This continues the Tales of DunnisUrom story, introducing the second set of characters. This is a high-fantasy setting that continues the world of Punishment Day Festival. Let me know what you think in the comments.
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NONIS: KASTI
The bells of DunnisUorm were tolling NONIS and Kasti stood, wretchedly, in a line of peasant girls like her outside the order's huge, walled enclave. They were lined up to attend the Theris-day's disciplinary sessions. The theory was that everyone engaged in impurities and the sessions were available to the populace to help "balance their books."
Kasti had not attended one of these horrible events since she'd been dragged there by her mother for being caught with her hand under the covers at herself. It had been awful—a tool was used to pluck individual sexual hairs from her sex and each one had hurt! Then she was spanked, hard.
The scolding made it clear that if she wished to spend her orgasm, she could submit herself to an arrangement house or a female guild hall (or other less likely paths such as applying for a university place or some such) and her husband, master, or mistress would see to it that she had spends on a regular basis if she earned them.
She wailed and gasped and then begged him to stop--and finally failed and her narrow hips had bucked and she had pulled at the restraints and, to her horror even five years later, left a wet splatter on the floor.
The punishment for her failure was another spanking--through which she howled--and then the application of an instrument that used a rubber strap in high tension to deliver hard "snaps" to a small area of flesh--around her clitoris! She had bawled for what felt like hours before being allowed to leave with her mother---her panties replaced with an even more humiliating absorbent. She has sobbed herself to sleep, after she needed release of her sex's urgency more than ever.
Now she was here--again--wearing a dreadful sign around her neck: SLATTERN. An accursed Watcher-woman had singled her out from a crowd and called her to an alcove set aside for that purpose. The woman had ordered her to bend forward and had lifted her skirts and examined her panties. She'd declared her panties, the soft hair around her sex, and humiliatingly, her anus to all lack sufficient hygiene. Kasti had her mouth and her teeth inspected, burning with blush and leaking tears. She'd been spanked--not soundly--but hard enough--and she'd been issued the awful sign to wear.
She was to wear it at all times when she was out of the house until she visited the enclave for a purity session. Its bright pink lettering drew eyes to her. She had been in tears all the way home where her husband, after comforting her, had done his head-of-household duty and spanked her again. She had served dinner with tears sparkling in her eyes--and he had clearly found the terrible humiliation of her slightly amusing and although he never said it; she knew he found the blush and embarrassment it forced on her to be fetching.
Kasti had not attended one of the
Now, two days after her ordeal with the Watcher-woman, she was here--in line, waiting for her turn to be punished. The sign was still around her neck so that everyone else here knew what she was there for. Indeed, it seemed some of these girls attended regularly, coming weekly for the imposition of discipline on them for their various misbehaviors.
She was furious with the watchers, the order, and the girls who stood in the queue facing dreadful humiliation and discomfort, and seemingly cheerful and comparatively relaxed. The very idea of a girl--of anyone--coming each week to suffer infuriated her. She was a girl in DunnisUrom--she knew she was already subject to discipline being sternly shown her place every day!
What could drive a girl to want more of it!?
The queue moved and she snarled softly. It was better, after all, than crying.
TASI
Tasi felt the faint butterflies in her stomach as she waited to come before the assessors and then the disciplinarians. She came every week as was recommended, and as such, she was all but assured of only mild correction--and hopefully in what passed for private in the purity center. Her nerves were not about the coming discomfort or humiliation--no, it was because she found the disciplinarians terribly imposing and their attention... compelling.
She tried to be a good girl--but in bed, thinking over her many sessions at the order, she would stroke herself--ears alert to movement in the girl's station-home. She wasn't married, so she slept in a shared room at the home for unwed girls, those not enrolled in a university, or employed in one of the guilds. It was a strict station but one of the middle tier establishments, which meant she didn't get a maintenance punishment each week. She obeyed the rules and attended the Theris-day services--known for being slightly worse than the Sattvas day ones. Most free girls attended irregularly or, in some cases, never. Without a husband or master or mistress to send them, the thought of spending all morning first in a line--and then under the order's discipline was not at all appealing--but Tasi had found that, when leaving her family home where attendance had been mandated, the cadence of misbehavior (daily, of course, if only to a tiny degree) and then punishment, and then attendant care and recovery was better than stewing in shame and worrying about her karmic debt (not that she understood really what it was--it was explained like a kind of building bad-luck--but she knew most people just ignored it).
It was the warm approval the order acolytes and apprentices and masters and mistresses gave her--being a regular attendee; they treated her with care--and the crying during and after the sessions was cathartic, more than resentful. She fantasized about what it would be like to be married to one of the order disciplinarians! Horrible, no doubt--she considered herself a good girl--but she knew a life within the walls of the cloister would be stricter than her devout mother's home! No, in her imagination she was taken in by one of the young, handsome disciplinarians and became entwined enough to receive a proposal of union--which she accepted (to the accompaniment of her fingers in the warm, wet folds of her sex) and was inducted into the strict fellowship of Sattvas!
