I was reading a story I wrote a few years ago and my eye got snagged on the legionnaires that were in it.
The Légion étrangère has a long and colorful – and often tragic history – since there have been more than a few instances where those hard men fought down to the very last one.
In that story, it was 1963. But it gave me an idea for something set in 1924, so away I went.
I’m putting up a few chapters tonight, knowing that it’ll take a few days for them to be up and I’ve got a trip out of town coming up to where I won’t have access. By the time I get back, I’ll put up the rest.
In the meantime, meet young A’ishah and her friend with the dour countenance. 0_o
**************
Late afternoon, Algeria, 1925.
She watched from hiding, hoping that the lot of them wouldn’t take as long as they usually did to wash their hair and bathe a little. They always took too long anyway in her opinion. The only ones who ought to be here on any given day were the servants and their daughters, there to do the drudgery of some light washing, but instead, they sat and combed out the long hair of the better ones while talking about nothing as though it was important news.
But it was warm in the sunshine here, even though it was wintertime and if there was no breeze, it could feel hotter than Hell sometimes, so a few of the whores came along for a splash in the ocean – since the guards had to be here anyway.
But those women lived rather easier lives and they were more prone to feel a little carefree as they splashed and laughed. Almost every one of them had some friends among the workers and it went both ways. The other women in the area never went there if the whores were there, not wanting to be mistaken for one of them, though it wasn’t hard to tell. Those women were always covered while the brothel girls – especially the servants – quite often weren’t.
To her, hiding among the rougher rocks where no one in their right mind would ever go with their soft and easily-cut feet, this whole parade just went on too long while she had to wait for them to get tired of it and ask to be taken back to the brothel.
It was probably good for business, she thought – a slow-moving parade of barely clothed beauties walking and chattering with their friends among the servants – who wore even less, since they had nothing to hide.
It was another thing that she just couldn’t understand – the concept of beauty among these ones. To her, many of the workers were better looking than the harlots.
But then, she sighed to herself, who was she to know?
At least all of them belonged here, unlike her.
She wasn’t one of them, the bathers on the pebbly strand in Algeria, not far from the Kasbah in Algiers.
She wasn’t Arabic at all; not Algerian, Tunisian, or Moroccan. Not Egyptian, Mauritanian, Libyan, Tuareg or Berber.
She sighed, knowing that she’d give a lot only to be able to catch sight of someone just a little like her other than her siblings.
She wasn’t human.
Where she’d been born, there had been a great upheaval, one of several cave-ins over the grottoes where she’d lived as a child. The ceiling came down, killing so many, burying hundreds alive in the blink of an eye.
Other than her siblings, she never saw any of her family again, not that it was more than a bother to her, though she and her siblings did miss their father. She’d been twelve then and her mother had already begun to cast jealous eyes her way, going from loving to where all of her kind ended up with respect to their own daughters – murderous if their offspring couldn’t take the hints by the time that they were about eighteen, if not sooner.
Everyone knew that some orc fathers would prefer much younger females even if …
She’d been topside on the other side of the ridge with her younger brother and her little sisters when it had happened, human miners digging too deeply because their bosses were after every scrap of what they mined for.
It had taken them several months to find others who were homeless due to similar circumstances. They’d fallen in with a pack and just followed as hidden stragglers, learning to fend for themselves even better than they’d been taught, since then they could put all of the lessons to use. They’d been noticed in time anyway, but by then it hadn’t mattered much, because by then, she could easily defend the rest and they were all beginning to come into their own as well.
She’d been eighteen by that time and her particular combination of genes gave her some of her mother’s beauty – for what they were – as well as a lot of her father’s speed, agility, strength and power.
She wasn’t quite his height, stopping at six feet by the time that she’d stopped growing, but though she was six inches shorter than her father had been, she was six feet of shapely, feminine, bone-crushing force – if she didn’t have one of her blades handy to simplify things.
All of her charms were in a slightly oversized package as far as most human girls go, but she had all of the attractions. Hers were just … more solid, that was all. She had ridges of hard muscle where the most statuesque human girl might only have hints of that on her and she weighed well over two hundred pounds.
Though to be fair, you’d have to wonder where she hid all of that – until you saw her rip out a tree – roots and all – to throw it out of her way.
Around here, where she’d been with her brother and sisters ever since they’d lost sight of the last of the others three years ago and sailed over, she was like a giantess that nobody knew about.
Well, there was one person.
Like the others who came and liked to laugh and frolic at the shore sometimes A’ishah lived at the brothel. They were all bound to it, though to different degrees and in different ways.
The moneymakers were the whores, the dancing girls, and the musicians and they were treated fairly well there. Below them were the servants – the serving girls who took a turn at the many jobs which always needed doing. But their lives were also better than tolerable most of the time at the brothel.
A’ishah lived there too, but her existence wasn’t all that charmed. She looked pretty, though she had barely anything for a chest, but that wasn’t the thing – the reason why all of the others her age looked down on her or made fun.
One good look at the roughness of the skin on her hands as well as the callouses would tell you everything.
A’ishah was bound to the brothel in a different way. She was a slave who lived there with her mother – also a slave. And in her place, it wasn’t all lighthearted songs and laughter, not for A’ishah and the others like her.
She performed her tasks as though she was transparent, because that was what she wished that she was. She knew the floor plan like the back of her hand and if she was unlucky enough to be making her way down one of the corridors upstairs where the clients were entertained, she’d always try to duck into a doorway which she knew had another exit if there were men coming the other way. If there wasn’t one of those doors nearby, then she had to continue on and put up with the gropes and the lewd comments with a smile on as though she enjoyed them or even liked the men as well.
