A Talander for Shirley (8) Penultimate Chapter

A Talendar for Shirley
Peony D Beckside
With acknowledgement and thanks to John Norman for creating the world of Gor, in which this story is set. 

Chapter Eight: Baggage Reclaim

 

I am beautiful!  Even I have to admit that despite my Earth-girl reserve.  I don’t know how this has come about.  It’s not just the make-up or the new hairstyle, it’s something much deeper in me, something revealed that I wasn’t aware was in me.  A realisation perhaps that I am, and can only be, one thing a woman.  A woman in the deeper sense than the restricted sense of mere femaleness that most women on Earth are kept in.

Of course I have been prepared.  My hair shaped into the (to men) pleasing shape that I believe is called the ‘slave-flame’.  I had to do my own make-up, but it was under the review and watchful  eye of Shura.  She, and doubtless the house, had to know that I am capable of this task when it matters, when I’ve been returned to my Master.  To her credit Shura found no cause to admonish me for slipshod work in this important task.

I’m excited.  Master is coming to retrieve me.  It’s not just that he will take me away from the harshness of this place.  I truly want to be with him.  I’ve missed him badly.  Why can’t I hate him?  Why do I have no resentment against him.  He dragged me against my wishes from my home, he whipped me, he had me branded, he raped me.  Strike the last.  His taking of me was glorious.  As for the rest, be honest with yourself girl.  Your life on Earth wasn’t that great.  The pay in the flower shop sucked.  The apartment I had was small, dingy, and not that comfortable.  In a huge city it’s surprising how difficult it can be to make friends, and one finds it difficult to trust many men enough for them to be lovers.  True I did get job satisfaction from my work, but there were few signs of me progressing.  It was essentially a dead-end job. Was it really any different from being a different form of slavery?  The so-called choices one had were limited to the point of being illusionary.  Here I sense my slavery will at least be honest.

The room is sumptuously furnished.  The diametric opposite of the pens where I have been held and trained.  It’s a kind of reception room for the owner of the house to welcome wealthy patrons.  I am led to a corner and ordered to kneel in nadu position.  A long chain is attached to my collar.  The rest of the links neatly coiled behind me.  There is another slave in the room.  She kneels as I do, but beside her is a low table with bottles, containers, and other accoutrements.  I hear voices.

“Greetings Michalis.  I may call you by your first name?”

He is here!  I’m sufficiently well trained to know that I must not move, not appear to take any notice of what is done or said.  I do chance a surreptitious glance.  To use an Earth phrase, ‘I could do worse than have this man…’, not that I have any say in the matter.  Be honest with yourself, Shirley!  The man is a hunk.  The familiar feeling of dampening between my legs begins.

The man is a caste brother, and one who I feel has done me a favour, in accepting my slave Shirley to train alongside a group of barbarian slaves being prepared for sale.  I take his cue.

“Of course, Stephanis.  It’s good to see you again.”

It is too, even though I have only met him the once before.  He comes over as a competent man, someone who knows his trade, that of a slaver, and doesn’t appear to overcharge for his services or merchandise.  In short as honest a man as anyone can hope and expect.  Word of mouth can make or break a trader in anything; more-so on Gor than on the purely venal Earth.

Stephanis turns briefly to one of his underlings.

“The slave ‘Shirley’, property of Michalis Dundras is ready, Cliarcho?”

“Absolutely, Padrona[1].”

Cliarcho leaves. I assume to fetch my property.

“Come in. Sit.”

I sink onto a large cushion by a low table.  Stephanis takes a cushion to the right of me.  In two of the corners kneel beautiful slave-girls.  The slaves wear identically skimpy tunic in the colours of the sub-caste of slavers, but of the thinnest of slave-silk.  The garments leave little to the imagination, they are a travesty of raiment. The slave in the left corner, though perfectly still, oozes sex and her need for it soon.  A chain hangs from a ring attached to her collar, falling between her barely covered breasts and past the barely hidden smudge of the girl’s pubis.  She is stunning; but then in the house of a slaver one would expect only the best to be on display.  Both the slaves are stunning, but the one to the left is better.  By the right-hand slave is a small table bearing drinks and a small oil-burning hob.

