Female Characters Challenge: Kira, human cleric of Pelor
Title: Captive
Setting: Greyhawk
Character: Kira, human cleric of Pelor
Prompt: Celestial Phenomena 2 - sun
Summary: A young girl from a poor family is taken from her family by slavers, and the young woman she becomes reflects back on this time
Notes: I've played with time a bit in this one, as part of another exercise from The 3 am Epiphany
I can't remember how long I've been caught. I want water more than anything. My mouth is dry and my throat hurts from screaming.
Kidnapping, enslavement, the market for human flesh. The poor of the Hold of the Sea Princes have little enough to protect them from consumption, and I was a mere dockworker's daughter. Not that I had expected anything to happen to me; I already had two sisters and a brother who had made it to adulthood and stayed in the docks. Perhaps my parents were not as strict with me; slavers usually did not favor girls so young as I was at the time.
I couldn't feel my hands; they were stuck with manacles. Everything smelled like sicking up. People were crying and moaning and making noise.
Sometimes the sailors would give away little pieces of hard tack - not something a person looks forward to for a whole voyage at sea, but something different to us, a treat. That is what I sold myself for, a piece of hard tack. A taste of stale bread.
I heard different kinds of yelling, and screaming. Then the door opened and it was light and people were running down. One of them came to me. Around her neck there was a necklace that had a picture of a sun. He had a skin of water and let me have a drink. It was the best water ever.
At that time, I was mostly unfamiliar with temples and the gods, except in a very general sense - superstition, things one did and did not do that I had never directly connected to a higher power. Those who lived on the docks and took time to consider theology generally treated it with contempt; there was little enough divine benefit to be seen by those on the docks. I knew the tradition of tossing a spare copper to the sea for luck, and knew that it was bad luck to kill an amphibian found near a coin.
The man said he was a servant of Pelor and had come to save us. None of us asked who Pelor was. Another man opened up the manacles, and the Pelor man rubbed smelly stuff where I hurt and it made the hurting stop. We had to wait our turns and get asked questions. He asked me a lot about my family and where I lived.
Returning children to lives of poverty and suffering where they will continue to be in danger of abduction can break the strongest of hearts. But how can a child be kept from a family who waits and hopes for that child's return? How can every family be saved, when there is so much evil and it is so strong? We do the best we can, and can only pray that it is good enough, that our strength and Pelor's strength is enough to withstand what happens to us.
I asked if Pelor needed more servants. My sisters worked as servants sometimes. Maybe I could run little errands. I would like to be a servant to someone who dressed me so good. The man listened to me talk and then said that Pelor was not a person like I was thinking.
Even beginning to understand the concept of divinity took me a long time, but the certainty that I would like to serve this Pelor persisted throughout my struggle. The priest who rescued me took the time to continue his interest in my welfare, and when I was a bit older he saw to it that I was offered a place as a maid-of-all-work within the temple. The pay was not much, but I was able to spend time in the glorious surroundings of a temple, and could almost sense the holiness of the place. Not to mention the access to knowledge and tutors, people who introduced me to what it meant to serve Pelor. Thus it was that my journeys began.
Setting: Greyhawk
Character: Kira, human cleric of Pelor
Prompt: Celestial Phenomena 2 - sun
Summary: A young girl from a poor family is taken from her family by slavers, and the young woman she becomes reflects back on this time
Notes: I've played with time a bit in this one, as part of another exercise from The 3 am Epiphany
I can't remember how long I've been caught. I want water more than anything. My mouth is dry and my throat hurts from screaming.
Kidnapping, enslavement, the market for human flesh. The poor of the Hold of the Sea Princes have little enough to protect them from consumption, and I was a mere dockworker's daughter. Not that I had expected anything to happen to me; I already had two sisters and a brother who had made it to adulthood and stayed in the docks. Perhaps my parents were not as strict with me; slavers usually did not favor girls so young as I was at the time.
I couldn't feel my hands; they were stuck with manacles. Everything smelled like sicking up. People were crying and moaning and making noise.
Sometimes the sailors would give away little pieces of hard tack - not something a person looks forward to for a whole voyage at sea, but something different to us, a treat. That is what I sold myself for, a piece of hard tack. A taste of stale bread.
I heard different kinds of yelling, and screaming. Then the door opened and it was light and people were running down. One of them came to me. Around her neck there was a necklace that had a picture of a sun. He had a skin of water and let me have a drink. It was the best water ever.
At that time, I was mostly unfamiliar with temples and the gods, except in a very general sense - superstition, things one did and did not do that I had never directly connected to a higher power. Those who lived on the docks and took time to consider theology generally treated it with contempt; there was little enough divine benefit to be seen by those on the docks. I knew the tradition of tossing a spare copper to the sea for luck, and knew that it was bad luck to kill an amphibian found near a coin.
The man said he was a servant of Pelor and had come to save us. None of us asked who Pelor was. Another man opened up the manacles, and the Pelor man rubbed smelly stuff where I hurt and it made the hurting stop. We had to wait our turns and get asked questions. He asked me a lot about my family and where I lived.
Returning children to lives of poverty and suffering where they will continue to be in danger of abduction can break the strongest of hearts. But how can a child be kept from a family who waits and hopes for that child's return? How can every family be saved, when there is so much evil and it is so strong? We do the best we can, and can only pray that it is good enough, that our strength and Pelor's strength is enough to withstand what happens to us.
I asked if Pelor needed more servants. My sisters worked as servants sometimes. Maybe I could run little errands. I would like to be a servant to someone who dressed me so good. The man listened to me talk and then said that Pelor was not a person like I was thinking.
Even beginning to understand the concept of divinity took me a long time, but the certainty that I would like to serve this Pelor persisted throughout my struggle. The priest who rescued me took the time to continue his interest in my welfare, and when I was a bit older he saw to it that I was offered a place as a maid-of-all-work within the temple. The pay was not much, but I was able to spend time in the glorious surroundings of a temple, and could almost sense the holiness of the place. Not to mention the access to knowledge and tutors, people who introduced me to what it meant to serve Pelor. Thus it was that my journeys began.