It was better than trying to duck into a room with no other way out, because the owners would beat her afterward, annoyed that they hadn’t known in time to charge for her – if someone actually wanted to fuck her.
They might not have known why the men had wanted her, but then the place did cater to some … men from other places and there was no telling what they might find attractive in a girl. That particular brothel was the one – the one where the legionnaires all went whenever they were in town and on leave. The doors were open to them in the hopes that the place might come under a little of their protection if it was ever needed, and until it was, the place had more than enough muscle around to keep them safe as they drank and sang their unintelligible songs and whored.
But that didn’t mean that they were loved.
To most people – Algerian people, that is – they were loathed since they were the Foreign Legion which at that time was the military face of the French government which oppressed them all, other than the French settlers.
While A’ishah wasn’t one of the performers or the pampered women who were the main draw, her services could be bought on occasion. The beauties who commanded a high price for their services all looked down on her and a lot of the other servants made fun of her and her life wasn’t pleasant. They all laughed at her, but she did have one man who loved her to a degree.
He didn’t mind that she was a slave-girl there. Her skin was so dark, but he understood why. The place had a large enclosed courtyard with a fountain as well as a garden in it and it was one of her jobs to keep it swept and clean. Since she’d become what she was, A’ishah had worn any sort of clothing only rarely. What for? She didn’t have much to her name and unless it was a cold day, there was no point to wearing out what little that she had. It wasn’t like they bought her anything very often, since she wasn’t one of the ones whose occupation paid for anything. And if you’re the one who has to stand in the sun and sweep for up to a day at a time, why dirty anything with the dust of it, other than your skin?
Her hair had been so long once, but lately, she just kept it short in a long boyish cut since it didn’t hang on her neck then. Her hair tended to grow in long ringlets, but she found it more practical to keep it short. One look would tell you that she was a girl, but with her little breasts, she looked a lot younger and her appearance came in a little handy at times, since some of the others tended not to tease her as much.
A’ishah was a little shapely and she was pretty, but to that one man – a Spaniard who was a sergeant in the Legion – she was the most lovely woman on Earth. He came for her whenever he could and he paid for her time – time which she’d have given him for nothing because she cared for him, but the place did have an owner, after all.
The change in her life came about by accident one night, but A’ishah was the only one who knew a thing about the large cloaked girl who hid herself so well that no one knew of her.
Not wanting to hear any of the taunts and jests of the others, A’ishah came alone to the shore by a different path with her washing and she waited until they were gone before she stepped out and began scrubbing her clothing and some of her mother’s as well.
But it could be a hazardous way to do it if you were the only girl out there on the strand on the other side of the small spit of rocky shore without a man in sight to protect you.
A’ishah didn’t need a man for that once they’d met. Her large friend could cause all sorts of mishaps to befall any man or men who entertained thoughts of using her. Boulders would come from nowhere seemingly to flatten a fool who came within a hundred feet and a handful of pebbles thrown by a powerful but unseen arm could do about as much damage as a silent shotgun blast.
There had even been strange and mysterious drownings, and not just a few. So after a time, A’ishah found that she could wash her clothes in peace.
They hadn’t met at the beach.
They’d met because the large girl had the beginnings of a crush.
She’d seen him one time when she was out hunting for food, running mostly naked from one place of concealment to the next in the early evening outside of town. She’d heard a commotion and hid herself as was her way. She knew nothing of the struggle for independence then, though she did hear of it later.
While staying in the area, she’d heard and learned a lot of the various tongues that the humans used and she’d even learned a little French, enough to get by day to day. But that evening, she’d looked out at the troops coming back into town and she’d seen one man.
He was human, but she didn’t care by then. Besides, she was convinced that even if she still saw plenty of her kind of males around, that one man would still draw her eye. Other than her own father, she’d very seldom seen males who were taller than her and even if they were, she’d found them ugly to look at.
But not that one.
He was tall and muscular, for one thing. His skin was so light that she knew that it must have been burned badly the first time that he’d been out in the sun for a time. People with skin that color had no business being out where he made his living.
She liked his face – even though he wasn’t what she was so he didn’t have tusks on his lower jaw the way that she did – which she also liked about him for some inexplicable reason.
His hair was like gold and though she’d seen a few like that, she’d never seen one like him. The comparison to the precious metal almost didn’t fit him at all, but if you kept it in mind, you’d be able to tell yourself that it was the shade of white gold and she liked that idea best.
His eyes had troubled her at first. Seen from a distance, they looked like two blue beacons whenever he’d looked a little in her direction. It wasn’t until much later – weeks, really – that she’d been able to get close enough to know that they shone like the sea in a shallow bay.
As the main body of troops had moved by her, she’d waited, having forgotten all about the meal that she’d been after. She couldn’t help herself and followed at a discreet distance, stopping only once to grab her dark cloak.
Even after they’d gone inside of their fort, she’d hung around, seeking ways to get inside, but before that happened, she’d seen the gates open again a few hours later as a few loud groups of the soldiers walked out to head into town, each group being escorted by two or three of their companions who were armed in case anyone thought to make something of it.
She still stole along behind them all, trying hard to see if the one that she’d seen was in one of the bunches. They were right inside the town by the time that she saw him and she was a little disconcerted as she watched him head off with his group to one of the brothels.
She knew what those places were and it wasn’t a shock to her. What bothered her more than anything was the possibility of them all having their throats cut.
Not even having a real reason to – since she didn’t know him at all, she still stayed out in the street hidden in the darkest of shadows as she waited. She’d seen that he was quiet and didn’t hoot or yell like many of them did. He just went along.
