Solo Requiem.

[Maore]

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Spring 3 521 AV


“Do you think of home often?” Ennoia Nitrozian’s bright eyes were already on Maore when she looked up at him. He was in the middle of tucking in his shirt but watching her with an uncomfortable intensity. The ethaefal looked away from him and fixed her tunic back in place with her belt as she thought of an answer.

If home was the Sea of Grass then she’d not thought of it in a while. It had been forgotten under the mind-numbing consistency of Ennoia’s ownership, the constant push and pull of his demands of her and what was expected of a slave kept at home rather than in one of the family businesses. If home was the divine realm she’d come from lifetimes ago then the answer was a little more ambiguous; she dreamt of it often and when sat in the sunlight as she took a breather from waiting on Ennoia or his siblings she couldn’t help but feel like she missed it.

“No, not really,” she answered him when she’d thought it out, moving forward to help him with his coat. “The water helps, I suppose. I traded a sea for the Sea.”

He wrinkled his nose and brushed her off to do up the buttons on his own jacket. She stepped aside like the dutiful slave she was meant to be as he looked at himself in the mirror over his dresser. “I was hoping you might tell me about it,” he said as he preened over himself. Distaste curled like smoke in her gut under the weight of her life’s greatest joy: apathy. Hollow and muted it dissipated when he looked at her again. “I’ve never left Ravok,” and never will, she knew, “you’ll have to tell me about it some time.”

Maore knew that he wasn’t asking her. She could feel the weight of obligation but barely stopped herself from sighing with resignation. If there was something she resolutely wished not to share with the man who demanded her body, time, and compliance it was her past. Glancing at his reflection showed her that he was waiting for a response, one that she gave softly, a sweet “of course, Ennoia” that left her feeling tired.

“Wonderful,” he smiled, all teeth, and patted her on the cheek when he walked past her. “See me out and then wrap up your duties. You have the night to yourself.”

Oh, what kindness.

Following Ennoia as he gathered his gloves and scarf, Maore took them off of his hands and met him at the door. The event he was attending tonight at the home of one of his friends was enough of a gathering to mean that they weren’t alone in the foyer of the Nitrozian estate. A few of his siblings were also in attendance being fussed over by slaves and each other. A few of their slaves were even dressed for the occasion; the Konti wearing feathers and gems, the child wearing silk and a circlet, both shackled at the wrists and marked by the household symbol on their bared left shoulders. She looked away from them, found Ennoia once he’d stepped out of a little cluster of his sisters, and slid his gloves onto his hands once he’d held them out to her. He was talking over her head as she worked as if she weren’t even there, which she was used to and expected, and Maore used the time to straighten out his coat and give him a long once-over.

“That’s fine,” he said to the ethaefal when he’d noticed her looking, brushing her off once more with a lingering touch to a red mark blossoming on her cheekbone. Maore tried not to flinch. “Keep out of trouble.”

Then he was leaving, bustling out the door with the Konti on his arm and amidst his chattering family, Maore watching him go before the door closed and she was left in the foyer, one suddenly listless slave among the remaining people straightening up after the party’s departure.

Maore only snapped out of her empty stare when she’d realized what she’d been doing. She straightened up, turned on her heel to leave the door behind, and returned to Ennoia’s room to clean up after them. If she had the night free she wanted to enjoy as much of it as she could before the call to sleep.



732 words

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[Maore]

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Ennoia kept his rooms immaculate, empty of personal touches and smelling like perfumes. After the flurry of his departure he'd left his wardrobe open, coats strewn on his bed, and a collection of pretty rings on the desk where his one actual personal possession not washed in the rich colours of the Nitrozian house stood out stark against the walnut furnishing: a bracelet, thin and copper and tarnished with age and exposure, draped around his ink which had been stoppered long before she'd even been called to his room tonight. His desk was a little haphazard but Maore, drawn by curiosity, lingered over the finely wrought bracelet moreso than the paperwork her keeper had to complete.

Maore couldn't read anyway.

Her fingers, long and delicate and covered with intricate knotwork done under a Drykas tattooist curled along the gleaming metal slowly, caressing it, feeling the difference between smooth metal and encrusted weathering, tracing the banding before dropping away, suddenly dispassionate about wanting to know what it was and why it was so important. The ethaefal instead moved it closer to the back of his desk and straightened out his paperwork neatly, doing her best to keep it in order--one time she'd made a mistake, near harmless, and she'd never forgotten--and pushed in his chair. Done that far, the woman turned back to the room, to the mess that had seemed so unremarkable, so easy to pick up and organize, and she felt so very tired, so very incapable.

Approaching the bed to begin peeling off the bedding to make it all over again, the ethaefal adopted something she liked to think of, and often called, dreaming wherein she was conscious of what she was doing if only in the periphery of her actual consciousness but otherwise thinking, perhaps even seeing, dreaming of something else entirely. Her first time encountering this had been frightening, down in the barren cells of the KRI with a wild man holding her down and people watching from the sidelines. She didn't know what it was but it had helped then, helped earlier when Ennoia had her in his arms, and helped now when the monotony of setting his bed finally hit her and dragged her under.

Her arms went through the motions, aching at the weight of downy blankets, smelling of perfumes as she refreshed his linens, but her eyes saw a memory of a dream of her last dead wife. Laying still in the back of a wagon being pulled by seme off to rest under the stars, laying together in a bed of long grass and sage, eating raspberries together, watching her grow old as their children drifted away and they began to forget what it felt like to hold their husband and wife, as they began to forget what it felt like to be young.

Maore dreamed of those moments, eyes focused with a haunting vacancy, flattening the crease in Ennoia's comforter, and snapped out of her trance by the sudden pungent aroma of

d e a t h

mildew. She had to step back after such an abrupt awakening and actually frowned at the bed as if it had been the culprit. No such luck, though; the bed smelled of sex and perfumes and feathers and intimately Ennoia.

Shaking the notion of wood rot off, considering Ennoia slept comfortably several floors above the water and within the inside of the house, she moved on.


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