A Sensible Purchase

Author's Note: This is a short story in the same universe as, A Rarity. I don't think you need to read A Rarity to understand this story, but I do suggest it. Like the previous story, it's meant to be mostly sweet and adorable. I noticed that one of the centaur characters might have a similar appearance to a character from A Rarity. This was not intentional. I apologize. I ended up adding more details to the universe, which might end up contradicting some details from the previous story, although I tried not to let this happen. I'm terribly, terribly sorry regardless. This story will have some mild elements of bondage and non-consent. Also, centaurs.

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Jansetta could never find favor with her stepfather. He had always said that she was unworthy of his time. Her mother would always disagree, but that didn't matter anymore, because her mother was dead.

One morning, after breakfast, three men came to her home, and with her stepfather's obvious permission, they tied her ankles together, then they tied her wrists behind her back. They handed her stepfather a bag of what she assumed was money. Then they put her in a cart and took her away, giving her a thin sheet to hide her body from the sun.

The journey was fairly long. It lasted a few days. They stopped regularly so they could eat and relieve themselves. The men were thoughtful enough to give her food, usually cheese and stale bread with a bit of ale. They also let her relieve herself, but one man was always watching her with the most disinterested eyes she had ever seen. It was mortifying, but tolerable, considering she had no idea what in the world they were meant to do with her.

She had asked them several times about her fate. They only told her that she was going to a new family. They didn't give anything more specific than that.

One morning, the cart stopped. Jansetta heard several men speak. She also heard horse hooves tap against grass. Then the blanket was pulled off of her form, putting the daylight into her eyes.

"Alright, Girl," said one of her captors, "I'm going to help you up."

She was lifted up and out of the cart. The bottoms of her laced up leather shoes touched grass, but she felt hands supporting her, since she couldn't quite stand on her own.

She saw a pair of feathered horse's legs, white with dark brown splotches.

Then upwards, where she expected to see a horse's head, she did not see a horse's head.

Jansetta saw a man's light blue tunic, and a man inside the tunic, wearing what could be called a muffin hat. The brim was tight around the head, and the rest was puffy.

A centaur?

Jansetta's pale blue eyes nearly popped out. Her mouth turned dry. She almost urinated. If she wasn't restrained and held up by a man, she would have ran as far away as possible.

The centaur peered down at her. His thick nose twitched, and a gust of air shot out of his wide nostrils. "She's wearing fine clothing. What sort of family did she come from?"

"Her mother was a lesser sort of noble," replied the man holding her. "I'd imagine this woman knows all of the finer work."

Nodding, his dark eyes fixed onto Jansetta's face, the centaur addressed her. "What's your name?"

As much as Jansetta wanted to remain silent, she didn't. There was always the possibility that the centaur would lose his patience and stop on her head with his hoof, cracking her skull and mashing her delicate little brain.

She licked her lips. "My name is Jansetta Thenel."

The centaur gave her a great smile. His teeth looked big. "Ah, that's a pretty name. Jansetta. That sounds like a gemstone. Well, you're going into my carriage, alright?"

He reached around himself, towards his withers and girth. There was something belted to his body. It turned out to be a pouch. The captor that didn't hold Jansetta up took the pouch, and then he pulled out silver coins, testing their weight on his dirty palm. Then he put them to his teeth, what little he had, and bit at the metal.

"You can take her, then," he said.

"Alright," replied the centaur as he bent down, his hands reaching for Jansetta's waist.

She couldn't do anything except turn limp.

"Thank you very much," the centaur said, turning and carrying her off. He was polite enough to say to Jansetta, "Oh, my name's Aldous, not that you need to know that for long. Well, in you go."

For a few seconds, Jansetta was able to see a large carriage and several, several centaurs. Four centaurs were ready to pull the vehicle. Four others were nearby, wearing light, padded armor and carrying weapons.

She was put inside the carriage where a handful of other women were seated. She wasn't left right away, though. Aldous leaned in and untied her wrists and ankles. Then, Jansetta learned that there were manacles attached to the lightly cushioned benches in the carriage, because Aldous took these manacles and locked them around her wrists and ankles, not even giving her enough time to massage away the itchy soreness the ropes had left behind. At least there were four separate manacles, so she could move around a bit. She also noticed that there was a soft lining inside the metal cuffs. They were actually more comfortable than the horrible ropes from before.