Hours later, she saw several of the men leaving, some of them reeling a little, and more than a few trying to sing the sun up. She was so intent on trying to make sure that she didn’t miss seeing the tallest one, that she almost stepped on the feet of of A’ishah, who’d come out to toss out the contents of a chamber pot, since nobody there wanted any of that French by-product left behind, and of course, it was an erroneous notion for only a few of the men were French by birth.
A’ishah almost screamed, but she found a hand over her mouth and a rough feminine voice growling quietly in her ear in Arabic that it had been an accident and that she meant no harm.
Much later the next day, when A’ishah had gone to do her washing, they met again and in the full light of the afternoon sun, A’ishah saw the face that would have caused her to scream for Allah’s mercy if she’d gotten a good look the night before. She tried not to stare as she did her washing naked while her strange companion stood nearby, out of sight of the beach behind some rocks as she bathed.
But they’d had time to talk a little eventually and there was even a little fun in it when they’d tried to exchange names. The slave girl grew to like the odd-looking one in spite of herself.
“Ayeesha?” the larger one said experimentally and A’ishah nodded, “It means ‘prosperous’.”
She looked down, “But as my name, it is nothing more than a joke. I am not from here.
I am a Bedouin and I come from the south a long way. My people are wanderers. My father fell into the trap of a house such as the one where I must live. He drank and spent too long there and couldn’t pay his debts after his losses when he gambled with the other men. They killed him and took my mother and me away and now, my mother is sick and neither of us can ever go back. We ended up here.
I don’t like to come here with the rest. I have washing to do while they play like children. And because I am one of the lowest, they laugh at me for my luck and my little bosoms and most of all over my name – because I am so prosperous, they say.”
She sighed, “I grow to slowly hate my name.”
“No.”
It was just one word, spoken in the low half-growl that the larger girl often used when she was trying to be serious or quiet. A’ishah looked over and up, not understanding as she saw that strong face.
“No?”
“No,” the other one repeated.
“Your language is not mine. I only know some of it because I learn these things easily. So I do not know what it is to mean. I only know the sound of it, and I like it for only that. As the name of a pretty girl as you are, it is a good name, as lovely as you for just the sound.”
A’ishah smiled then and thanked her new companion, “What name are you known by?”
The other girl had to think about it, not out of not knowing it anymore or anything like that, but she thought about how long it had been since she’d heard it much. Her siblings most often called her ‘sister’.
“I am Yasmikha,” she’d said.
“‘Yasmina’ is the closest name to that here,” A’ishah smiled, “A very good name, a pretty name. It must be the same. Here, it means a flower that smells sweet.”
Yasmikha shook her head with a slight scowl, “No.”
“No again?” A’ishah asked and the she-orc nodded, “No.
It is the girl name of Yasmahk. It means ‘one who can tear an arm from a foe and eat it before them’.
Not the same.”
“Not the same,” A’ishah agreed. “But I think Yasmina fits you better. You are lovely in your way.”
The she-orc could have fallen over at that. Indeed, she almost did, trying not to roar in laughter.
“Then I think I would be happy to be called that name by you,” she’d chuckled when she had a little breath back, “since it makes me smile because of you.”
“I like the marks on your face – those tattoos,” A’ishah remarked with a smile, “I have wanted some, but they will not pay to have any put on me and I cannot pay for them myself – but I do like yours. Is there a meaning?”
She meant the way that Yasmikha’s eyelids and eyesockets wore dark ink and the heavily-stylized patterns which ran down her forehead.
The she-orc shrugged, “Not especially. I had them done when I was fifteen to make me look more fearsome, since then, I wasn’t as … big as I am now. It was an exchange; the ink to pay for my killing one man and two males of my kind who had given the artist some trouble.”
As the young Bedouin absorbed it, Yasmikha smiled as she looked at her. She reached out with one hand, “I do not see what is the matter with your tits as you told of it.”
She extended one finger to touch a nipple and she wiggled it around in small circles, “I like them.”
A’ishah laughed in ticklish response and she drew back, covering the nipple as she sought to make the feeling pass. “You do? Why?”
Yasmikha chuckled as she nodded, “Yes. It is a matter of what fits. They fit you well and add to your beauty to me. You wouldn’t like large ones anyway. They would make you look as absurd as those tittering idiots who come here. And also, it is work to have to carry things like that around, trust me.”
A’ishah nodded, for what Yasmikha had were large, her nipples being probably bigger than A’ishah guessed that she’d be able to open her mouth. Wet as they were and in the shore breeze, Yasmikha’s hard nipples were a sight, standing out like that.
“Are the babies … of your kind … do they all have mouths so large that you need mountains like that to feed them?”
Yasmikha chuckled, “Most of them yes, though I have never birthed any.”
“I couldn’t even move if mine were like that,” the Bedouin said, “Are they hard, or …”
She didn’t know why, but she made a smiling lunge then and she reached out to touch Yasmikha’s breasts. The she-orc laughed and tried to dodge away and it ended up in a playful struggle for a few laughing moments. Afterwards, A’ishah surprised herself again and she still asked to try just for a moment and Yasmikha nodded.
So for maybe a minute or two, they stood still as A’ishah leaned a bit with both of her hands holding one of Yasmikha’s breasts while she sucked a little just to see. She was astounded at how hard and firm they were and she liked holding on like that. The next minute, she reached for the other one, seeing as Yasmikha seemed to like it as she stood with her eyes closed, so A’ishah toyed with the other nipple at the same time while she suckled a little longer.
When they pulled apart, Yasmikha put her arm around A’ishah’s shoulders while the smaller girl slid her arm around her waist when Yasmikha offered to help with the washing. “Did you learn what you sought to know?” she asked.
