She decided to call herself Sa’manatha; after the goddess of flight, Manatha. It was an absurd name for her to hold, she knew that. Slaves holding names was weird enough. But it was an order, so she decided since she got to pick she’d make it something really different. Not many people were named after the gods after all.

After storing her things, she made her way to his room. She had been trained for years how to teach languages to people who could not communicate with her. She had been around this magic ritual long enough to guess at the young man’s origins. He was supposed to be born without the curse. From another world even.

She was even surprised at how accurate the ritual was. One of the great debates was what type of traits they should try to summon through the portal. The list of traits was long. High elemental attunement, sexually mature, healthy with no inherited curses or diseases, physically fit, smart as the great sage; the list went on and on. She was worried the conditions were too exacting, as she was uncertain there was a human like that anywhere.

However, something nagged at her amongst all the prep for this summoning. Something about bringing someone unrelated to mankind’s problem into the middle of the problem, against their will, taking them from their life always made her feel like they were turning this savior into a slave just like any other slave. She was young when she was sold into servitude. But she remembered the hurt being torn from her family and even her name; it hurt even though it was the family that sold her. She thought the Sage probably had thoughts along those lines when he was training her and the others to teach him the language. All the slaves were young girls. She came to realize part of her role was to help distract him from those types of thoughts with her body. There was even some talk in the project that even if this not-cursed man couldn’t save them from the curse, perhaps his children would be curse free.

It was middle of the day, so he should be wandering somewhere, she figured she could wait for him to return in the room. She made her way through the corridors with slippered feet, and hoped he wasn’t in the room sulking when she got there. It would be hard to start over and start teaching him the language if he was crying.

Turning the corner, she heard a low rumble of voices in the distance. It sounded like a lot of people, which made her feet slow down. Puzzled she turned yet another corridor and came to a dead stop. This was the passage his current room was located in, however what she saw puzzled and surprised her. What surprised her was the commotion outside his room. There was a large number of guardsmen cheering and clambering, while watching something in the room. She had a bad feeling about this-

“YEAAAAH!~ “ Flexing his right arm, he pulled a few coins over from the middle of the table, to join a growing pile on his side of the table.

[Gha’relle!] He shouted, it was one of the first few words of this stupid language he had learned. It meant “next”. Too many “H” or “K” sounds and “L” sounds, it reminded him of the Klingon his one friend tried to learn in middle school. A group of people speaking this tongue sounded like an animal dying. There was no charm to it. He remembered learning French in high school, in part because a good chunk of hockey players spoke it, in part because he HAD to take a foreign language, and in part because the French teacher was hot as all fuck. That language was romantic when you spoke it. Everything sounded like pillow talk in French. Of course it was a brutal language to learn for an English speaker too. He wasn’t particularly good with it, though he wasn’t bad with the pronunciation; the sentence structure and vocabulary was too much. This language was on another level. He was having difficulty hearing where one word ended and the next began. Maybe it was an accent? Where the people here just slur their words together like southerners?

His mind was drifting, rather affected by the liquor as a large man with a vivid red scar across his forehead sat down across from him. The man was cleaner than most of the people here, which was interesting as he was also the first man he saw who was a bit overweight. He had a strong looking build was missing a few yellow teeth, and an evil grey eyed glare that would have scared him silly back on earth. Of course he wasn’t unarmed now, which was why he didn’t get too worried.

The room was packed, so packed he only now noticed someone in an almost see through white robe. She was an almost cute girl, probably 15 or so, so of course she was way too young for him, he always liked older mature women, or at the worse, women his age. He had been asked out by some of the younger girls at his high school and never even looked twice at them. They always seemed like little kids. THIS girl had pale blonde hair and eyebrows, and a cute pink flush to her pale skin. She was short, like everyone else, and he noticed she had a metal and chain collar and bracelets, just like the prior slave girl. Of course this one was clean, and dressed, the fact her robe was clean was in itself remarkable. He thought the people of this world lived in their own waste. Despite looking as cute and harmless as a little kitten (and about as sexy, seriously, nothing sexy about cute little kid in an almost see through robe). Still she was easily the best looking girl he had seen since coming to this world. At least this one didn’t look like a savage beast like the one in his room.

Turning his attention back to the large man he grabbed his right hand with his own.

She forced her way through the throng, surprised at the heavy smell of alcohol in the air. Inside the room was a strange sight. The young man was sitting at a table, with his right hand locked with a larger guardsman, there was a pile of coins on the table by the young man, and he even had an assortment of goods lying in a pile next to him.

