For @daHob’s prompt, in continuation of:
Tea with HER (beginning) (LJ)
Tea with HER (continuation) (LJ)
Tea with HER (continuation 2) (LJ)

Tir na Cali has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

I really wanted to send him back.

I was in no mood to play. I had been mourning my mother for a week, for three years before that bracing for her death, and I was exhausted and staring at the Barony that was now mine, trying to figure out what I was doing with my life.

“Go home,” I told him, not really meaning it.

He quailed, swallowed, and said, in a voice that squeaked with nerves, “Forgive me, Baroness Treanna, but Her Ladyship told me to inform you that if I was to returned, it would be by your hand, or she would consider me a runaway.” He gulped. “I really don’t want that, ma’am.”

I looked him over. His accent was East-coast, southern from the sounds of it. He had freckles and a fading tan; he’d been kept indoors for a while, maybe a few months, but he had to be fairly new to California. I admit, I was both distracted and intrigued.

I unhooked his leash from the doorknob. “What’s your name?”

“Ja – I mean, whatever you wish it to be.” He was clearly terrified, and trying to stick to a script. Not broken, not really. He didn’t know how he was supposed to act, just what he’d been told to say.

“I’ll think on it. For now, I’ll call you boy.” I wanted to tweak him, to see if he still had any pride. To see how far I could push him. Petty, but I wasn’t in a good mood.

He swallowed, glaring at me for a split second before he looked back down at the ground. “Yes, mistress. Whatever you want.”

“Come on, then, boy. I’ll show you where you’ll be staying, and you can call the Countess’s secretary and schedule an appointment for me.”

He swallowed, even as he followed me – it was that or drag his heels and fight the leash; his hands were cuffed behind his back. “Call? Mistress?”

I rolled my eyes. He was certainly no Michael, rough, raw, and untrained.

Certainly no… I sat down, hard, tugging on his leash and pulling him down on top of my in the process. That bitch. She had done this on purpose. To show me what Michael must have thought.

“Mistress?” he squeaked uncomfortably. He was going to take a lot of training. A lot of attention. I smiled slowly. Just like the Ice Queen to teach me a lesson and give me a pleasant distraction from my grief in one package.

“I’ll teach you,” I told him.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/248765.html. You can comment here or there.

For @daHob’s prompt, in continuation of :
Tea with HER (continuation 2) (LJ)Tea with HER (continuation) (LJ) and Saturday’s Tea with HER (beginning) (LJ)

Tir na Cali has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

I bid him a quiet, respectful, tearful goodbye, and sold him to the best broker in town, demanding – and getting – promises about his well-being and the type of place to which they’d sell him. He’d do well. He was so very well…trained.

I was angry at the Ice Queen all over again after that – for being right. For winning, again. For being my Countess. For calling for me when my mother was dying. But I went. She was my liege, and she’d been right.

The conversation was tense, unhappy, and stressed for the first half hour, until she set down her cup and stared at me. “Let’s stop beating around the bush. You sold Michael, and it makes you miserable.”

“My mother is dying,” I countered tensely.

“My the Goddess hold her close and move her on,” she murmured devoutly. “There will be a time for the funeral, and there will be a time for mourning. And I will be there beside you for that, Treanna, you have my guarantee.”

That, I’ll admit, took me quite by surprise, but I just nodded. “Yes, your Ladyship.” It’s something you get very good at saying.

“But right now,” she continued, as if she was flipping the page to the next item on her agenda – and she really could have been, for all the expression she had – “I have a gift for you.”

“I’m sorry, Your Ladyship?” I asked blankly. She’d shifted gears too fast on me this time.

“It’s not really…” she gestured, and, for the first time in my life, I thought she might be nervous. “Well. I could wait, if you prefer, until you are installed as Baroness.”

“I would rather,” I said, rather stiffly, “rather not discuss my installation as a done deal. My mother is still breathing.”

“But you will inherit. And likely you will do so soon. I can release you from this tea, and call for you again when the suitable mourning has been done. Or we can continue to talk now.”

It was clear from her tone which she wanted. But my mother was dying. “I would like that, your Ladyship. To come back later, at your leisure.”

“And at yours.” She gestured, smiling gently. “Tend to your mother, Lady Treanna.”

It wasn’t much longer. The healers and doctors had done everything they could for her, and all that was left was the horrible waiting. Alone, because I had sold Michael. Alone, because, with Michael there, I had never bothered to look for a partner, a companion, a Consort.

I held her hand through her last breaths, and I called the priests and the priestesses to lay her to the Goddess’ hands. I spoke the words I needed to say, and did was what required. I, like every child of Tír na Cali, am very good at doing what is required.

And then I went home, where I could be more alone, and sat, pondering my next step.

And there, wrapped in a ribbon over his perfectly-tailored suit, sitting on my front porch, a leash from his golden collar to my front door (my mother’s front door, my front door), was a boy. A man. A slave.

I’ll keep writing this in increments until @Dahob thinks it’s done… 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/245705.html. You can comment here or there.

For @daHob’s prompt, in continuation of Sunday’s installement: Tea with HER (continuation) (LJ) and Saturday’s Tea with HER (beginning) (LJ)

Tir na Cali has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

“I know this, Treanna, because, believe it or not, I was nineteen once, myself. And when this happens… come to me again, and we will talk.” She sipped her tea, her eyes smirking at me. “I’ll enjoy it.”

I sold him, of course.