If Stephanis Thromberg can turn my gauche, awkward, ignorant, unskilled, barbarian, Shirley into something half as glorious as this slave, I will think the money paid him well spent.

“May I offer you some refreshment, Michalis?  Some paga?  Ka-la-na perhaps.”

“Since returning I have redeveloped a liking for Kal-da.  If it’s not too much…”

“Not at all, Michalis…  Your slave Shirley mentioned your fondness for this beverage.”

The slave pours liquid from a warming pan on the hob into a drinking vessel. She flows elegantly towards us, placing the drinking vessel on the low table.  I’m puzzled.  Normally in this situation, a slave would proffer the drink forward as gracefully as she could.

I suffer a momentary pang of jealousy.  This other hussy, to use an Earth word, is about to serve MY Master.  I know that he’s not mine, I am his, but this goes beyond semantics.  She doesn’t serve!  Instead she retires, leaving the drinking vessel on the low table.  Master Thromberg gives me a discreet sign.  I move.  I’ve not been told to, but sense hear the dramatic potential.  I crawl towards Master like a restrained big-cat.  If the truth’s known, I’ll be happy to be Master’s ‘pussy cat’.  I know the words that I’m expected to say, but yes, want to say; and in Gorean too!

From the corner of my eye, I see that the other slave has moved.  She’s stalking forward on hands and knees like a forest panther; sleek. fluid, sensuous.  The chain uncoils as she glides towards me.  As she arrives at my side she morphs so perfectly gracefully into the nadu position.  I don’t need to examine this woman to know that she is highly excited, almost quivering with need and lust.  I can smell her desire.  She raises her eyes and, though perhaps considered disrespectful, looks into my eyes.

“'Cas kajira por aspin servall, Dominus”[2]

I barely hear her question.  I stare, dumbfounded into the eyes of Shirley!  I had been admiring this beauty, not seeing through the gloss that she’s now acquired.  I can barely believe the change in the unrefined gawky Shirley of a couple of months ago!

I hear Stephanis chuckling away, doubtless at my amazement.

“La vera servassi.”[3]

She does not ask, instead she picks up the warmed goblet.  She carries this down to her lower belly, holding it there before raising it to her lips.  I see the desire and truth in her eyes as she kisses the rim opposite to the one I will drink from.  I see her quiver with need as she offers forward the vessel in both hands, dropping her head in submission between her upper arms.

We’ve practised this ‘offering’ before in training.  It being explained to us that we are offering more than just the drink.  I give it everything that I can.  I am going beyond the offering of my body, I am offering my very soul.  I know that I’ll be devastated if he rejects me.  There’s one thing more to be said, that I desperately want to make clear to him, him having known me before when I was nominally free.

There is a quaver in her voice.

“Vere La Kajira sumus[4]”

I take the goblet from Shirley and smile widely.  Shirley drops her head in submission, but before her features are hidden, I see a moment of joy suffuse her face.

“She has not been given instructions as to what to say.  What she speaks here now comes directly from her.  Of course, her language skills are rather basic and her vocabulary is somewhat limited and mostly specific to domestic and intimate servitude.  If you wish her to be more erudite and capable of more abstract conversation, I would recommend putting her in situations where she can hear a greater range of conversations.”

Stephanis pauses.

“With your permission?”

I’m not sure what he has in mind, but doubtless it’ll be relevant.

“Of course…”

“Shirley,  Remove your tunic.  You may rise to do so.”

I reach for the unfastening loop at my left shoulder.  Clearly this other slaver recognises that with this chain on me I cannot take the skimpy silk off over my head.  I am no longer embarrassed by being naked before others, before men.  Even just a few days of total nakedness will remove that pernicious Earth taboo from a woman.

Stephanis speaks again to Shirley.  He gives her a string of orders, putting her through a display routine as rigorous as that when I dropped her off.  The chain she is wearing does not hinder the girl.  The difference between then and now is startling.  Where is the jerky, gawky, uncoordinated Shirley of before? This ‘new’ Shirley flows from position to position with such grace and elegance that I’m stunned.

