Completed [Challenge] The Length Of A Day III

[Tazrae]

Timestamp: 45th of Fall, 522 A.V.

The Kois Quas Dominion : Gold Lake (first season)

She woke with the dawn. It was the same dawn as the dawn before and she knew that the dawn would be the same on the next day. Taz slipped out of bed, belted on her robe, and walked to the balcony to watch the sun rise over the mountains at the exact same spot it did the day before. The cloud patterns across the sky were the same white islands drifting across the cerulean sky as the day before. They moved at the same rate and held the same shape every morning. A bird flew across her view. It was the same bird as the day before at the same exact time. Lira brought the same breakfast she offered the day before. Taz watched her dispassionately.

“Nothing changes here.” She offered to Lira, wondering how the woman would react.

Lira glanced up at her. “It’s a dominion. Things only change if Florentin wants it too. Time will pass differently here.” She added, lifting lids off plates and portioning out Tazrae a measure of breakfast she thought was appropriate. The Innkeeper just looked at the food, not wanting it. She was a far better cook than whomever was making the meals, and she knew it. Did she miss cooking? Tazrae wasn’t sure. She couldn’t think about how it would feel to cook again. There was no emotion attached to it. The emotions attached to her memories were real, and she could feel them, but they felt dulled somehow. She knew things, for example, were pleasant or exciting, or she felt love and passion, but it was more like she was remembering feeling that feeling with its label rather than the actual feeling itself.

“How long have I been here?” She asked abruptly, pushing her plate away. She didn’t want the food. The act of eating seemed somehow exhausting to her. She did nothing all day, wandering around, reading, staring out at the landscape from one of the balconies. She was never hungry, tired, thirsty, or any of it. Lira made her eat, forced her to drink, and even after her nightly sessions with the man who’s name she didn’t know… she still didn’t even weep. None of it mattered.

“I can’t tell you that. Time passes here differently. But Taz, you need to eat. You are loosing weight. You are losing muscle tone too.” The servant added, frowning and studying the odd necklace chocking Tazrae’s throat. “He took that too far.” She said, worried, as Taz stared at the plate and opted not to eat yet again. It tasted like sand anyhow. Everything here tasted like sand. “I think you came from a life you were used to doing a lot of things. Here, there is nothing for you to do… and you need something, anything, to occupy you.” The girl said, looking thoughtfully at Tazrae.

More days passed. They were all the same. Taz would have been bored if she could feel such emotions. She started making marks on the wall behind a curtain to notch out the passing days, but often forgot if she’d made a mark that day or not. One mark became ten. Ten marks became a sixty. Taz watched it all impassively and then over time forgot to make the marks at all.

The same argument with Lira grew to lunch and dinner meals as well. The servant was always shoving food at her that Tazrae often refused to eat. She was still a brood mare at night, and every three or four days the doctor came to check on her. She didn’t bleed, but when the doctor questioned her, he didn’t seem surprised because he seemed to think she’d lost too much weight and muscle tone. Florentin came to visit once or twice, but it was always random. He questioned Tazrae, but never stayed long. What she said seemed to enrage him and he left immediately. After his visits there were changes, small ones at first, but changes never the less.

[Tazrae]

Taz would often drift in her mind to pass the day. Then she’d abruptly come back to lucidity, realize nothing had changed, and drift again. Lira seemed to notice and started answering more of her questions when she had a rare moment when she asked them. It all started with Tazrae’s question on whether Lira was real or not. “I’m real. Yes. I came here shortly after you did. I really am one of your cousins.” It was the most she’d ever gotten out of Lira at once. So Tazrae found herself taking a bit of food to see if that excited the young woman, and asked another question.

“Is the man at night real?” She asked. Lira answered almost immediately, more to see if she’d take another bite for the servant than anything else. “Yes, he is. He’s just as much a prisoner here as you are.” She added and was rewarded by Tazrae cleaning a small portion of her plate, more than she’d eaten in days.

That particular question rattled around in her brain a great deal, and she swore when Lira got her ready for him that night and fastened on her blindfold, and left. Tazrae swore that Lira paused just outside of the door and had a conversation with the man. Taz couldn’t tell what they said. She heard a softly spoken sentence, a deeper gruffer answer, and a few moments of back and forth. Taz wrapped an arm up and itched a shoulder, otherwise sitting still. Lira hadn’t bothered with the robe for what felt like months. Taz sat waiting for him without a single garment other than the blindfold, not caring what would happen. It had happened yesterday and would happen tomorrow. She had no feelings about it otherwise.

