At the height of the first night's Wine Tasting festivities, past the twentieth ahn and well into the wee breaths of the next morning, a new cup was passed overhead. I reached up with my hand to make a grasp for it. In the game, several beneath the cup were sprinkled with its crimson rain. Yet another hand, much quicker than my own, grasped the cup away. In their collective attempt to participate in the game, the crowd alternately parted and closed like one giant breathing organism, making it near impossible to walk a straight line if one had been attempting to penetrate its center from without. In essence, a drunk's footfalls may not have stumbled. But a sober person's might've. From nowhere, I was pushed with the maddening undulations of the crowd, right into a woman's backside.
Drawn to a pair of eyes, my own had lowered downward in that time lapse of slowness, where a subtle blink or two above my veil-hidden smile may have showed no initial sign of recognition. Yet suddenly, the whole world stopped its spinning.. when I realized I was staring, face to veiled face.. with none other than Asia herself. What a heart-stopping, breath-stealing coincidence. Everything else around me seemed suddenly to fade into whitenoise.
My immediate response was also two-fold, for as part of me had the innate desire to throw my arms around the woman, another part of me wanted to turn and run. Which culminated in the taking of but a single step backward, as if I were stuck and unable to think a coherent thought. None in the nearby crowded vicinity had been any the wiser, for the tightly packed throng continued to breathe its collective breath, in and out with the same feel-good of the wine's warm spirits.
My Joy had turned to immediate fear. She was angry and this I could see it plainly in Asia's eyes.
The crowd suddenly broke open like the parting of the Red Sea, as I turned and made a run for it. Straight down the small sloping hill and right for the House, which is quite large, perhaps three times the size of the Slaver's House on Thanta Isle. Into its labyrinths I fled from her, barricading myself in Marius' private rooms. It is the heart of the House, the very innermost sanctum where I feel.. safe. And in the silence I waited, breathless with fear and exhaustion. The world spun quite maddeningly around me for all the wine I had imbibed. And all I could do was crouch to the floor and wait. Stare at the bolted door and wait.
In that instant I wished it could all be over, that I might just wake up between my Master's sheets from a bad dream, and go on living again. I never counted on this. For the past two hands have been pure bliss. Pure bliss indeed. In which time I had even written a 'goodbye' letter to my Master, that has since been tucked away beneath his pillow for him to find upon his return.
It was my beloved Stringed Lady who gave the ultimate gift of love. She the selfless sacrifice that had purchased my freedom, purchased my ship's fare. Gave me life unlike any I had ever dreamt of in a million night's dreams. She is gone forever, and my freedom has slipped through my fingers like sand.
And now... it is inevitable that the gravity of my loss should fall upon me like a ton of bricks. The price of freedom, no matter how fleetingly short-lived.. is truly great.
Perhaps greater than I myself am able to bear.