The young man’s face was flushed, his eyes were watery and he held a pitcher of what smelled like Curran in his other hand. A third man was standing in between the heavy guardsman and the young man holding both their clasped right hands straight up, elbows resting on the tables, and muscles flexed, she could hear guardsmen gambling on the outcome in the crowd. Suddenly the 3rd man at the table released their hands and the two men started struggling, elbows on the table, the large guardsman started grunting heavily, as his arm was forced down toward the table. The third man crouched down and watched closely as his hand was forced down, checking their elbows, and then as the guardsman’s hand touched the table he jumped up and proclaimed the winner to a large cheer from the guardsmen watching.

She wasn’t sure what to make of what she was seeing. She had never seen this type of contest before. The big man laughed even louder than the crowded and slid a dagger across the table toward him, dagger plus a belt and sheath. Then the young man tossed it into the pile of things behind him, and said a word “Next!” before taking a drink of the Curran. What made her eyes pop out was that was THEIR language.

Laughing, one of the guardsman walked up to the table and took off a cloak he was wearing and offered it. The young man, examined the cloak, then said “Good! What fair?” the guardsman split the pile of coins on the table and said “This,” he enunciated clearly, the young man listened and repeated the word, “Thahhis?” the guardsman laughed and corrected him “Th-is”, the young man laughed again and repeated the word, a few more times to the general approval of the guardsman. Then the guardsman sat down and the started another contest of strength. Most of the guardsman lost to him something. He seemed tireless, and bottomless too. He kept drinking all throughout the afternoon. Taking items, coin, and words out from them.

One guardsman came for another try. He had a heated look to his face and said a few rude things which the young man didn’t seem to mind. She thought it might be the guardsman Teral. As she thought about it she seemed to think it must be. He had a dark reputation among a few of the female slaves, apparently he liked to hurt them when he mated. She never liked the look in his eyes when he looked at her. Since she was always naked she never really cared about the looks of lust men directed at her. It was normal. But there was something dark and unpleasant about him.

He was calling the young man a “boy-girl” and “fagot” and challenged his manhood. She was a little worried that it would escalate but of course the young man didn’t even blink and of course didn’t understand the words spoken to him. To her dissatisfaction the young man mimed and offered ½ his winnings on the contest. The whole crowd had grown quiet when Teral started his insults. The festive mood evaporating. A tension settled in as the young man separated out about half of his winnings for the gamble. Then he looked at Teral. Teral seemed intimidated by the bet. For a long moment he seemed to hesitate then took out a silver Tal. It might have been worth half of what the young man was betting. The young man smiled, though instead of the easy one he was wearing before he seemed to be smiling slyly now. He waved away the silver and said "What words boy-girl, fagot, that be bet." His eyes were sharp and Teral froze. Half his winnings wagered for the explanation of the words “Girl-boy” and “fagot”. When she realized the terms of the bet she realized the mild smiling young man clearly understood the insults were insults. Teral enraged agreed to the terms and promptly lost. Apparently this was his third loss from what the audience said.

Eventually the young man grew tired, and called for an end with a “enough”. It was even pronounced properly, despite his state of inebriation. He then started sorting the winnings, and shouted out “Trade”. This of course only increased the traffic through the room.

As Sa’manatha watched from a corner of the room, he proved to be an active if drunk trader, many of the things he was interested in puzzled her. He traded away most of the clothing and armor for other clothing and armor, he stopped drinking though he kept the jug of Curran by his elbow. He traded for raw goods as well; and his pile of weapons shrunk too, down to a hunting knife and a woodsman axe. Both of which were arguably tools not weapons. Amusingly he even traded for some wood, rags and other odds and ends.

After he called an end to the trading, she watched as he quickly started to process the wood and rags into something similar to a rake, though without the teeth. He vanished from the room then returned with water and started to clean with his strange contraption. It was a strange thing to watch, as he fanatically cleaned the walls and floors. She never quite seen anything like it before. He spent hours cleaning, deep into the night. Tirelessly wearing nothing but a strip of cloth over his manhood. He’d clean from one side of the room to the other, one wall to the other, ceiling as well, then change the rags and water with clean ones and do it again.

He barely glanced at her twice, excepting to make her move out of the way. While he no longer had the look of pure revulsion on his face, he clearly wasn’t particularly interested in her either. What was puzzling though was this type of cleaning should have been done by a slave. She never saw a freeman clean for himself while make his slave watch. Granted she’d never seen this type of cleaning before but the principle was clear.

The black stone become grey. Eventually he turned to Sa’manatha. Leaning on the pole he examined her. Then he walked over to her and seized her wrist, turned her hand over and tapped her palm. “What is word?” Then he pointed to the floor.

“Wash” She replied

He nodded and repeated the word, then grabbed the clothing piled on the bed. “Where wash?”