"Does anybody need to take a squat?" Aldous asked, smiling down at all of the quiet, visibly timid captives.

None of the women gave him an answer.

Aldous nodded. "Alright then. We're off!" He closed the door.

Jansetta took in the appearances of her reluctant companions. They were every bit as chained up as she was. Across from her, there were three seated women, and ... unfortunately, they didn't smell like fine perfumes and silk, which wasn't their fault at all. They were clearly peasant girls. Their feet were bare and dirty. Their ankles were very tanned, and so were their faces and arms. Their hairstyles were crude. Their aprons were a bit stained.

Jansetta didn't want to seem rude. She didn't turn her nose up as if she was sitting near feces. She did wonder, though, if she was meant to end up in the same place as these women, and if so, what in the world would be suitable for both peasants and higher class women? Then Jansetta imagined they were meant to be slaves. Perhaps the peasants would be used for outdoor labor, and she would be used as an indoor slave for housework ... or perhaps for something more unpleasant.

She looked to her left. There were two women seated on the same bench as her. Jansetta seemed to be on the farthest right of the bench. The two women to the left of her appeared to be upper class. Although they were slightly disheveled, no doubt because they probably had been taken away from their families, their flesh was pale and relatively clean. Their silky gowns were long enough to cover their ankles. They didn't have any jewelry. Jansetta imagined that if they had any, it had been stolen away by their captors, the same fate that her own single piece of jewelry had met. It was a golden brooch, shaped like a baby chick, with no gemstones.

Jansetta asked the higher class women, because she feared that she wouldn't understand the accents of the peasant women, "Is there anyone here who knows what these centaurs have in mind for us?"

The higher class woman on the far left bent over to look at her and said, "I'm not entirely certain, but I believe we are meant to be carnal slaves." While Jansetta understood her fairly well, her accent suggested that she was from a country far away from Jansetta's homeland. The woman added, as if she wanted more emphasis placed on her words, "All of us."

Jansetta's eyebrows rose. Her honey blonde hair shifted about her body, like sections of a curtain, as she turned her head and tried to look for any openings in the carriage. There turned out to be a metal grate of little holes to peek though, but not much else. She saw daylight, centaurs preparing for the journey, and the green trees and grass.

Then there was a jolt in the vehicle, and the centaurs all trotted along. The vehicle bounced a little as it was pulled. Jansetta heard one of the peasants say something that sounded like, "We're off to be ruined, no?" She couldn't be sure, though. The accent was rather fast and blurry.

Through the grate, Jansetta saw that they were going through a forest. Then they were at what seemed to be a border of sorts, because there were heavily armored centaurs carrying armored dwarves on their horse-like backs. Then she saw what seemed to be a construction project. Centaurs were pulling carts of rocks, cement, and other materials. Dwarves were wiggling into tight spaces that centaurs couldn't crawl into. Both races often seemed to be chatting with each other, holding up scrolls of what were likely blueprints. If Jansetta had been asked about it, she would have said that they might have been building a wall.

"Do you suppose they're trying to defend their city from something?" Jansetta said aloud.

"It could be preemptive," one of the upper class women said. "Perhaps they want to be cautious."

The carriage went past the construction site and through what seemed to be an agricultural area. There were seemingly massive strips of growing crops, a wide river, and several buildings. Most of them seemed to be made of wood, straw, and perhaps even manure or mud, to keep the mixture binding and strong. The roofs were thatched, and there almost no doors, only curtains in the doorways. None of these facts concerning the buildings seemed strange to Jansetta, for this was how a typical peasant in her homeland would live. However, she was surprised at the overall size of the buildings. They were very long and quite tall.

Jansetta saw poorer looking centaurs working at the fields, pulling plows, swinging long scythes, and so on. Some of them had working women and girl children attached to them with harnesses, as if they wanted the women to walk around, but didn't want them to walk too far away.

The carriage went behind a building that wasn't a typical peasant's house. It was a building of stone. The carriage halted, and Jansetta heard the centaurs saying something about letting "them" out. Then, one of the carriage's doors opened. Aldous was the one to greet them; he had a cheerful smile. He gestured towards the peasant women and said, "I need you fine women to climb out, alright? I'll unlock you, but I'll have to put some different chains on you once you're out. We can't have any of you running away, now can we?"

Aldous started the process of unlocking the cuffs of each peasant woman, one at a time, and putting them to the ground, chaining them in connected manacles at their wrists so they couldn't flee. They honestly looked more like slaves at that point than when they were in the carriage.

