Chapter 24 -- Anyia's Journey
Upon arriving at the first church along the route Anyia had to walk over the next three days, the Clergy allowed her to rest, eat, and relieve herself. Then they led her to a stone platform that had chains with cuffs suspended over it. They placed her wrists in the cuffs and immobilized her with her hands over her head. Anyia started to cry, because she thought she was about to be whipped. However, the Clergy members only wanted to bathe her. They covered her in soap and then rinsed her off with very cold water. The Priestess then unbraided Anyia's hair and shampooed it. The Clergywoman ran a comb through the younger woman's hair and announced that it would remain unbraided.
"If you can demonstrate to me that you understand the meaning of your experience over the next three days, I will re-braid your hair before you assume the collar. You need to prove yourself, however. To have your hair braided will be a privilege to be earned, not a right to expect. Do you understand me, Anyia Dukov?"
"Yes, Priestess."
The Priests splashed her with several buckets of frigid water and then left her to shiver until the cool morning breeze had completely dried her. During her three-day walk she would be bathed in the same manner at sunrise and sunset. She was not allowed to touch her own body so she could not bathe herself. She could not dry herself with her own hands; she had to wait for the Creator to dry her body with the wind. The frigid water and being left to shiver was to remind her how exposed she was; her bare body presented to the mercy of the elements of the Realm of the Living.
Once she was completely dry, the Clergy members unchained Anyia and led her into the church. She knelt in the proper position of Penance, with her hands placed on the ground in front of her, her head touching the floor, her knees spread and her back properly arched. She was the Grand Duchess, but like any criminal or servant, she could feel the cool air blowing against her exposed vulva and sphincter. Her bottom still had some belt-marks remaining from the punishment her mother had given her the day before and five sets of welts crossed her thighs. She was humbled, with nothing to set her apart from anyone else who was beginning Public Penance. Her hair fell dishonorably around her face, but she was grateful for that. Her eyes were covered and her view of the world concealed.
The Priestess prayed, first in silence and then with a prayer in Archaic Danubian. She ordered Anyia to kneel upright and conversed with her, asking her about some of the mundane details of her life before she became Grand Duchess. The questions may have seemed trivial, but the Priestess was determined to completely understand the young woman in front of her, and often one can gain more insight from a trivial interest than from a major event. The conversation drifted to a friend that Anyia had in high school, an American exchange student called Jennifer Thompson. As she talked, Anyia was able to forget about the present and go back in time about five years in her life.
Jennifer was a year older than Anyia. Her school year abroad started very badly; within a month she had earned the enmity of the school's teachers by behaving like she would in the US, doing things such as skipping classes and smoking in public. About six weeks after classes started, Jennifer was caught smoking in a park and brought by the police to her school. The director was furious with both her and her counselor and ordered the girl to be switched in the gymnasium in front of 400 classmates. She was stripped, ordered to lie over a chair, and given the maximum punishment a student could receive, which was 25 strokes.
Jennifer's behavior calmed down after she was switched, but she always fascinated Anyia. The most important detail was her bright red hair. Anyia had never seen a girl with red hair before...not only red on her head but also thick red curls covering her vagina. The American's hair obsessed Anyia during the entire year they were together in school. Jennifer was a senior, so when her class graduated she had to have her hair braided for the final ceremony. Anyia was the one who braided Jennifer's hair and was elated to finally have the chance to touch it, comb it, and shampoo it. However, Anyia admitted that what she really wanted to do was to run her fingers through the thick red curls covering her friend's vulva. She felt horribly ashamed of her thoughts because of the taboo Danubians had about people of the same sex touching each other.
Jennifer spent a second year in Danubia attending classes at the National University before she returned to the United States. That was the year Vladim Dukov campaigned to become Prime Minister and Anyia's romantic attentions became focused on the sons of her father's political associates. Jennifer pursued her collage classes while Anyia finished high school, so the two friends saw very little of each other. Although they now were separated, Anyia continued to think about Jennifer and longed to be with her and see her naked. However, during the few times they saw each other the two young women had no reason to take off their clothing and Anyia never saw Jennifer in the nude after graduation.
Anyia admitted that watching Jennifer's punishment always fascinated her. She remembered the entire incident in loving detail: Jennifer's terrified teary face, her lovely body, the cruel red switch marks on her white skin, and the girl's screams...yes, Anyia remembered all of it. She wished she could have been Counselor Tolkiv, the prim imposing teacher who struck Jennifer and admonished her. Anyia spent endless hours masturbating over the incident and over the memory of Jennifer's punished bottom. Each time she was about to climax, she imagined herself whipping Jennifer.
The Priestess thought about Anyia's confession. Could it be that Jennifer's switching was an important event in Anyia's life, a single incident that fired up her imagination? That would make sense, because Anyia was fascinated with collecting foreigners, pushing them into servitude, and physically punishing them...Could it be that her real desire dated back to her unfulfilled fantasy of touching and punishing her American classmate?
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A few minutes later the Priestess ordered the Grand Duchess to lie on a mat that had been placed on the floor of the church. The Clergy member stripped off her dress, hung it on a hook on the wall, and lay on a mat next to Anyia. Two Priests entered the room and also stripped off their robes. They set their mats a few meters away from the women and promptly fell asleep.
Anyia was exhausted but could not fall asleep for several minutes. She studied the mosaic on the church ceiling, which she guessed must have been completed in the late 1700's, judging by its style. The topic of the artwork was a common religious theme popular at the time; a griffin battling a ball of fire in a darkened sky. Surrounding the main battle were black-robed winged figures that were immensely old. The figures were praying and looking at the battle with concern. The image was a representation of the time-old fight between the Creator and the Destroyer, with the Ancients offering up their prayers to help the Creator win. For several centuries Danubian artists had used mythical animals to represent the Creator in such works of art, although that practice was dropped in the mid-1800s.
Anyia's thoughts returned to school and specifically to her friend Jennifer. She hadn't thought about Jennifer for a long time, because her father already was Prime Minister by the time Jennifer left Danubia. Anyia had become so different since that time in high school...or had she? Maybe she was indeed the same person, but one that had been allowed to develop her fantasies to their extreme. Not many people have the chance to do that. Everyone has fantasies, but maybe it is just as well that most people cannot realize them, because to have unlimited access to one's fantasies was to eventually to become corrupted and fall into the trap Anyia Dukov had fallen into.
For the first time in her life the young woman regretted that she had become the Grand Duchess. She wished she could have been a simpler person, leading a normal life...and not becoming the terror and the degenerate she had turned into. To be simple...like her brother, or her former housemate Kimberly Lee, or even like her father...
Her father...Anyia realized how superior her father was to her, the extent to which he was indeed a better person. Her father was Prime Minister, but the position had not corrupted him. He was still the same person he had been before he was elected. Unlike his daughter, whatever fantasies he had were left in the back of his mind. His duty as Prime Minister was to serve the nation, not to have the nation indulge him.
Anyia thought to herself: that was my duty too, but I failed. I could have done so much good with my title, and all I did was cause trouble. Now I have to start over. I've wasted so much and now I have to see how I can make up for that.
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Anyia knew that she would never again wear a crown. The crown traditionally worn by Grand Duchesses was in storage and would remain there until her successor was coroneted. The one she had bought from Monaco no longer existed. Undoubtedly her father would have its jewels appraised and then exchange them for gold ingots for the National Treasury. It was equally likely he would attempt to sell off her expensive collection of clothing. Perhaps Kimberly Lee or Cecilia Sanchez would be tasked with posting the items to one of those Internet auction sites.