A’ishah nodded in an uncertain way, “I think so. I liked doing it very much as soon as I began for some reason and when I saw that you liked it, I just went on. When you do have little ones, they will grow up strong, I think.”
“That may happen one day, though it would not be wanted so much,” Yasmikha said as they began the laundry together, “I have only my brother and my sisters for me sometimes.”
A’ishah was shocked, “Your – your brother? You – you have sisters as well?”
Yasmikha nodded, not looking ashamed at all, “Think a little, my friend. We have little choice.
To the ones here, I am too large and I frighten many – as I did you last night – only to see me. My brother is the only male like me. There are times when we all have a need and … well, there is no one else who would want us, my brother and I. So we do what we must, though not often. I have two sisters also. I am the oldest of us all by a little. We haven’t seen any others like us in some years. Who in the world might care if we do what we can to please each other?”
“I think that I understand it now,” A’ishah said.
She looked up then, “Still, it is a pity.”
Yasmikha nodded, “We get so lonely sometimes.”
“That is worse, for I know the way that it feels,” the Bedouin smiled up a little mischievously, “but it was not what I meant.
You said not often, Yasmina. THERE is the pity to my mind.”
Yasmikha stared a little, though her lips curled into a small smile after a moment, “Alright, perhaps it is a little more than that. I only wanted to say -”
“A lot would be a far better thing for me to hear,” A’ishah said with a little grin. “Take some pity on me who has no one, beautiful girl. To look at you, I’d much rather hear it that way. Why to me, it would be a crime to hear -”
“It happens all the fucking time,” Yasmikha laughed, “Would you feel better lying in your bed to think of it like that, A’ishah?”
“Yes,” the Bedouin smiled a little, “much better to know that someone enjoys that body. But can there not be anyone else for you? Anyone at all that you might like besides your brother and your sisters?”
Yasmikha thought for a second before she nodded, “Other than your kind hopefulness, there is a man that I like – I think. He is one of the soldiers. I was there to see him when we … bumped into each other last night. Well, I was there to try to look at him because I think that I like him. But that doesn’t mean -”
“Which one?” A’ishah asked a little excitedly, “I think that I must know the man that you like. I have seen them come sometimes, for a few nights a month, anyway.”
Yasmikha nodded, “He is a big one, very light hair and blue -”
“I know of him,” A’ishah smiled a little triumphantly, “He comes only because the others do. He never chooses a girl. He only sits and drinks quietly.”
“A little strange for a French soldier,” Yasmikha remarked, “for a soldier of any kind really.”
“They are not French,” A’ishah said, “Most of them are not, anyway. The few French ones who are ordinary soldiers are criminals from France. The rest of the French ones are officers. Most of the men are from other lands. I learned of it from the man who comes and asks for me sometimes. He is a Spaniard. From him, I learned that the one that you saw yesterday is not French either. Juan calls him the Northman.”
Yasmikha smiled, “I know that kind. If I am right, his land is not far from where I came from. To him and his people, my kind are a legend lost in time. It is not true, but we do not show ourselves to them very much. They used to call us Jötunn, or the Jotnar in their old stories. I wonder what he is doing here.”
“Easy enough to know, for most of them,” A’ishah nodded, “They come to a place in France to join for many reasons. Some are wanted men elsewhere, Juan told me. He is one something like that. Some join to forget something or someone in their past. Some come because they have nothing else or no one. Some are criminals and a life here so far away is better than a rope around their necks or the big knife they call guillotine. They join in France and are sent here. They are forgotten men and no one back where they came from will weep when they die.
Your friend, he -”
“He is not my friend,” Yasmikha said, “I only saw him yesterday and I followed because he looked good to me. I do not know him at all. What reason has he to want to be here?”
“He does not want to be here,” A’ishah said quietly, “Juan told me that he was in a fight in a tavern in a place called Brest. He told Juan that he didn’t start it, being only a sailor who wanted a night off the freight ship that he was on. I don’t know the rest really well, because I only asked a little, but from what Juan said, sometimes the French judges give criminals a choice among several, though most often they just sentence them. They can go to the French prisons – but they are full, so they can be sent to the French prison colonies on the other side of the world to die there.
Or if the judge thinks the man might be too strong and could be trouble for the jailors, he is given the choice to join the Légion étrangère- the legion of foreigners to fight for France. If the man agrees, he is taken and delivered to their offices and he joins. They are used to keep the power here in French hands. Some take that choice and run when they get here. But where is there to go?
The people here hate them and would cut their throats for nothing. And to run out into the desert … men who do not know how to live there … not many last more than a week before they are found either dead or begging to be taken back.
And if those ones are taken back, the rest might kill them because they had to leave to go out and hunt for them. Juan told me that they are punished then, and that they can only be taken back once.”
Yasmikha nodded as they worked, trying to digest what she’d learned.
“So he would run?” she asked.
A’ishah shook her head, “No. He is smarter than that. He would leave if he saw a chance maybe, but not if he had to run with his own comrades hunting him down. Juan said that he wants to go home before he dies. But very few men live that life and leave it. Most are killed sooner or later.
How did you come to be here?” she asked, “I’ve never seen anyone like you.”
Yasmikha shrugged, “This is the direction that the rest walked. There were many of us once. We do not like the sunlight, but the bigger and stronger of us can walk in it. Where I am from, we live in the darkness, mostly underground. I was young when I took up with that bunch and they led me -”
“Here?” the shorter girl asked, “That must have been a long walk.”
“Well it was anyway,” Yasmikha said, “But I didn’t walk right around this sea here. My brother and I stole a boat and this is where we stopped, out of the smelly oil that it needs to run. I keep it hidden in a little cove. The water inside is calm, but the rocks outside and the waves make it foolish to try to go in there even with a little boat if you row.