I follow the instructions given me.  I flow like water from one position to another.  I put my heart and soul into being the epitome of grace.  I sense that this is going well, not like the spasmodic uncoordinated jerks I’d inadvertently utilised that other time.

“I’m sorry Michalis, we didn’t have the time to give her even the most rudimentary instruction in slave-dance.  I think that she has the aptitude, but it’s a question of how much you think it would be worth to train her.”

“Thank you.  I agree with you, she moves surprisingly well.  I’ll consider the matter.”

Stephanis’ instructions have returned an excited Shirley to my feet.  I’m not at all sure that her  breast-heaving is all due to the effort put into her exercise.  There’s something there.  A look in the eyes perhaps?

Come on Master.  I’m ‘climbing the walls’ in need and lust.  Can’t you see, or are you just being cruel?  I’d beg in the crudest terms possible if there weren’t someone else here; someone who might see such as being a poor reflection of the training methods of his house.  There’s one thing I can do.

Shirley’s lips kiss my feet.  No one has bid her do this.  She starts to rise, her kisses moving up my leg. There is a look of adoration on her face.

“Priest Kings!  She is a slut!  A hot one!  Smell her…”

Yes, Master.  I fear that I am.  I don’t know what it is about my situation, this place, or the training I’ve just received, but in the last month or so, something, a blockage, a logjam, has shifted.  I’m like a racing car and the driver has taken off the brake.  I don’t need to,or want to, hang onto sexual and emotional hang-ups that are an everyday part of being a woman on Earth; but are clearly counter-productive here.

Indeed, the odour of her arousal is clear and unequivocal.

“She’s clearly in need of a good fucking.  I assure you that she hasn’t been ‘warmed up’ prior to your arrival.  This ardour is all from the girl herself.  I don’t know if she cost you anything, but I’d say you got a bargain, even with the cost of her training.”

Ironically he continues.

“I think she likes you!”

Like him?  He did some truly awful things to me, but what I feel is beyond mere liking.  I’m not sure I have a suitable word.  I do wonder if I’m suffering some form of Stockholm Syndrome[1], but then again, is ‘suffering’ the right word for that?

Shirley’s ministrations threaten to distract me from my goblet of Kal-da.

Stephanis Thromberg grabs Shirley by he hair, holding her still.  With his other hand, he unfastens the chain from the girl’s collar.

“Resume kajira.”

Shirley’s lips and head threaten to burrow under the hem of my tunic.

“I return your slave to you, Michalis Dundras.  It’s been a pleasure doing business with you. I wish you success in your profession, even if it directly competes with mine.  If you come across any special ‘baubles’, do me a kindness and give me first refusal.  This one is clearly owned by you, by more than just legalities!”

I laugh with Stephanis.  I’m intrigued by what has changed.  Before her stay here at the House of Thromberg, there’d been within her a simmering displeasure, even hatred, at me for dragging her from her prosaic job and life.  Shirley now seems to be genuinely pleased to see me, and more, to make it clear her desire to be my kajira.

“I will remember your kindness, and see what I can do, if an opportunity should present itself.”

Shirley’s teeth are almost about to untie my loin-cloth.  She presses her body to my leg, her dampness on my ankle.

“Michalis.  I think that you need to deal with this slut.  We have guest quarters where special clients may try out slaves they are interested in purchasing.  May I offer you the use of one such?  Come.”

Oh, yes!  Please Master, soon.  Slut I must be.  I burn for your touch.  But is it just for your touch?  Some of the men I’ve seen have been very handsome, even exciting, but none make me so needful as you.

I reach up under my tunic, grasping the hair of this importunate beauty and stand.

“Thank you, Stephanis.  I accept.  Come, Shirley.  Show me what you have learned…”

---

[1]     A psychological response where hostages or abuse victims develop positive feelings, empathy, or bonding toward their captors or abusers (Definition from Google)

---

[1]     Boss, associate, colleague.

[2]     How may a slave be of service, Master.

[3]     I beg to serve

[4]     Truly I am a slave-girl