Thread: The Concubine     (Fanatic/Nika)

Soft deer-hide boots treaded warily behind the servant that led his slender charge through the tent's various curtains. With a curt word and a bow from the boy, the woman was left to wait yet again, left to her thoughts as various heavy trunks and treasures were carried down from the transport, into the tents, and past her. The Vestalis wrinkled her nose, hidden behind the soft white slip of a face-veil, and brushed back the hood of her furred cloak. The camp smelled of smoke, men, and death. This was no ceremonial trip. She had not been transported in a carpentum surrounded by her softly-singing sisters and swinging incense. Instead, she had been carted away in a military caravan. It had not been uncomfortable, she had been given pleasant food and furs and no male hands had touched her, nor had her guardians spoken much to her. It had been disorienting for the first few days, but she feared no harm from the hands of Romans. She was chaste, and for her was always reserved a place of deified honor. The trip had been a long one. She had begged information at the last stop on the verge of tears, but she was met with only silence. That was three days ago. Haughty eyes roamed across the tent in which she had been told to wait, drifting over the finery as well as the grisly weapons of war. The girl was rather composed, for one who had been ripped from her Vestal bed in the dead of night and ushered out of the Temple's doors without even a word from the matron priestess. Delicate brows furrowed as she once more mulled silently over her vows, and the duties she no longer attended the sacred fire that burned in Vesta's temple, some thousands of miles behind her. Alicia Saputo of Roma looked over to the boy servant who had uttered her name, holding open a curtain for her with his head lowered, eyes fixated on the floor in reverence. He purposefully inclined himself lower than her stature, but he needn't try too hard, as the fair-haired one stood taller than many of the young women of Rome, as she did the young nervous child here. The woman paused, hearing the faint splash of water sound from beyond it, but stepped gingerly within the inner tent, beside the trunks brought from their caravan. Without a word, the boy left, and the woman raised her eyes. The were blue, and they grew wide as they fell upon the entwined forms within the steaming bath water. Vesta! Came the breathy whisper, the shock registering in the maiden's eyes before her body reacted. Quickly she turned her face away, her white robes now stark against her reddening cheeks. Wishing she also had the large, modest silken hood of her temple to cover her head, Alicia made do with facing her back to the erotic scene behind her. Her hair spilled down her back, having been combed out by one of the women before disembarking, gold strands pulled back from her face and twisted into a small braided bun perched above the waves. The girl's mind was working furiously now, heat in her cheeks mirroring the angry heat in her chest. Who would dare leave a Vestalis in the same chamber as a unclothed man and his his She blushed hotter, the fury of her thoughts alarming her. It had been a Legionnaire. A warrior, fierce and uninhibited, like the stories she had been told of his kind. Battle-worn, with strong-set shoulders and brows, deep eyes and a posture that seemed both contemplative and relaxed... and yet as keenly tuned as a wolf's. He positively dwarfed the little thing sat in his lap, or perhaps it was his aura. Trying to calm her whirling angry passion into something more befitting of a priestess, Alicia's eyes stared hard at the portal from which she entered. Those who had brought her here had done so for a reason. What reason, the lone Vestalis, could not comprehend. Was she to preform a ritual here on the edges of the wild as the Daughter of the State in hopes of a Victory? She was a protector of the hearth what business did she have in such wild, untamed lands? What business within the camp of such dangerous Men, within the private chambers of a Blood-Letter!? Where was she? Her eyes alighted upon a map, and she struggled to make sense of the pieces perched upon it.