Sage Blossom’s Blog

After hearing the tale of my grandmother, and seeing the proof of my bloodline, my Free Companion Antonio Carvano of the Money Lenders was quite pleased with the bargain he struck with my father.

We were companioned in a simple ceremony with my mother and father as witness and I was taken away to the home of my husband dressed in rich white robes of concealment, a gift to me from my mother and father.
I loved my family. I went willingly into the companionship.

The money lender was many years older than my father, but he had not grown to fat. He still had thick dark brown hair kept back in a long braid and his face was not displeasing with his square jaw and large brown eyes.

But though he proclaimed me fair, and though I did as my mother had instructed and danced for him the love dances of our city, on the first night of our companionship my new husband’s sword would not salute. I had been sheltered as a child and was ignorant in the matters of man and woman except for the brief instruction my mother offered before giving me over to the money lender for our ceremony.

I did not understand the problem and asked him what the matter was. He became enraged and beat me. It seems, he had a taste for violence, for it was only after he struck me that his member was able to rise to the occasion.

And so it was, always. And to my shame, after months of being with him, and though i hated him for beating me, sometimes, I would intentionally incite his rage that he might take me. I blame my mother for this.

She did not explain to me that once I’d been opened to a man that my passion might rise to the point of a constant craving. Truely I felt mad. Obsessed. Desperate.

Perhaps some of my discontent was sorrow. My parents’ home and shop burned to the ground several weeks after I left. I lost them both to the fire.

I was overwhelmed with grief for many weeks, and to my companion’s credit, he allowed me my grief and did not intrude on my sorrow. This is not to say he was a good husband. But that, he understood he could not force me to be happy, only wait and allow my heart to heal on it’s own.

Once I’d come out of the darkness of my grief and returned to my daily routines, our life as a couple resumed it’s twisted cycle. He would go weeks without touching me and then come to my bed to whip me while he took me. And I wept and I screamed. But oh, I grateful i was for his touch. And how shamed I was at my behavior. No better than some simpering paga slut.

For nearly a full year I was Antonio Carvano’s companion. And then he died. Rather, I should say, it is believed he was murdered. I do not know but it was rumored that he drank much and gambled often. I assume these rumors were true for after his death, the wolves descended. His debtors thought to snare me and sell my beauty to the highest bidder to pay my late husband’s debts. I took as much coin as I could carry and fled for my life.

I rode in a caravan to a small port and bought passage on vessel heading out to the sea. The boat was overrun with pirates on the river. Realizing that the slavers on the pirate ship would happily lock me in irons I jumped overboard and swam to shore. I could have died. I did not realize the danger of the water. The real possibility of being torn to shreds by a tharlarion. I only wished to escape the danger of the collar.

So it was that I washed ashore a half-day’s walk from Port Kar. No shoes, no money, a wet, bedraggled mess. And so it is that I walk the wharves of Port Kar. She urt. Homeless. But free.