When the door opened and closed, Taz didn’t even bother to turn her head in the direction the sound came from. She was apathetic to the whole thing. He’d arrived like this dozen of times, maybe even a hundred, and he’d do what he came to do and leave. There was nothing different about this day. It was the same yesterday and would be the same the next day. She simply waited as the man approached and stood before her.

“Tazrae.” He said softly and she tilted her head upwards, towards him, not startled that he spoke yet thinking she should have been. His big hand came down on her head, stroking the curls and pulling one straight out gently, letting it spring back into place. Taz didn’t move, didn’t react, just sat there waiting for him to press her down, do what he had come to do, and leave. It made no difference to her. He didn’t excite her. He didn’t make her afraid. He simply was… simply existed. He stroked her hair again, trailing his hand down her head, and touched her neck. Then he dipped his hands beneath the collar, frowning though Tazrae couldn’t see the reaction.

[Tazrae]

When she’d first slipped the necklace around her neck, it had tightened up on her neck to a smaller size and acted as a choker. But she’d lost weight and muscle mass and the man could easily slide his fingers beneath the collar and pull it out and away from her skin. He glanced around, thoughtful, and then pulled his silken belt from the robe around his body. He took the end and slipped it under her collar. Then he began to carefully wrap the silk around her neck snugly but made sure her airway wasn’t cut off. When he was done, the collar was buffered from touching her skin and he stepped back.

Tazrae took a deep breath. Then she took another. And after another moment, she began to shake, hard, and to her horror, she began to cry. She felt rough thumbs wipe tears from her cheek and the man’s soft voice whispered quietly and fiercely at her. “Don’t use your magic if you can touch your well. He’ll know and he’ll do worse than this collar. You are in his world here, and there’s nothing you can do to free yourself. Not right now. I need you to pull yourself together. I need you to focus. You aren’t going to survive this if you don’t and I won’t be able to leave this silk on your throat. I can’t let Lira see you as this either or she will report it. Do you understand?” He asked, his whisper concealing the true timbre of his voice.

She nodded slowly.

“You’ve dropped weight. You are nothing but skin and bones. Lira is worried. You are losing muscle tone as well. We both need to know what we can do to help you survive this. We can’t free you. We can’t help you rebel. We have to do what we are told. But I won’t let you waste away, not like this…” He said, rubbing her shoulder.

Taz started to speak, but she wasn’t used to talking to this man, not during this… not about her needs. Emotions were flooding her, foreign, things that she hadn’t felt in what seemed an eternity. They shook her, making her want to fight, to shift, to call on her djedpool. In fact, even before she could speak, she sank deep into herself, where her awareness was flooded in the djedpool at her core. “I need… something to do. I spend all day, an eternity, doing nothing when I am used to doing something.” She whispered, the talking was foreign, and felt horribly rebellious. In this place, at this time, she was desperate to be heard.

“He said no magic, but could I train my weapons? Could I learn Benshira things? Could I fight and keep the muscles I worked hard to develop?” She asked abruptly, feeling like a stranger in her own skin.

The man cupped her jaw, thumb stroking her jawline. “Yes. I can arrange for that and a trainer. I can make sure you have things to do to fill your day. Lira isn’t doing her job and has no idea how to care for one of our Wilder clanswoman. You are something we haven’t seen in the Kois for a long time. And if you perish here, away from your family, we will never see it again. This child he wants to get you with is going to be mine as much as it is going to be yours. We both know why he wants it. He wants a son for a future vessel. I do not want to do this, but I must. It's too complicated to tell you about… to explain. But just know if he didn’t have my whole world hanging over me, I would not be doing this. I would let him take my life or even my body for a time if I didn’t have others to live for. I will try and change this endless life for you, Tazrae. I swear it. And I will make something for you that will do this full time if you can bare it, so you can come back to yourself and not be locked in your own mind.” He said, reaching up to run a hand across the silk insulating her skin from the collar.

[Tazrae]

Then he tipped her chin up, bent low, and kissed her. He’d never kissed her before, not like this, which caused Tazrae to freeze and began to tremble again. His lips were not the lips of a man she wanted, loved, or had anything with other than a shared experience. “What… who… I need to know… your name.” She said when he pulled back and paused. She had his scent in her nose now, not unpleasant, and he nuzzled at her neck, his fingers toying with the silk at her throat as if trying to decide to leave it in place.