I go out at night with a jug,” she smiled, “and no one sees me. I go from boat to boat, usually one a night and I steal a jug of fuel. Now, I have the tanks full and several drums as well. Soon I can leave to go north once again. I can abide the heat, but it is not to my liking all of the time. I love mountain passes and hillsides the most. The air might be cold sometimes, but it is freedom to my heart.
Sometimes I go to the east a little. There are mountains and it is a good place to hunt.”
A’ishah nodded, “That is where some of the Legion regiment will go in a week or two. There is a little trouble there now; the people try to rise up sometimes – as they might here once again soon. There is restlessness in the air that I can almost feel. It all makes me nervous.
Juan told me that there has been a large uprising far to the west, in Morocco. The people there fight the Spaniards, trying to throw them out. The French are there in small numbers too. They sent some legionnaires there to build a line of little forts; more than sixty of them, but the people attacked and took most back.
So many more legionnaires were sent. The big one that you like was to remain here, for he is as good as several of the others. It is known that some men are Spanish, so those ones are not sent and remain here. Juan is one of those.
But now there are less of them all here and it has been noticed, so there are little uprisings everywhere as the people see their chance.”
“Do you love this … Juan?” the orc asked.
The Bedouin shrugged, “I – I like him very much, but I do not love him, no. He treats me very well whenever he comes for me and he pays well for a little loving with a low one like me. He gave me extra one time, but it was taken from me after and I was beaten over it. Now I beg him not to give me anything.
I like it when he comes because he makes me feel a little special and it is nice to have someone to hold on to in the dark. He talks to me and tells me of what is happening outside of the brothel walls.”
As they gathered up the washing, finished now, Yasmikha looked over and had a thought, “A’ishah, what are you in that place – when you are not a washerwoman?”
The smaller girl looked up, “Just a slave.
I am nothing and have nothing. I do the work that no one wishes to do. My mother will die soon I am sure, and already, I must do more work than ever to take her place.”
“No.”
There was that word again and A’ishah tilted her head, “Again no?”
Yasmikha nodded, “You are not nothing. You are my friend, the first I have had or wanted in a long while. You make me smile and laugh as though I have no cares and I find that I love to hear you talk of anything.”
She set the largest bundle of wet laundry down and picked A’ishah up until she was looking up into her shocked face, “It is a good thing to keep someone like me laughing.”
She leaned a bit and nuzzled A’ishah’s little tits, one after the other, opening her mouth to suck a little as well, just out of fun and because she knew that it would cause the other girl to giggle and laugh.
A’ishah looked down, her cares forgotten for the moment as she saw that mouth open and felt so good as she watched Yasmikha’s long, warm tongue move a whole breast around easily, chuckling as she did it.
She admired the tattoos on Yasmikha and she found that she was a little intrigued by the widow’s peak at the front of her long black hair. It felt wonderful to A’ishah and she wrapped her legs around the she-orc’s ribs as she held her head to her breast, “Oh, a little longer please, Yasmina. I like this so much.”
As they stepped onto the beach in the gathering dusk a little later, Yasmikha took both loads of the heavy and wet laundry, “So if you are a slave, then to them, you are a piece of what they own?”
A’ishah nodded, “Yes. Not any more than that.”
She stared a little then, “Why does that make you smile?”
“It is nothing,” Yasmikha said, a small grin remaining on her face, “If you are only that to them, then they might be persuaded to part with you – for the right amount, of course. Would you like that? To be free of them?”
A’ishah nodded, though there was little hope in her face, “My mother …”
Yasmikha nodded and they fell silent as they went for as far as Yasmikha though it prudent to go together. She waited while her friend took one bundle inside of the gates and then came back for the other one.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, “For your help and … for you liking me.”
“The liking needs no thanks,” the orc smiled, and the rest – ” she shrugged, “It needed doing, so I helped.”
A’ishah reached up and Yasmikha helped so that the shorter girl was on her toes and they exchanged a few kisses, friendly ones which were done a little quickly.
“I will come back in a few days,” A’ishah said, “More laundry.”
Yasmikha nodded and watched as her friend walked away. She felt a little sad for A’ishah. She didn’t have much in her own life, but she had what she needed to get by. She found that she didn’t like the thought of a girl like A’ishah, who was not strong and hadn’t been raised to be self-reliant, having to live at the beck and call of others.
Where she stood was hidden in shadows and she watched as the gates closed before she turned away and walked back to the shore, wondering if there was a way that she could help.
They saw each other at least once a week for a time, when A’ishah came to do her washing and it grew to be a firm friendship, though the slave never said a word to anyone about her large friend.
–
One time that A’ishah came to do the washing, Yasmikha saw that there was not so much to wash and she asked about it when she greeted her friend. A’ishah hadn’t even noticed the presence of someone else there in among the dark rocks.
She began to weep quietly and said that her mother had died the day before.
“But I am given no time to even cry,” she said with a sniffle, “Once, I couldn’t go on and … ”
She turned and let her cloak slip from her shoulders and Yasmikha gasped to look at the five lines left on A’ishah’s slender back by the lash. The only reasons that she didn’t feel her fury rising within herself was out of the sadness that she felt for her diminutive friend and her observation that the strokes had been given lightly by what she could see.
A’ishah was startled then to see the other person, obviously a male and a few inches taller than Yasmikha. As well, that one was broad-chested and very fierce-looking. His eyes were so much like his sister’s, and they fairly glowed with sudden rage.