But she'd never had the courage to imagine this outside of her forbidden touching! She felt certain the esteemed servants of the order would found her pleasing as a dutiful attendee--but not union material! That was okay: she attended these sessions because otherwise she would feel terribly guilty and her regular submission to the punishments made the sessions themselves far less unpleasant than if she came only during the festival moons or only when made to by some mechanism of judgment.
Like the girl behind her.
She had seen the poor thing slip in behind her in the growing queue (Tais was near the front: she came early!) looking both afraid and furious. She wore a shaming sign around her neck and she looked like it was weighted like a mill-stone! She wasn't in tears (not yet!) but she was red-faced and down-cast and clearly had no idea how this worked.
Tais felt for her! If she hadn't attended a purity session in several moons, it could be a pretty serious punishment. Coming in with a humiliation sign would make that worse. She was likely to get it. Tais hoped she'd at least attended some of the less severe public scoldings or the smaller enclaves about the city where purity sessions were held. Coming here--to get the sign-stricture removed--was going to be an awful event for her!
Tais wanted to comfort her in some way--but the two times the girl met her eyes, Tais only saw sullen resentment, probably at everything and everyone in the girl's sight.
The line moved and she passed through the arch into the peasant-girls courtyard. It had some other proper name but this is what it was. She could see the boy's queue and courtyard next door. The young men (mostly) removing shirts and shoes or boots before the group was moved past the outer courtyard to go into the assignment chambers.
There were two acolyte girls at the boy's table, taking their clothes save for pants and ushering them forward into a group. The boy's embarrassed looks amused her--and the girls were clearly being gentle with them as they were herded into the next group.
"Welcome, Tasi!" the acolyte girl at her table greeted her by name, with a warm smile. She saw the girl, or one of her fellows, weekly. "Hope you've been good!"
"Good as I can be," Tasi chirped. "How are things within?" She looked up at the tall towers of the enclave.
"Oh--" the girl said, taking Tasi's shoes. She was allowed to keep her dress. The boys removed a shirt or tunic--but the girls usually just removed sweaters or jackets and footwear. "I've heard the sorrow bells ring a few times already. I think it's been a hard morning for some!"
The bells, it was said, rang when a penitent or group of them cried deep tears of regret. If they were ringing, it meant that the subjects of the purification ordeals were suffering greatly--the balancing of their ledgers causing the Artisan mechanics in the bell towers to engage and sound. If the disciplinarians had their claws out today, things might be well worse than normal.
She gave the poor girl behind her a glance. She looked sullen, undoing her boots and placing them with a thud on the table. Tasi listened to the acolyte take the girl's name, the day of her birth, and star signs and her partner hunted feverishly in the shelves of books for old records.
Tasi moved forward, glad the girl's entry way was carpeted and was beckoned through the double doors to the assessor mistress. Three other girls stood barefoot and nervous on the rug. The Assessor Mistress was ordering them to step onto a brass platform on a stone pedestal. Rising from behind it was the Artefice Machine that stood as a five-foot pylon with a complex abacus -like device next to where the assessor stood. It had pipes and gears and, and pipes and twin rollers that would spit out a parchment the person's assignment chamber.
Tasi gave the mistress a hopeful smile. She'd seen her often, and the woman was usually kind with her. Today, the young woman looked harried and stressed. She halted Tasi with a hand and beckoned the other girl forward. She had been lurking behind Tasi and scowling at the assessor.
Oh! Don't! Tasi thought at the girl. Looking angry and sour always made things worse and while the assessor mistress wasn't going to handle her punishment, she could do things to make it worse than it had to be.
The girl reluctantly came forward, padding barefoot across the floor and looking uneasy. The way she looked about, it seemed clear this was all new to her.
"Step up on the scale," ordered the Assessor Mistress, pointing at the metallic platform. Looking distrustful, the girl stepped up and Tasi watched as the plate sank some--more than normal? She thought so! And the mistress moved the stones on the abacus-like thing. She shifted them this way and that, pursing her mouth.
The girl fidgeted and the Assessor Mistress snapped at her to remain still. The girl looked stricken for a moment but then huffed and folded her arms. Defiant! Tasi felt her own anxiety rise! This foolish girl was NOT behaving properly! She was going to get herself in serious trouble!
"Mistress Assessor," Tasi asked--using her most pleasant tones--"I can speak to the young lady about the protocol here. She may be unused to--"
The Assessor Mistress cut her off with a look. Oh! She's truly in a sour mood today! Tasi thought of the Sorrow Bells and worried what might be going on today! The mistress was making a delicate movement of the stones when the girl harumphed again and gave the mistress an impatient look. The motion wasn't much--and the look wasn't the sort of thing that would get her punished out on the streets--but here it was a terrible idea. As the measuring woman scowled at the machine--the sensitive mechanism thrown off yet again, the tension in Tasi's stomach was too much!
"Stand still until the measurement is done," she emplored the girl. "Don't fidget with the sign. Don't even breathe too heavily--just stare ahead!" She spoke encouragingly, and this drew the girl's glare at her.