“Nyle.” He said softly. “I am Nyle.” He repeated. “I very much want this silk to stay on. I want to touch you until I make your body sing and feel your organism around me as I do what I must do. I want you to feel the pleasure I feel buried in your body. I want the child I put inside you to be put inside you in a moment of passion and not in a clinical moment of breeding. Would you be willing?” He asked. She said nothing, not for the longest time, as a wash of emotions filled her. Faces from her past, memories, wants and desires, things she could and couldn’t have. Syka seemed a world away. She wasn’t in the living world and she wasn’t alive. This was the Ukalas, and she wasn’t sure if she was willing to live, not here, not now.

Tazrae reached up, grabbed the silk tucked around her collar at her throat and ripped it away. It was all the answer she could give him. If she said yes, she was an active participant in this madness and became something other than the victim. She wasn’t ready to be that. She wasn’t ready to betray the memories she held tight to. Nyle sighed softly and whispered… “I understand.” Then he gently grasped her shoulders and instead of turning her where he couldn’t see her face as he took her like one beast took another…. he laid her back, pushing her up on the bed, and took her as a man took a woman.

As every day, the same as the last, Lira returned when Nyle left. She cleaned Tazrae and pulled back the sheets so the woman could seek rest in her bed. In the morning, when the sun rose at the exact spot beyond the golden mountains, Tazrae woke and walked out onto the balcony where she watched the very same bird as the day before – the same bird as would fly past tomorrow – cross her viewpoint. She took a deep breath and wondered how long she could endure.

[Tazrae]

Even though everything was the same, day in and day out, there were changes made. In the mornings, before Lira made any attempt to break Tazrae’s fast, she would set out with the captive on a run through the garden in the desert before it got too hot. Then, they’d break their fast with a small meal of honeyed oats or cakes with fruit. Then, slowly, a man started coming around. He was tall, and comely, with the golden skin and eyes of a true Benshira.

He offered weapons to Tazrae – bows with arrows, swords, morning stars, daggers, and assorted other things. None of the weapons moved her until she spotted a coiled bullwhip in the mix and the man nodded his approval. Then the man began joining them in their morning runs and after the morning meal, he began teaching Tazrae hand-to-hand combat and how to handle the whip. They sometimes included bow lessons too when he found out she knew a bit about compound longbows. The lessons and the run outside in the mornings seemed to do wonders for the woman’s health. Without emotions, she still emotionally felt nothing, but her body started craving food and started feeling hungry again. She started sleeping once more in a regular cycle, and woke more or less well rested.

And once that happened, Tazrae’s body started filling out again, gaining muscle tone, and her female cycles grew regular again. She bled monthly, as a woman should, and it was then that Nyle managed to do what Sran’tuka, housed in the body of her grandfather, bade him do. He got Tazrae with a child. She suspected it happened when her health had taken a turn for the better. Her menstruating should have remained regular but instead her period stopped. She wondered when her breasts grew sore.

And finally knew when nausea struck her morning, noon, and night. It hit her with a fury. After two missed bleeds, Nyle did not return to her chambers. The last time he visited her before he never came again, he wrapped the silk around her neck, between the collar and her skin, and held her tight for a long long time. When he finally spoke, he told her this was his last visit. He told her what the doctor expected her physical exam on the next day to conclude, and that he wanted her to remember that this child was his too. And he whispered to her, asking her … nearly begging her… to win free of Sran’tuka and take their child to safety.

She said nothing, making no promises to the man whose face she'd never seen. And he withdrew without touching her otherwise and without performing the act he’d performed for countless nights since she’d arrived. She was too busy locked in the horror of what was to come, what a pregnancy meant for Sran’tuka, and praying that what lay sheltered in her womb was not male. If she carried a son to term, the monster would have a new vessel.

All that emotion, after none at all for days and days, was overwhelming. It crippled her to the point she didn’t tell Nyle goodbye. It even crippled her to the fact that she failed to free the silk from around her neck before Lira returned and found her locked in her own deluge of cascading emotions.

The next day, Sran’tuka, wearing the body of Florentin Arcadius, paid her a visit, tightened the collar almost unbearably tight against her skin, and stood in observance of the exam and the confirmation he was going to get the one thing he had always wanted of Tazrae; a child.

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