If only

My mate has his slave cook for him. She does his cleaning and his laundry as well. She sleeps in his wagon and sees to the majority of his wants and needs. This is how he wishes everything but it leaves very little left for me to do. No matter how often I offer to take some of those responsibilities, he merely says she will see to things. I have no wish to make him feel less a man by making demand against his wishes. I could exert my will and say this must change and that must change but it would only make him unhappy. I could do that ... but I will not.

I miss doing those small things though. There is something satisfying in them to me. I know some women would rather chew bosk hide than crouch bent over a fire cooking but I enjoy it. I find other ways that salve my own needs. I help Petra do the wash for her large family and I thread Magda’s needles because she can’t see as well as she used to. I bake little goodies now and then for Ramza but he doesn’t come in from patrols sometimes until late and usually doesn’t have much interest in … food. I know not to waste anything so I share my hand made treats with the wagons around me.

My latest endeavor was taking some of the honey I found and some nuts to make a layered sweet pastry. It is as close to baklava as you can get out here on the plains. There isn’t a grocery store you can run to for ingredients, much less a food processor to chop it all up. Good thing we have slaves. Even with a few of the girls helping to sort the bitter bits out of the shelled nuts, it was going to take several days before I had the finished product.

“You are not doing it right!”

“I’m doing it the way I was taught.”

“Well, I’ve done it this way for a long time and you are not doing it right.”

“My way works and no one complains.”

“It is not how I do it. It is wrong.”

I’d listened long enough to the two. Cracking nuts was not an art form so I finally sent the two slaves off to bore someone else with their banality. If only they could see themselves in a mirror. It only took me a few ehn to finish the rest once all the posturing and bickering ended. I gathered the meats into a small basket and stored them away at my Midnight wagon.

I hadn’t heard the sound of boot steps come up behind me but I felt the gentleness of a hand caress the length of my arm. I felt that slow guidance to turn around where the touch lifted my chin and I felt the brush of a kiss that spoke of tenderness. He didn’t have to say the words. It was all there. I was glad to see him too. There was so much I wanted to sit and talk with him about.

Each time I tried to speak, he would brush his lips against mine; trace his fingers along the side of my face, down my neck to my throat. Each kiss growing in their passions, hungers … demands. I knew where all of it was leading and finally reached up to catch his hand in mine. I brushed my breath over the back of it and pressed a delicate kiss there before I looked up seeking his dark eyes.

“I do not know what the answer is to all of this … but I do know that this ... this is not it.”

It was hard walking away. I had seen the sadness that crept across his features. I saw how his mouth twitched with all of the things he wanted to say and didn’t.

I didn’t make it more than a few rows before I leaned against the canvas of someone’s wagon. There I reached up to touch my lips and close my eyes. My fingers trailed beneath my chin to rest on my chest. I stood there a long time before my hand rose to my throat mirroring where he had touched me. I found myself shaking my head as I shoved away from my leaning post and began walking again.