P-p-p-p-pokerface

Right then.

My day. An observation...sirik chains get damned cold when it is, you know, cold out. I also found out that if one rolls around in them, body heat can warm them up. Lesson the third? Try not to do so in the street, the weird stares and slipper to the ass are so not worth it.

I do not deal well with free women as a rule. Not the hyper-prissy "help eek a naked slave" sorts. I mean for fuck's sake, are free women born blind? Maybe raised in windowless boxes? Pft. I was raised in the damned forests and even I was not sent into a fan waving frenzy of kicking at the thought of naked women.

Seriously.

I had very strange dreams last night. There were talking larma and giant sandhills and something about if I just knew the correct rhyming couplet I could find my way to the fairs where something was important and hidden in plain sight near water. Oh please. I am not even going to try and analyze that one. I will, however, share it with Skirt and Mads, they like to think about stuff a lot and are smart about those things. Plus? Other people's wack-ass dreams might make take their minds off of other things.

I have to be honest, I do not exactly know what those other things are but I am fairly good at reading people. Sort of a required job skill for a whore. Skirt, there I think it is something between her and Master. They both seem tense, edgy, and I am absolutely certain that every time we are in the same room I am observing a long discourse without benefit of spoken word. Not a bad thing per se, but it is something I observe without trying too hard to figure it out. Interrupting conversations, spoken or not, is rude.

Mads, I think her issue right now is far more overt and yet perhaps far more difficult. She loves the Scribe, though I am not sure yet if she knows it. She at least loves the fact that he will not leave her in peace. See, because all women, at their core, are discontent to be left to themselves for too long.

'Course there is not a damned thing I can do to help either friend with what ails or at least occupies her. So, I'll hand them a puzzle, Skirt will especially like that, of dreams and see what they come up with. It is a small thing, and their findings irrelevant really, but it is something I can do.

Mads asked me to speak in poetic terms to show her how chains ought to make her feel. She also told me I was perfect. Woman has got to be mental. There are no words I can share that would give her what she is looking for, and speaking of how I came to be where I am today may have horrified her more than helped.

That is the thing, though. I could describe a moon dance a thousand times and not one syllable would gain the listener a single inkling of what is is to feel the trees pant, to smell the earth heat and to know one's own blood as a primal thing.

Mreh.

That was many lifetimes ago. Who I am today is...well, different. In some ways wonderfully changed, in others, the jury is still out. The Desert Man actually asked me that last night...who am I? Why do men ask such ridiculous questions? I am stark naked, in sirik and on my knees at your feet. Hello, I am the Tatrix of Tharna, care to wager on my basket at the fairs? Stupid men.

I am Portia. I am a slave. I am, all in all, a happy slave. I am and enjoy being a whore to men. I like chains, sometimes. Why is there a need to know more than that? Men seem to think that layers and walls are bad things, and to forget that sometimes walls hide unsightly landfills or half done construction. Layers can enhance the flavor of food or warm you on a cold night. Walls and layers insulate, lend strength to and can even beautify a place. Without walls, nothing within survives intact. They are not, inherently, bad.

I do not lie or deceive when I use my body or my words to distract a man from my own layers and walls. I offer myself, freely and with genuine pleasure. I am an exquisite whore of a slave. To survive as a whore I cannot, logically, extend a depth of energy or emotion with every man that takes me. The ability to separate the external and internal is a skill, not a disorder. So stop with all the mind numbing excavations already and enjoy me as what I am. I am Portia. I am a slave.

I still do not see the fun and empowerment in this writing thing. I have charcoal on my hand. Better wash it off before I go and be precisely, exactly, perfectly, what I appear to be.