A’ishah wanted to run, but she saw Yasmikha hold out her arm to restrain the other one as she spoke a few words to him that the Bedouin couldn’t understand and he settled down, though barely.
“This is the worst kind of meeting, “Yasmikha said, shaking her head, “I wanted you to meet Håkan and our sisters when we met the last time. He is my brother and to his way of seeing things, someone must now die for what was done to you.”
A’ishah looked up into his face for a moment.
He was younger than Yasmikha, A’ishah thought, though perhaps not by much. His hair was longer than his sister’s and she could see that his tusks were a little longer as well. He wore the same widow’s peak over his brow and she imagined that he might look even a little boyish at times, though it was hard to tell.
At the moment however, he just looked murderous.
“Why?” A’ishah asked him and the look faded instantly. After a moment of what looked to be an internal struggle, he looked at Yasmikha.
“He …” Yasmikha sighed, “Håkan admires you,” she said with a sad little smile due to the circumstances, “Even before the night when I almost stepped on you, Håkan saw you and later he spoke to me of a girl that he liked to see whenever he could. He just said nothing of it to me until after you and I met.
At the same time. I was trying to tell him of the one that I’d met and liked so much. It was almost an argument between us because we were both speaking at once. It took us a little time to see that we were speaking of the same person. At first the others, that is to say our two sisters, were about to moan to us to shut up, thinking that we were arguing over something small and unimportant as we do sometimes. But when they heard everything, they became interested and since that time, you have never walked the streets after dark and been truly alone, no matter where it is that you are sent.
If any of them see you go out of the gate near dark, they follow, at least one, because they wish that you come to no harm when you are sent out unattended while I am out stealing more fuel.
They watch over you mostly, though Håkan and Koåhn have both killed a man each to keep you safe because they saw that you were being followed. You take the same way back whenever you go somewhere and it is a bad thing to do. That night, two men were waiting for you to do that very thing. You’d have walked straight into them.”
A’ishah thought back to one particular errand the night after she’d met Yasmikha that she’d had to undertake all alone to pass a message to someone a few streets away. She’d been sure that someone was following her and she’d been pretty tense and frightened. Once she’d passed the message, hoping that the one in the doorway wouldn’t pull her inside, she saw a look of shock and fear cross that face as he’d looked past her and then the door closed and she was alone.
She remembered turning around to go back and seeing no one, but as she retraced her steps, she almost tripped over a body on the ground in the alleyway. She only looked once, but it was plain that his throat had been cut so savagely that most of what she saw was a yawning opening.
“That – that was … you?” she asked in a shocked whisper.
He said a few words to his sister and she nodded, “There were two. Håkan was with Koåhn that night. They saw the men and followed them as they stalked you. You only saw one.”
Håkan spoke again and Yasmikha said, “The other one saw it and ran. He died without a face when my sister caught him.”
He spoke again and Yasmikha nodded before turning to A’ishah, “This is not time to be doing the washing. Go with Håkan. He will not hurt you. I do not think that he even could. He wants to give you something to eat and though he has trouble with speaking your language, he does understand much of it and he wishes very much to hear you tell of your mother if you would.
I will do the clothes washing for you.”
A’ishah was nervous and she was so upset over her mother’s passing, but she trusted Yasmikha and went where Håkan led her. In a little while, they sat together in the cabin of a launch, not more than thirty-five feet long as it bobbed gently at it’s moorings.
Even though she was somewhat upset and still in her grief, she found herself looking around and as her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the cabin which was lit by only one small lantern turned low, she stared for a moment.
There was a girl there, very thin by comparison to Yasmikha and Håkan. She imagined that next to them, she would look willowy. Even sitting as she was, she was obviously taller than A’ishah, and on her, the breasts that she saw were small – being not all that much larger than her own. She sat in what to A’ishah was very little light as she looked into a mirror and shaved the sides of her head with a dagger, leaving the top and the back quite long.
When she finished the long, slow stroke with the blade on the one side, she turned a little and handed the dagger to another person. Noticing that one for the first time, A’ishah was a little startled, for she was nearer to the size of the others, though perhaps not quite as lean in her musculature, as hard as it was for her in that light to determine anything much. That one said nothing for the moment, being careful in how she handed back a second blade so that she could re-sharpen the first.
“I am Zhaeri,” the first one smiled in a small way, and when it had passed, her face returned to something not quite as friendly-looking, though A’ishah could see that it was just her natural expression in concentration as she worked looking into the mirror, “It is good to finally meet you. I have seen you out in the streets after dark once or twice and I followed so that you came to no harm. I cannot think but that that the one or ones who sent you need to feel my foot against their dull backsides for that.”
She smiled again, “But you are here now and we can talk. Now maybe our brother and sister will shut up about you. Give me a little time to finish here and we can meet you properly.
And please don’t be put off,” she smiled again, “We know how we must look to your kind.”
A’ishah shook her head, “No, you are wrong Zhaeri. When I first saw Yasmina it was a big shock because I had never seen anyone who looks as you all do, but I have come to like what I see – though if I can ask without seeming rude, why are your eyes red? And I see that your ears …”
“We all have these ears of ours, “Zhaeri smiled, “I am the only one of us who does not hide them under a lot of hair. Show her, Koåhn.”
A’ishah had a little more trouble seeing the other female well in the darkness, but she saw it when she held up her long hair to show her a pointed ear. Her eyes were the same as Zhaeri’s.
“Except for Koåhn here,” Zhaeri said, “We all come from the same mother and father. Koåhn comes from our father growing tired to hearing our mother’s jealous accusations that he was fucking another female – so he did.
