Inamorata Tales Ch 01

The weekend after her twenty first birthday, Vella's father kept his promise and took her on the long, long journey to the distant town of Aidem. The largest settlement in the area, Aidem was a familiar place to them both due to the large, monthly market held in the grounds of the great house, but that wasn't why they travelled that day. This time, Vella was simply taking another step closer to fulfilling what she increasingly saw as her destiny. As she sat down next to her father and took the reins of the horse and trap in her hands, she didn't even look at him and felt not a moment's hesitation as, with a snap of leather, she set the horse moving. In fact, if Vella achieved her aims for that day, this would perhaps be the last time she ever saw any of her family. And then, casting one last look at the only home she had ever known, she realised the truth of her feelings; no matter what happened today, she would not return to that place for many years, if she ever did again.

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Vella had once never known anything but a hard, almost pointless life. Her family were poor and, as far as she was aware, always had been. Her father had been the proprietor of a run down and unremarkable inn and coach station positioned midway along an infrequently used carriage route. Travellers were few and far between but the inn also had a small farm holding and it yielded enough food to feed the family and any guests they were lucky enough to have. The remainder, he would take to market, along with anything else he had managed to lay his hands on that might turn a meagre profit and, in that way, Vella's family scratched their living from day to day.

But even before the event that changed her, Vella had known that this was a life she could never accept. Though she could never have explained why, she had always felt she was destined for a greater purpose and a higher order of life than the one she had been born into. She was special somehow, meant for greater things than the excuse for living her parents accepted. And if ever Vella needed motivation to break free of that world, she only had to look at her mother and see the hollowed out, tired figure of a woman who had once hoped for little and then got less. The cruel reality was that Vella knew her mother counted herself lucky; she had a home, a husband and she had given him two children, one of which was that rarest of gifts from the heavens; a son.

Vella was older than Stefan by five years yet she had always felt in his shadow. When he had come along, what little love and attention Vella felt from her parents pretty much dried up entirely. At meals, he got the first serving every time and she got the last, often little more than the dregs in the pot. His clothes were the best his parents could afford whereas Vella had to patch and repair the few clothes she had or wear her mother's cast-offs. On the few occasions they had guests, Stefan was paraded before them and Vella, when she wasn't attending to her long list of chores, watched as they'd praised and fussed him. Of Stefan, her parents were proud and diligent; of herself, Vella wondered if they would ever give her a thought once she left home.

And the idea of leaving home had taken root firmly in her head from a very young age. Growing up, Vella had entertained herself with thoughts of what she could make of her life but with every year the list of likely occupations grew smaller and smaller. The more Vella saw of the world, the more she realised that she would be lucky to have what her mother had and be even luckier still if she gave their world a son.

But then a coach had stopped at the inn and in it had been a woman unlike any Vella had ever seen in her young life. There was just something about her, an air of being something rare and coveted and desired beyond the fact she was simply a beautiful woman. She moved with grace and an easy fluidity alongside the stern faced man she accompanied and when Vella was sent to fetch their bags, the woman had simply smiled and said 'no'.

The man was busy negotiating with her father and paid no attention to her and Vella guessed that to him it was quite normal.

'I will take the girl and inspect our room before my master retires after dining,' the woman had added by way of explanation and she spoke in a voice that was like steel wrapped in silk. Even before her father had stumbled out an 'as you wish, lady', Vella had known there would be no arguing with her. What she didn't know then was why.

The room was as shabby as the rest but it didn't stay that way for very long when the woman set about it, Vella helping as instructed. The bed was stripped, extra blankets added under the thin mattress until, remade, it looked plump and inviting in a way not even Stefan's did. She shifted furniture around and somehow seemed to create more space, moved the few ornaments in the room until they added... something. Vella couldn't understand how, but everything just looked better after the woman had finished.

'I don't understand...' Vella had said as she inspected the inviting and spotless room that now stood in place of the tired and worn one they had walked into. It had been done so quickly, so seemingly effortlessly that it left Vella dazed.

Downstairs, Vella served them the meals her mother prepared and then watched them eat, peeking round the corner, fascinated by the woman. There wasn't a sign of the tiredness that would surely have resulted from her work in preparing the room. Vella had barely done anything in comparison and she had felt the ache from the immediate and unstinting work. From simply looking, Vella would never have known the woman had so much as gone upstairs. The way she talked, the way her lips moved even when she simply ate her meal, her mannerisms, her bearing and especially the way she looked at the man across from her all seemed, to Vella, perfect in ways she couldn't fathom.

And as for the man, he seemed to relish her presence, revelling in her every word and gesture. He smiled and laughed and was increasingly relaxed and casual, the tension of a long journey slipping away from him. The woman had, at one point leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered something to him and his whole being seemed to change. He breathed deeper, his eyes became hungry and eager and a wicked grin formed on his lips and Vella could see that his mood, good or bad, fair or foul, was entirely dependant on her. She had never seen anything like it.

At the end of it, the man had risen and walked from the room and Vella watched him leave, turning back to the woman when he closed the door after himself. When she looked back, she nearly shrieked in fright; the woman had crossed half the length of the room in a few seconds and was now stood at the table right by Vella. She hadn't even seen her stand up.