I didn’t want to. I was entirely in love with him, a little more gone than was reasonable. And selling him without him ever getting him to love me was admitting defeat.

But I’d started to grow up, even as my mother got more and more ill. And looking at him, I couldn’t help but remember every childish tantrum, every teenaged secret I’d whispered in my ear. He’d known me at my worst. No wonder he’d never love me.

When you reach a certain point, you put away the pink diary and the teddy bears and the dolls. When you reach that point again, it’s time to move on from your first companion.

I bid him a quiet, respectful, tearful goodbye, and sold him to the best broker in town, demanding – and getting – promises about his well-being and the type of place to which they’d sell him. He’d do well. He was so very well…

There (exactly) ends 750 words… *evil laughter*
(note: I’m not THAT evil. I’ve already written another 150)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/242800.html. You can comment here or there.

For @daHob’s prompt, in continuation of yesterday’s installement: Tea with HER (beginning) (LJ)

In today’s installment, our plucky protagonist and her slave get names!

“I should hope he does. I don’t act with the intent of being forgotten.”

I chewed on my lip, and then, immediately, stopped myself. That was a girl’s habit, a childish trait. He’d helped me break myself of it – why was it coming up now? I could see in her eyes that she’d noticed, however, and judged me for it.

“You are, I’d agree, quite unforgettable.” The audacious words were out of my mouth; again, my voice was working without having asked my common sense what I should do. That wasn’t her power, was it? I struggled to recall, and couldn’t. If so, what a masterful use!

But she was smiling. “You have some spark in you, don’t you? I like that.” She gestured, cutting off my objection: she’d snuffed the spark out of him long before she’d discarded him. “Slaves are slaves. A woman who will be ruling part of my territory, that’s a different matter. Do you think we can get along, Treanna?”

“I believe we can work together, your Ladyship.” There, now my brain and my vocal chords were working together. “I believe I can serve very well under you.” Wait, what? Was I flirting with my liege lady? I hated her! I didn’t want to flirt with her!

But her smile was growing. “I believe you would. However, as you’ve noted, when someone serves under me, there is rather less of them to enjoy when I am done. That’s why I sold him, you know.”

“I’m sorry?” I blinked, trying to change gears. What was she doing to me, this Ice Queen? “You sold Michael because…”

“There is a length of time one can serve under me. I kept him longer than I’d intended; he serves so beautifully, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, and he is, himself, so flawless.”

Except the brand. But for her, that, too, could have been part of his perfection. “He is a beautiful man, and a wonderful servant,” I agreed, perhaps more warmly than I should have – but I was in love with him, so painfully so. “But he will not love me.”

“Not will not,” she sighed. “Cannot. I had hoped that, with enough time away, he might recover, but I’m not sure he will. Will he let you remove the brand?”

It should have been illegal, but he might have consented. Probably had consented. And would not consent to me having it smoothed from his skin. “No, your Ladyship.”

She sighed again, deeper. “Well, then, sadly, there is our answer. He doesn’t fail to love you, Treanna, because you are not a beautiful young lady – although you are very young – but because he cannot stop loving me.”

“Can’t you stop it?” I almost wailed. Later, I’d remember this with mortification and humiliation, but being around the Ice Queen opened all of your stops, eliminated all of your self-control. “Can’t you make him love me?”

She shook her head slowly, looking almost sympathetic. I hadn’t thought she had an emotion like sympathy in her. “No. No, I cannot. But I can tell you this. In a year, you will look at him, and you will know that, as much as you love him, you can’t keep him anymore. You can’t look at that face, that face that knows all of your youthful silliness, any longer.” She held up a hand. “I know this, Treanna, because, believe it or not, I was nineteen once, myself. And when this happens… come to me again, and we will talk.” She sipped her tea, her eyes smirking at me. “I’ll enjoy it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/239537.html. You can comment here or there.

For @DaHob’s prompt, based on a Cali idea.

Tir na Cali has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

When the Countess called me in for tea, I didn’t know what to think.

I knew why, of course. My mother was ailing, young as she was, and I was her heir. I would be the Countess’s loyal Baroness soon enough, and I was (so I had been told a thousand times), young for the position. She needed to get the measure of me.

The problem was, I had the measure of her already. I had the feel of her hand and the chains she left on a mind – not in person, she wasn’t the sort of liege to do that to her vassals – but in proxy, in the slave who was mine, who had once been hers. I had it in the brand on his hip that I couldn’t avoid, every time I touched him, and the marks in his mind, the way that, even after she’d set him aside, he still loved her.

I went, of course. You do not turn down an invitation from a Countess unless you’re the Queen herself. I put on the proper clothes and the proper smile, mouthed the proper words, and spoke business of her for a while.

But it made me twitch, when I heard phrases from her lips that I’d first heard from his, or, worse, when I found myself echoing one of her phrases, because I’d picked it up from him. He’d been with me for five years, my first sex slave, my first Companion, my first “grown-up” slave, fresh from the market where she’d sold him, the Ice Queen, my Countess. He’s seen every woe and misery, every triumph, held me while I cried and celebrated with me when I succeeded. He knew all my secrets, and all my buttons. And he was still in love with her.

“He remembers you, you know.”

I didn’t realize at first that I’d said it. It was in the middle of a conversation on something banal, trade rights, I think. Important, but not what was on my mind. Nor hers, I think, because she didn’t ask “who,” merely raised an eyebrow, one perfect, impossible eyebrow.

“I should hope he does. I don’t act with the intent of being forgotten.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/238721.html. You can comment here or there.