He liked her a lot and she liked him, so they kept on when they could for a time, since Father found that he liked it with his girlfriend quite a bit more since, for one thing he said, she was always happy to have him. He said to Yasmikha that it made a welcome change.
Koåhn’s mother was a kind that is … a little different. That is where her fur comes from, also her little horns and tail. Her mother was not any sort of goblinkind. She was a demon. Some few of them there were where we lived. For one reason or another, they were trapped there, some with their wings torn off.
Those ones could never go back. The ones without wings were another kind, only different, and didn’t go back out of a want to remain. Koåhn’s mother was one of those. She stayed because she’d found a good male in our father and all of us females seek to feel a good hard prick in us. In that way, we are all the same, no?”
A’ishah looked a little harder, “She has horns? Where? I cannot see well enough here.”
“That is because they are small, as I said.” Zhaeri held up her thumb and forefinger, “Only like this and she hides them in her hair. Just have a care, for though they are small, they are sharp.
My mother killed her mother when Koåhn was small, so we took her in. Father asked us to watch out for her so that Mother didn’t kill her too. She and I are the same age and I am the most like my mother, so I kept my new sister with me always, for as small as I was, I knew the danger even then. Whenever my mother tried something, I felt it and turned it back to her instead and she gave up after a time.”
She shrugged a little then, “Though it must be said that her hair was never the same after the last time.”
She shrugged, “Our eyes are like most of our kind. Only Håkan and Yasmikha’s are a little different. They are like our father was and I am more like Mother was. I have her shape, a little more like yours and I have her ability – and his.
My tusks,” she smiled, “of us all, Koåhn and I have tusks more like a male’s, though they are much smaller than most male’s are. I have the longest in our family. I only wish that they were a little more … even in length.”
You had to stare to even see the difference to A’ishah’s eyes, since it was miniscule. All the same, she liked what she saw. Yasmikha might be able to hide the way that her’s peeked out, but there was no way that Zhaeri could. The slightly longer of the two stood almost an inch above her lower lip, and if she was feeling better, A’ishah might have wanted to kiss her once at least, because she’d always loved to feel Yasmikha’s little tusks when they’d kissed each other goodbye.
“I like your teeth,” A’ishah said, trying to be polite and it was truthful, even for how she felt, “I even see what you mean, but Zhaeri, there is only the smallest difference between them that I can see – and now I wish for earrings like yours.”
Zhaeri smiled, knowing it was meant, but her expression changed then and she tilted her head, “Please, sit and let Håkan bring you something to eat. I see that you have cares of your own and I talk too much sometimes. Please forgive me. Our brother waits to hear of your mother – and I … I am sorry for your loss.”
She bowed her head slightly for a moment and went back to her shaving while A’ishah wondered how Zhaeri could know those things. After the last stroke with the blade, Zhaeri took down the mirror and with it propped against a pillow and switching blades once more for a sharper one, she began to shave her pubes as she leaned against Koåhn.
A’ishah sat where Håkan indicated and he brought her a surprising variety of small things to eat, from clams to kelp and bits of goat meat, and he joined her when she indicated that he ought to eat as well. Zhaeri spoke quietly to Koåhn over her shoulder and when A’ishah looked up, she saw Koåhn looking back at her with a concerned expression for a moment.
It took A’ishah a little while to feel comfortable speaking to him out of her feeling a little strange to be sitting near to someone as large and strong as Håkan appeared to be, but his face showed his earnestness and he encouraged her whenever she stopped talking. The more that she spoke, the stronger her feeling of grief came to her and she found that now it wouldn’t stay down and only rose up in her more, no matter what she might have wanted.
When everything … when all of it became too much for her and she began to weep, Håkan sighed quietly and carefully reached out to lift her very gently. She was shocked, but before she could really react, she found herself sitting on his thigh with one knee on either side of it.
He put one of his massive arms around her and pulled her gently until she leaned her head against his shoulder and just wept as everything came out of her. He said nothing, only making soft and sympathetic sounds to her as he stroked her shoulder and back softly.
Koåhn touched Zhaeri’s shoulder and Zhaeri looked back and nodded. Koåhn got up then and crept closer as did Zhaeri.
In spite of the strangeness of it all, A’ishah began to feel a great deal of comfort and she started to cry then, really cry for everything; the death of her fool father, and what she’d had to live through with her mother, the shame and indignity and the absolute loss of choice and freedom. Most of all, she cried for her mother and then she realized that one day, she’d die too and nobody would even know or care. It all spilled out of her and she couldn’t stop crying or trying to tell of it in broken, mournful and sad sobs.
Håkan heard it all and when she slowed down, trying to steady her breathing, she heard him sniffle once.
As she lifted her head, she saw the lines of her tears on him where they’d run down on his arm and chest and when she looked over, there were the lines of his own tears down his cheeks. It seemed impossible to her. She was sitting astride the leg of a mountain of strength, so large in comparison to her. He held her and even now, he was stroking her back so gently with his large hand.
And he’d been weeping silently.
She became aware of the others and looked around to find them close to her and all of them had wet lines on their faces, having heard and felt what had come out. They shifted a little and A’ishah found herself in the middle of them all as they touched her and leaned their heads against hers.
She felt a stirring against her knee and she glanced down to see that Håkan was hard – and very large to her mind. Before she could even process a thought, she felt his finger under her chin, lifting upward very gently.
She looked into his sad gray eyes, so unlike her own, and she saw him shake his head and shrug, so she knew that it was only the closeness that had caused the male reaction in his body.
“Our brother cannot help that,” Zhaeri whispered, “No matter what his heart feels, a male’s body always has it’s own hopes.”
Håkan struggled for a moment, trying to find the word and at last he looked at her a little searchingly as he strained to ask her something, whispering it in his deep voice.