The peasant women were then led into the stone building, and one of the armored centaurs closed the carriage's door. There was a few long, stretching minutes in which Jansetta had no idea what to think. Was Aldous going to come and unlock the rest of them next?

She soon heard Aldous' voice again, but he didn't open the door. He said something about hurrying to their next destination. The carriage moved again.

The more rural area faded into a more urban area. There were more brick and stone buildings in this place, although there were a few wooden structures here and there. Most buildings had only one story, but the few buildings that had multiple stories seemed to have large spiral ramps around the exteriors. The windows and doors of these buildings had to be placed in key locations, so as not to be blocked by the supports holding up the ramps. Or were they stairs? Did it depend on the building? Would centaurs walk on them? Wouldn't that be bad for their hooves?

Time was pulled on with a tense sluggishness. Jansetta saw centaurs walking about the city. Well, she assumed it was a city. There was only one road, a dirt one, and it wasn't very wide. The majority of the area was covered in grass, and while goats were munching on the grass, a centaur would occasionally move down, pluck up the grass with his fingers, and put the grass into his mouth. It was apparently an accepted snack.

Some centaurs, only some, had someone on their horse-like backs, and they were almost always human women or children. She saw perhaps two centaurs carrying dwarves on their horse-like backs. Jansetta said to her companions, "We appear to be in Breden."

"Well," said one of the other women, "that's a sensible thing to say."

The carriage went on for a while, and then it stopped at a building that seemed a bit separated from the neighborhoods and districts. A carriage door was opened, and Aldous was smiling at them. "Time to get out, then! I'll help you all do it!"

They were all put in a similar situation that the peasant women had been put in. Their wrists were put together in manacles, and they were all connected by a slightly long chain. Another chain was held by Aldous, who led the women inside the stone building.

The floor was completely dirt. The room they entered had wooden interior walls, but Aldous slid them aside to reveal other rooms. The women were soon taken to a room where a very tall, long table stood. There were several centaurs, most of them with wrinkled faces, tending to glowing coals in braziers, which were heating up small pots.

"Now, you all need to go the table," Aldous said with a gentle voice, waving his fingers at them. The centaurs that had been at braziers went to the women immediately, reaching out and clasping their waists. Their chains clattered and dragged on the wooden material of the table as they were all placed on it, their lower legs dangling off the edge.

Aldous removed his hat. His hair fell out of it. It turned out to be fairly short, but a little bit wavy. "Alright, we're going to wash you all up, which means you'll all have to be naked."

All three of the women flinched. Their mouths parted, and they gasped.

Holding his hands up, waving them a bit, Aldous rushed to say, "Don't fret about it, now! We aren't going to rape you! I only want you to be sparkling!" He put his hands together then, backing away a little, his hooves tapping against the floor. "I wouldn't do anything to hurt any of you. Besides," and here he laughed a bit, which made him look like he was squinting, "if any of you end up damaged, I won't make anywhere near as much money."

Curiosity temporarily put Jansetta's fear aside. "Who are you meant to sell us to?"

Aldous gave a small shrug. "I can't sell all three of you to the same man. You'll each go to a different one, and I don't know which man will have which woman." He turned to one of the older centaurs. "Get on with it. I'll see about getting their new clothes." He opened a wall and left the group.

Jansetta realized that the older centaurs were approaching them with cold expressions and colder looking scissors. Then, despite the weak protests of the frightened women, all of their clothing, including their shoes, stockings, and chemises, were cut away. Then they rubbed at their bare flesh with damp cloths. The men were considerate enough to make sure the water wasn't boiling hot, but Jansetta was still uncomfortable with the ordeal.

When the centaurs were satisfied with the women's skin, they gathered up bars of soap and fine combs. They rolled the soap into their withered palms to make lather. Then they actually scratched and rubbed the lather into the women's scalps. They pulled at their hair with the combs, their eyes sharp, as if they were scanning their locks for something nasty.

Perhaps they were worried that the peasant women had given them lice, fleas, or ticks? Jansetta had heard that farm folk often had parasites on them, but it certainly wasn't their fault. Peasants needed to keep their animals inside their homes at night, so they wouldn't be eaten by wild animals or taken by thieves. Thanks to that fact, peasants often had a few bugs on them.

Jansetta wondered how much money a peasant woman was worth. Then she wondered how much money she was worth.

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