Vol of Thentis declines to have the girl branded with the popular khef symbol; she is a little wild flower, a tiny unexpected thing of beauty growing in the empty desolation of rocks and rubble on a barren hillside, such as might lift a solitary man's heart as the blossoms in the midst of desolation have often done, sometimes bringing tears to his eyes, and so he has her branded with the stylized petals of the dina, slave-flower of the north.
He is proud that she lies down so obediently on the metal worker's bench; she makes no resistance as her left thigh is firmly strapped in place, and only her body, trembling like sa-tarna in a heavy wind, betrays her fear.
He saw her eyes dart to the brazier where the hot irons repose. She knows what lies in store for her. Yet she justifies his faith, expressed in the brand that (almost redundantly, he thinks) marks her as kajira; the symbolism of the delicate and resilient flower. Kan-lara Dina.
My little Talender.
As the scorching metal bites into her flesh, he sees the tears stream and start from her eyes; he feels hard and powerful at the agony that marks her as his own, his property, and he is only half aware that he is stroking her hair, murmuring to her like a man, stalking his prey, quietly apologizing in advance for the taking of its life.
The locking steel collar was another matter; Vol of Thentis simply pointed to one of a score of identically inscribed collars, and after a few ehn's friendly haggling, the metalworker cheerfully inscribed the final words of the message...Vol of Thentis.
I am the property of...
They both know, in a general sense, what it says, although neither of them can actually read Gorean- she, because she's from another planet, he because reading and writing are the business of Scribes, not Warriors, and that which he cannot purchase with coin he will purchase with steel.
But it is with coin that he purchases the flask of Veminium perfume; she is his, and whatever far off land she might once have called home, she shall evoke henceforward his own landscape of the heart.
A rainstorm, long ago, in the crags and valleys of the lower Thentis mountain range, and in the morning light a thousand flowers of the palest blue, a shock of beauty in all directions, coaxed forth by the tempest. It is this memory that he wishes to smell on his slave girl.
She is the property of a man of Thentis now, a man for whom the smells and curves and dizzying heights of his land whisper in his heart: Pride. Homestone. His property shall remind him of his love of home and homestone, however far from them his wandering may take him.
And for some reason she knows how to make Black Wine perfectly.
The moons are casting a light so bright that visibility is almost perfect; but it's a cold light, white and penetrating, and the way it illuminates the scarred face of Vol of Thentis seems to capture a grim and shadowed man who appears, after all this time, a stranger.
In moments of extreme fear the mind seems to take on a strange, schizophrenic life of its own; the consciousness darts away like a startled school of fish, and now her thoughts swarm in a scintillating cloud to concentrate all her notice upon how cold she suddenly feels. What a difference, her mind chatters to itself, it made wearing something for even one day, the scrap of cloth in which he indifferently sliced a hole with a stroke of that outsized knife and pulled unceremoniously over her head and secured around her waist with that soft twine stuff; it didn't cover much down below, but at least it kept her nipples warm; only hours ago they were acclimatized, but now they ache with the cold.