“Better?”
He held up his hand indicating a small gap between his thumb and forefinger with a hopeful expression.
A’ishah nodded slowly, holding up her own hand with perhaps a somewhat larger gap and he smiled a little weakly to see it and he nodded.
“He is so strong and yet …” A’ishah whispered, “I see that he is very shy.”
“Yes,” Zhaeri nodded, “as are we all with you, though Håkan and Koåhn show it most, I think. Yasmikha and I are the quickest to learn other tongues, but Koåhn and Håkan do understand what you say. They want you to like them, but they do not know how to say it and they do not wish to seem foolish if they try to say it in your speech.”
A’ishah looked at him again before she turned her head to look at Koåhn, who reached to take A’ishah’s hand from her brother’s shoulder to place it in the middle of her own furry chest. After that, she placed her palm against the center of A’ishah’s chest, nodding as she did. Zhaeri reached in from the other side and did the same.
“We feel you,” she said in a low whisper, “A’ishah, you are not like us, but you are not alone. You are among friends here with us. It might feel strange, but all of us have seen you and now, when you have the need to be comforted, we are here and happy if we can ease your troubles in some small way.”
A’ishah’s tears began again for maybe a different reason, but she nodded and tried to make herself understood as she told them all that none of them needed to feel foolish.
They sat that way for a time until A’ishah looked at Håkan for a moment and reached for him to put her arms around his thick and muscled neck, her hands slipping under his surprisingly soft hair and she hugged him tightly until she heard his deep sigh.
She knew then and she found that she didn’t mind at all. He smelled clean and a little salty from the waves and he was so warm that she couldn’t help it as she pressed her face against his throat and held on like that for a long time.
When she drew back, she looked at the others and then she was against Zhaeri and Koåhn with her face buried in the short, soft fur of Koåhn’s neck, just where it grew thicker as it joined with her mane toward the back. She opened her eyes after a little time and she saw Zhaeri there looking back at her from where she rested her head on Koåhn’s shoulder, only an inch away.
Zhaeri reached and held her hand against A’ishah’s cheek, “We would have wanted a happier time to meet you, “she smiled wetly, “but I think that this might be better for the way that all of our hearts are bared to each other.
Yasmikha spoke truly of you. We all feel it, but I think that I am the only one who can see what shines from you so clearly to my eyes. We are strange to you, but you like us and we cannot help but like you.
I cannot tell you when it might happen, but little friend; we will try to help you somehow very soon.”
A’ishah didn’t really understand, though she knew the way that they made her feel and in their way, it was nothing subtle. To her, what she felt in her breast was raw warmth from them, like suddenly finding oneself standing before a blazing fire. The only difference to her was that she didn’t want to draw back out of fear of being singed. She somehow knew that it was just not possible.
She knew only that if what she felt was their comfort to her, then she wanted to stand in that fire and be warmed.
Zhaeri read her thoughts easily, “We are not always gentle in how we do things. To us, we do – or we do not – it is simple. We seldom dislike something to a small degree, just as we do not like something else by the same amount. We do or we don’t. In that way, our kind is more like …”
She thought a moment to try to find something to help A’ishah understand, “We are like one of nature’s forces. Like them, we are hard to stop and it is nothing that we can help.”
Later, as A’ishah pulled her cloak back over her shoulders out on the beach, she wondered why the stiffness and the sting were gone from her back and she tried to look back.
“Håkan took it,” Yasmikha smiled, “We can do a little when there is need.”
A’ishah walked back with her new group of friends – more than she’d ever had in her life. They walked with her, sticking to the darkened alleyways until they drew close to the brothel.
When it was time to go, she didn’t hesitate.
She kissed them all right on the lips for a long moment, one after another, meaning every bit of it, “I am so lucky to have such friends.”
They kissed her goodbye in return and watched as she struggled up to the gate and it opened for her.
As they walked back down to the beach, Yasmikha looked over with a little smile, “What do you think?”
Håkan sighed and glanced at the lash lines there on his palm, “I think A’ishah needs a much better life.”
Koåhn struggled in silence for a moment and then just said it in their language, “I have never felt something like that before. Before I even knew it, I was … I was in love with that poor, beautiful girl.”
Zhaeri nodded, “I am the same sister, and I had no say in it at all. She is just like that somehow. I think that if she had no cares, her personality might allow her to be a little like a child again. – you see how she has little fear of us, only a sort of honest fascination in her way.”
Yasmikha nodded with a quiet grunt, “So then, it sounds to me as though you’d want her, you two.”
As Zhaeri and Koåhn nodded easily, she looked at Håkan, “Do not be too quick to agree brother, I would say that you fascinate poor A’ishah no less than any of us seem to, but if it comes to be, you must always be careful, for she is much smaller.”
He nodded with a look of concern, “I would never want to hurt that one, knowing that it could happen in error so easily. Perhaps if I was slow and as gentle as possible, then …”
“Always a caring heart,” Yasmikha smiled over, “No wonder that I had to fight to keep you alive so often before you came into your own strength. It was not what I meant. Imagine her with child from you. At best, she would be torn terribly and at worst …”
“Do not say it,” Håkan growled softly, “I would want her even if I could only look at her and kiss her. How can we get her free of her yoke?”
Zhaeri looked up and across for a moment, “As much as I hate to admit anything sometimes, I must admit that you were right, Yasmikha. There must be something that we can do.”
Yasmikha nodded, “I only need a little time to think – and while I plan, you must all hope that her choice ends in our favor. I have known her only for a little while, but she is a friend that I do not want to lose.”
With that, they walked on silently, for nothing more needed to be said.