'You have curious eyes, girl,' she said and her voice soothed Vella, reassuring her she wasn't in trouble or had done wrong in just a few words.

Still, she blushed furiously and looked down. 'Apologies, my lady.'

'No need to be sorry for being curious, unless of course you're a cat. Are you a cat?'

Vella grinned, shaking her head. 'No. I'm just a girl.'

She pursed her lips and looked disapprovingly at Vella. 'There is no such thing as 'just' a girl, unless the girl herself can be no more than 'just' a girl.'

Vella blinked, puzzled. The words sounded as though there was importance and meaning behind them but Vella had no idea what it might.

The woman smiled. 'If my master allows it, I will come and speak to you later,' she had replied and then left to follow to her man.

Clearly her master had allowed it because in the early hours of the morning, Vella had been wakened by the woman sitting in the small chair by the side of Vella's similarly small bed. They spoke a little and then, more and more, the woman spoke and Vella just listened. And the more she listened, the more she understood and the more her mind opened to understand that she could be more than 'just' a girl.

They talked until a cold, pale sun rose and then the woman bade her sweet dreams and left. A couple of hours later, she watched the woman walk in her casual yet knowing way, arm in arm with her man, back to their coach and they left. But by then Vella knew beyond any doubt what she wanted to become, that there was only one path she wished to follow and only one calling she wished to answer.

Inamorata.

It takes strength and dedication beyond anything you can even comprehend, Vella. It is the highest of callings, the most noble and worthy of aspirations a girl can have.

When she walked alongside her father, she did so head up, tall and proud in his company. When he set her to a task, she devoured it and then sought more.

To be become worthy of attention, you must be worth paying attention to. Push yourself and you will perhaps become remarkable but hide yourself and you will be ignored. You know that last feeling already, Vella, because though you may be seen you are never noticed.

When her father went to the market, it was Vella who stood out on the stall, not Stefan. He may have been a boy, but Vella began to develop a way about her that saw people buy when they might have walked past.

You have to pay attention to detail and use what you see. Reading people is one thing but understanding what they need to read in you in order for you to have their attention is quite another. You cannot offer what is not wanted and sometimes you have to convince others that they can use what you can provide.

Those that looked tired and harasses, Vella would soothe first with voice and manner and then, if she could, would do business with on the back of it. If a potential buyer, and Vella quickly learned to tell them apart from the crowd, looked happy and relaxed, then Vella would joke with them, be charming and playful. If they didn't buy the paltry wares her father offered, so be it, but Vella took every failure personally, scrutinising every detail trying to work out why.

It is never what you do, when you do it or even how you do it; it should always have a reason, a motive. The truth is in the 'why', Vella. Never do anything without knowing why you do it because the why of something will inform the what, when and how. It is rarely the other way round. And if you can understand the 'why' of another then you are but a few steps from having the keys to them.

She worked hard at home and hard at the market and as a result of her efforts more money came into the household. Her father made more at market and coaches began to increasingly frequent the inn, knowing that the standard of room and service there was better than others they might have gone to. And she didn't do any of these things to simply earn more money; she didn't do it to curry favour with her father; she didn't even do it to put Stefan in the shade, though she did so more and more. She did it for one sole reason; because she had to first prove to herself she could.

This is no simple ambition I speak of, Vella, no easy task that can be overcome with good intentions and wistful hope. It requires an absolute devotion beyond even the comprehension of many. It is the hardest of paths to step onto, let alone walk along and at every step you will be tested, physically and mentally, pushed beyond your limits of endurance and forced to call upon reserves of strength and willpower you never knew you possessed. It has to be that way because the wheat must be sorted from the chaff. There is no place for the weak, the selfish or the easily deterred. True service is ruthless, you see? It is single-minded and determined in its purpose.

And Vella became just that. She kept what she wanted close to her heart, guarding it and giving nothing of her hopes and ambitions. Head down, obliging and unobtrusive, never complaining, Vella worked until her hands were raw and bleeding. And then she worked some more, often to the point where her tears of pain from scrubbing floors or carrying sacks had been exhausted and dried up. No task was too menial for her, no duty allowed to be beyond her. If it needed doing, she did it and if she couldn't do it well enough, she did it over and over until she could.

The hardest thing to become as a woman is indispensable. To give so much that you simply cannot be done without is the key to both true service and being absolutely essential. To provide what someone needs and what noone else can give them is truly a worthy ambition for any woman. It requires a degree of selflessness that is rare and precious and an acceptance of self-sacrifice that is even rarer.

And Vella, in the only way she could, began to serve selflessly. She put her own needs, bar that one increasingly vital desire, to the back of her mind and began to provide for the needs of her father, mother and even her brother. Her father she served by tending to the land and the market. Her mother she served by taking on all aspects of running the inn; she cleaned, cooked, washed, dried, ironed, folded, repaired and also found time for countless other duties. Before long, her own mother began to look at her with something approaching nervous respect, reduced to the role of little more than Vella's help.

