Page 14 of A Brat's Tale
Ioften marvel at Baya when he’s asleep. His lids close sweetly, his breathing peaceful, none of the heaviness of his Warlord’s day to mar him. Even in sleep he exudes magnificence. How can something so rough be so smooth at the same time?
Corrik wasn’t rough at all. Corrik was sharp and nothing sharp can be rough. Sharpness exacts, it carves and polishes. Corrik had his vision of me and he thought he could bring me into his life and carve me into what he foresaw. He didn’t expect to have to do any work, Gods forbid he had to understand me.
Perhaps it’s Elven sex magic and I don’t love him at all.Maybe that’s what Bayaden feels when he says my heart reaches out?
I move to climb off the bed, but a large hand snatches me back. “Go to sleep, Tristan,” he says in his booming voice that is extra-loud against the quiet of the night.
“But I—”
“—okay that’s it. I knew I should have done this earlier.”
He uses his arm as a vice to hold me against him and spanks my bare arse with his mammoth hand. I can’t move, at least not to go anywhere, and can only kick my legs and brace myself against him. “Owww! Baya, please.”
“No. You’ll take it, Tristan.” As he talks, he spanks never missing a beat, while I grimace and pant, my backside throbs. “C’mon let go and take it. You’ve needed this all day.”
I try. But it hurts. That’s why pain—odd as it might seem from the outside—gets a spankee like myself to a new place. Pain is something you cannot overcome. It’s an experience, and it’s there and you have to deal with it. You have to surrender to the pain and let go to free your body of what it’s holding onto.
You do this with your mind.
Some days the pain is too much, but then so is my internal struggle, which for me takes more pain and thus more mental strength to overcome. Bayaden spanks as hard as he feels I need in times like this. “Take it little human,” he coos as I writhe in agony.
Slaps ring out, each one lighting my arse afire; I struggle more, he spanks harder.
Fighting, especially when emotionally charged, is exhausting and I give up. I accept that this is happening whether I want it to or not. I take a deep breath, exhaling into the pain allowing it to sink into me, rather than trying to block it out. My body relaxes and while the pain never lessens, instead of rejecting it, it becomes part of me. My eyes still wince a bit, but I don’t struggle and take what he gives me.
His heavy spanks turn to rubbing and though I wasn’t crying during the spanking, it all comes out afterward. “Shhh, you neededthat didn’t you?” I nod into him. “Everything is going to be all right. I promise.”
It’s not though. I think I know what he’s up to and I don’t want to say either, in case I’m wrong. I don’t want to give it life. “Bayaden tell me you love me.”
“I love you.”
“Say it again.”
Instead of using words, he hums to me, something soft and deep. His singing voice is as rough as the rest of him, which is why he prefers not to sing in words. He only sings to me. I calm down and eventually, I can sleep too.
The grey sandstone is warm under my feet, the perfect temperature for walking on without shoes. Most of the humans and Elves in Aldrien don’t wear shoes, which begs the question: why does Baya have so many pairs of boots for me to polish?
I head down to the marketplace, making sure to give a smug guffaw to the large, female warriors who stand guard and allow people from the palace into the marketplace. They don’t like me much and I don’t blame them, I’m cocky which is opposite to the way Papa taught me to be, but I can’t help it. They scratch at my ego, looking down on me as they do. It’s not even because of the human versus Elf thing. I merely think Elves moronic for that; my ego is irritated because they don’t think I’m good enough for their Warlord, not even as a manservant. They scathe at the pendent around my throat.
Truth be told, they’ve got some points they could argue. I’m a terrible manservant. I grew up as a royal with very little education in the art of servant jobs. I was spoiled even with my parents spoiling me far less than Lucca’s parents did. I thought I had it rough when I was a kid, but I didn’t. If only I knew how incredibly lucky I was.
But I digress. I was a spoiled rich kid. I know nothing of being a manservant, nor do I like it, nor do I try all that hard.
I am another kind of servant though as a warrior. That’s where Ishine and where I feel I’m equal to Baya, even if he’s way stronger than I am. I wished they’d compare me to him under those terms. Not that the result would be any different, but I’d rather be hated for what I am, than for what I’m not.
I do have to exercise some amount of respect for them though, or Baya will have my head, so I nod and smile. “Lovely day, ladies.”
“Be gone with you, human.”
I don’t need to be told twice.
The market is, in essence, like that of Markaytia’s markets—a busy chaotic mass of people, but the one rather large difference is the persistent presence of nakedness. I would be naked too, if not for the pants I was able to acquire after making a bet with Bayaden on my first day here. He underestimated me. He didn’t have to allow me to keep my prize of course, but he did, which demonstrated his proclivity toward honor—even to his slave.
But the odd thing about Aldrien, in general, is that as much as humans are slaves, they don’t seem to mind so much. Aldrien Elves treat humans like beloved pets.
Some Elves have leashes attached to the collars of their human, some humans crawl on all fours, some are naked, others wear scant amounts of clothing or strange harnesses, some are with their owners, but some without. Each human-Elf pairing seems to have its way of things, but the commonality is, they are happy.
Never thought I’d be one of them, but here I am giddy at the prospect of acquiring Bayaden’s favorite mushrooms along with some special herbs and spices they don’t always keep on hand at the palace, to give to Meren for Baya’s dinner.
