Samarra was called to conference this morning, and my mother and I took that opportunity to slip away and go spend time with the Anchoress of the Ancient City. Jasreth has been bringing things in for me to see and study, because she is freer to move about than I, but what she brings does not do justice to the things… (MORE)
There is so much confusion around here! It reverberates even into the women’s quarters, which is usually a pretty quiet place. I am to be given to the Thirteenth Dragonhorse. No, I am to be given to the Telenir warlord that my father is holding prisoner. No, I am to be given to the warlord’s Mahdi, whomever that may be. I just wish I knew, so I could prepare myself to go in a straight line somewhere. My father grows ever angrier and less in… (MORE)
I saw someone very interesting today. I was, I admit, somewhere I probably shouldn’t have been, but I was there for a good reason. I’d heard the Nargas were here, and that they had someone with them. I wondered with a racing heart if it was my sister. I hid behind some huge pots in the hall just outside the throne room, and, peering through the space between pots, I saw the Nargas drag a bruised and bloodied man into the palace and drop… (MORE)
It is hard to live in a world where nothing is known of the worlds outside. So much is based on conjecture, and much of that conjecture is based on fear. Am I really going to be given to a man who will eat me if I do not please him? Am I going to be brutally handled? I have seen sex demonstrated and it is violent. At my last training session we went into a part of the palace where one of my father’s concubines was giving birth. She was my age. She was crying and screaming in pain and the only concern of the women attending her seemed to be the welfare of the babe. There was blood and feces and it stank and the screams… (MORE)
I am so stupid! I mentioned to Anchoress Samarra that my mother fears she is drugging me, and I asked her if that was true. While I got a mollifying answer, I also got my mother beaten half to death. Samarra told my father. I half wish I could return to that place I was a few weeks ago – that comfortable place where everything Samarra told me felt like the truth, and I didn’t feel so divided in my thoughts and loyalties. I do know she is drugging… (MORE)
My mother has kept me home from my usual routine, saying she thinks I am Ill and feverish. I don’t feel ill, but I am beginning to feel very strange, as though I am in two places at once – caught between what Anchoress Samarra says is important, and what my mother and Anchoress Ensharra say is important. I feel like two different people trapped in the same body. My mother says it is because Samarra is drugging me. I cannot believe that of her. My friend, Jasreth, says I should listen to that part which feels most deeply like the truth, but that makes no real sense for me. I have to focus on what is most politically correct, and sometimes I’m afraid… (MORE)
Showandah Terrill is a scifi/fantasy author from Forks, WA.Learn more than you ever wanted to know about her here.