Some men are worthy of respect, worthy of listening to and heeding the words of, and you will know them when your paths cross. Other men come in two forms; those with potential and those without and you will learn to tell the two apart once you know what to look for. When we see the potential, it is our duty to do all we can to nurture it and if not bring it to fruition then at least lay foundations that can be built upon. It is ironic, Vella, that in a world where a man is a dwindling, precious resource, so few seem to see the need to instil in them anything but an arrogant assumption that life will provide for them. It is the sacred duty of girls like us to see this waste is stopped and the chance to do so must be seized upon. After all, what point is there in aspiring to be precious and coveted and cherished if there are no men who would see the value in us above the common woman?

And with her brother, she served both him and herself, developing her reading and writing skills and using them to both educate and entertain him. She walked with him, talked with him, listened to him and became someone he looked to for advice and help as he grew from a boy to a young man. Vella had already long replaced her mother as the woman of the house and so, in many ways, she replaced her as Stefan's mother. Before Vella had turned her inexhaustible energies on him, Stefan would surely have gone to seed, cast adrift in the lazy acceptance of his own importance as a male. Vella, however, simply decided that wouldn't happen and that she knew what was best for him over and above everyone else. She showed him how the inn worked, how to negotiate with gentle firmness, how to get the best from limited resources and her lessons took root as she had intended they would. As Vella approached her twentieth year and Stefan turned fifteen, she saw that he would become more of a man than his father had ever been and that, in many ways, he was already. She instilled in him something so desperately lacking in so many young men; ambition.

You have to accept the truth of yourself, knowing and understanding what you want and need, understanding the 'why' of what drives you. And you must act on what you learn of yourself, honour it and accept it to honour and accept yourself. So many see service as a lowly ambition, see it either as an easy way to comfort and false security or the expression of a sickly mind, and for some that serve it is. They serve to serve themselves and they do so because that is all they know and all they are good for.

At market, Vella began to see more and more in the people she walked amongst. She saw happy men, smiling and enjoying the day together with their wife, sometimes with children and sometimes without and that was how it should be. She saw lovers who looked at one another with puppy dog eyes and she smiled at them and with them, hoping the women tended to him well and that he appreciated her for it.

Then there were the simple whores, painted and pungent, touting themselves like bitches in heat to earn money to feed themselves. In time she understood that contempt and loathing she had once felt toward them was wasted.

Because then there were the other whores, the ones who walked arm in arm with a man, a sneer of repulsive self-admiration on their face as they bathed in the simple fact they had a husband. And in some of those men she saw that such a woman was all they were worthy of, choosing her for beauty and shape alone, the woman as much a trophy for them as they were to her.

No potential

, she thought to herself,

to see that there is more that a woman can be and that a man can aspire to have.

But then she also saw those men who did have that potential, who could have known true happiness and true service and she sometimes wept for them. She saw the light in their eyes was beginning to dim if it wasn't gone already; a misery of a life unfulfilled, of thirsts unquenched and joy unfelt taking their inevitable toll. She could see that the woman such men walked with had hollowed him out, leeched from him and limited him to living in her world and not the other way round.

Another man gone

, she would think to herself.

Another man who will never fulfil his potential and see the true value in an uncommon woman

. How they had done this, how they

could

do this, was beyond Vella but she knew, profoundly and deeply, the wrong of such a thing. As Vella saw the world now, a woman fulfilled her potential to fulfil the potential of the man she served. She shone to bathe him in her light, grew to offer him a comforting, cool shade and learned in order to better understand and provide for his needs.

And guard yourself, Vella. If you have already let your sense of self-preservation fail you, then do not do so again. Bury yourself in doing what you now know needs to be done and do not pay attention to any other desires that may come to you or be pushed upon you. The world is full of those who would take what you have before it is ready to be given and they will ruin it in doing so. I am quite sure you have already felt eyes upon you and not understood what they are looking at, but you will. And they will desire to ruin you if you return their gaze. It will likely go against your instincts and your desires to deny them, but you must deny them anyway. The time will come when your eyes can be opened a little further, but it is too early now, trust me on that. Do not let others explore what you yourself have not.

But I will return to this place, one way or another, in due course. I see much of myself in you when I was your age which is why I have come to you this night and why I will do so again another night. I pray I do not waste my time when I do so.

And, three years later almost to the day, she did return, the same woman with the same man and the same breathtaking beauty and ease about her.

And that night, after their meal, the woman again walked to the watching Vella and again they spoke briefly.

'I see I did not waste my time in coming back, Vella. This is an altogether different place now, isn't it? I chose not to inspect the room before allowing my master up to it. If it is not to his liking, then I will pay the price for my faith in you. Will I be paying a price, Vella?'

Confidently, her eyes locked on the woman's own, Vella shook her head. 'No, my lady, you will not be paying any price.'

She smiled a knowing and approving smile. 'There's more money coming in now, isn't there? And I couldn't help but notice your brother is showing signs that he will become one who is worth calling a man. There are a thousand other differences, too, and I think it's safe to say the work that has gone into making those differences is yours. Am I right?'