be dammed if I was going to do it to someone that had treated me decently. Piper was also the reason I felt the way I did about slavery. The orc girl once told her that somewhere in her families past a human woman had been force bread to a True Orc slave.

I finished what I had said and waited for the worst. However he didn’t seem mad. He actually gave me another of those smiles. Either I was going to punch it off of his face at some point or admit it made him attractive. No bets on which please, I would have no idea what to put the money down on.

         He held out his hand “Come I want you to see.” He helped me up and walked with me outside. He didn’t try to carry me, and only gave me as much help I took. For the first time since my rebirth I found myself going out into the world again.

The night was punctuated with torches fire and stone walls. What I had taken to be a tent was actually a permanent home on an out of the way cliff ledge, a spur that jutted off from a mounted side town. It looked like a basic village, stone walls complete with watch, but it was built up a mountain. I saw more permanent buildings and parapet, watchtowers and pickets. I looked around to get my barring and realized I was in a town of Leather Wings. They had used a network of caves and a few open spaces to carve out a decent place to live. Much like Dwarven settlements, they had used dirt and stone to make flat places to build buildings, and we were on a small one of those. I saw other Leather Wings as well, but it took a few moments for my mind to catch up with what I was seeing.

“They’re all different colors!”

He smiled at me. “Of a kind, in truth there are only four by four different colors; Red to Orange, White to Green, Blue to Yellow, and Purple to Black, female to male.” He said these words with pride.

I looked around and saw that all the Reds I could see were female, and the oranges were male. Two things struck me as funny however, one he put female first; I had never heard anyone do so in my life. And two, he was white. “Does that mean you are a girl?” Ok so I was being coy. I was also testing the limits of what I could get away with as far as he was concerned.

He laughed, and for a moment I thought I had it wrong, and greens were female. And that like any guy he had simply put his color first. “Reds and Oranges’ typically are fighter, guards, hunters, and warriors because they are stronger, Blues and Yellows leaders because they can see farther than most in their understanding. Whites and greens are different and yet not, Whites are priests, where Greens tend to be story tellers. But you are right, whites are normally women. I however am not a woman.” He sighed it was almost a sad sound, “it is called the Empress’s touch when you are born a different color than you should be. It is often seen as a great honor.”

I could hear the pain in his words; I also noticed something I wanted cleared up. “One, what about Black and Purple, and two does this mean what you do is decided by your color?”

He chuckled “Purple and Black, they are of Imperial blood. It is kind of like blue and yellow, it just means that the Empress herself runs in your veins, or so I have been told. And no, being a color means you have leanings towards one thing or the other. But I have an Aunt, a Red that cuts herself anytime she picks up a sharp object, and she can’t hunt for” he seemed to be searching for a word “Dalist.” He turned to me and smiled.  “I don’t know your word for it. But not very well.” His eyes took on the look of child hood memory “but she can make Foods and Breads better than anyone I have ever seen.” His next words however were serious. “What happened to you would not happen here.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I did for you would have been done long before it got that bad.”

“Oh” cold disappointment crawled across my skin. “You’re a slaver culture”. I turned away from him then. We were in his city; I was a prisoner and knew I had no chance to get away from him at this time. There was always the cliff… but I could not be sure it would do more that hurt like Ellie herself had gotten ahold of me, possibly leaving me crippled. No way to tell until I knew what was down there.  Besides death meant I would have no other option, if it came to it later maybe, but it was not my first thought. And if, IF he was good to his word I would be free in seven years, surely I could survive until I was twenty one.

“Not the way you mean it.” I turned back to him with that, and looked him in his eyes again. Though his words had been slow, there had been anger in them. Anger so deep it chilled me, one that if it was directed at me I may have tempted the cliff and taken my chances. But I had long learned how to read people, and this anger wasn’t directed at me. So I waited.

“Eighteen generations ago, one of my ancestors joined the war against Unstoma to stop the type of slavery you mean. Most of our families did.”

I was all too familiar with this tale. The last great empire of man, Unstoma was the greatest bastion of freedom and justice in the world, an artistic and cultural center that had become corrupted in its later days. I knew of some of the sins of that empire, Piper could trace her family back to their slave pits. Before then, no one had ever heard of the Empire of five, or the term Leather Wing. Then suddenly one day they came boiling out of the northlands slaughtering everyone, in every fort, weigh station and port that housed any of the Grand Army of the Empire. Men, women, children, it didn’t matter if the Leather Wings landed, everyone and everything there died. That was what I had always been taught.

Piper however told a different story. She said that every slave pin the leather wings found, they cleaned up, took them in, feed them, then released them. That even the most violent of the True Orcs were tended to and given their freedom.

Then as quickly as they came with their rein of blood, they left. They took no land, treasure, or anything. They left everything behind, except the ruling families of the Empire. That entire line died a horrible, and some say deserved death.

“Why?” It was the only thing I could think of to say. After all this time, three centuries of speculation, and here I was with one. A real live Leather Wing and I wanted to know, if not for gold, or land, or food, why come and kill so many.

“We have rules, rules on how to treat… slaves. I can think of no other word for it. ‘It is a privilege to own a slave, and they are your most prized possession. Feed them before you eat. Cloth them before you cloth yourself, see to your needs after you see to theirs, Teach them your way and learn from theirs, mistreat them at your peril’” With his last words he looked at me. “That is part of the third law.”

I found myself smiling at his naiveté. “Hun, no law on any book can stop someone from being a jerk. If people actually treated slaves that way, I might be willing to listen.”

“If you break the law, the penalty is death.” I went dead still; I was by trade, a law breaker. It is how I had feed myself since I was seven summers old. It was no wonder his city would not have let my situation happen, I would have been dead a long time ago.

“Cheery thought that, you must have a lot of people to bury. I mean if you kill people every time that someone breaks a law” The cold was starting to claw at my skin, it was still winter, and though a fire was near, I don’t think it could do anything for the cold caused by true dread.

His laughter interrupted my thoughts as much as my words. I got angry. “Hay now, you made me a slave without asking and just told me if I break one of your laws I die, what in the hells is so funny.”

He shook with and with real mirth. “Realized” he started, strangled himself on his own laughter and continued. “Your laws, hundreds you have. A death trap you must think you are in.” His highland wasn’t so good when he was laughing fit to burst. I still didn’t see the joke, though him thinking me grasping my new situation was funny was realty starting to get on my nerves.

“Five we have, only The Five laws.” And with that, if he said more I completely missed it.