The Birth of Hope

Villetta was restrained to a single spot by tightly strung wire connected to two poles. The wire cut into her arms and blood trickled the length of the steel wire. Her head hung down and her hair covered her bare chest. Her eyes were dull and unfocused. Her back had several wounds from being whipped due to failure to cooperate. The wounds wear puckered and beginning to fester. It had been some time since she had been beaten, but even longer since they stopped making sexual advances on her. Her body was bruised, cut, and rough. Unlike when she had first been brought to this slave camp.

One of the Slave Drivers walked up to her and looked at her. She had bags under her eyes from the countless nights where they had prodded her with searing hot pokers to keep her awake. He walked forward and grabbed a fistful of hair. He yanked her head up so that she was staring him in the face. He held up a canteen full with water.

"Are ya thirsty?" He asked. "Mus' be if ya been out here in this blasted heat. Care fer a drink? Hold on lemme test it to make sure it's safe fer ya"

He drank from the flask and purposely let water flow clumsly onto the ground. He held some of the water in his mouth, swished it around, and then spat it back into the flask.

"Yup," He said. "No one been messin wit dis water"

She turned her head further up toward him and said something inaudible. He leaned in closer to hear what she was saying and she spat in his face. He drew back and wiped it off. He grew angry and punched her in the jaw. Her head snapped to the side and a bruise welled up on the side of her face.

"STUPID WENCH!" He screamed. "I WAS GONNA GIVE YA SOME FRESH WATER BUT NOW YA GETTIN NUFFIN FROM ME! I HOPE YA DIE"

Villetta's eyes opened slowly, as the calls of the workers rose her from her slumber. She looked at the ceiling of the tent. She reached up and looked at her hand. A dream. No. A memory. Another fragment of her past surfacing upward to the forefront of her mind. How annoying. She kicked her feet down, and moved to exit her tent. It had been twenty-two years since that nightmarish, fateful night. twenty-two bloody years since coming out of a depression only to find another. And how did she spend it? As a cranky, old recluse on the edge of sanity hell bent on bringing about change.

Villetta wrapped her beloved, black cloak over her naked arms as she looked at the west wall in her shack. She wore a plain black, buttoned vest with a black yarn necklace; the heavy pendent that kept the string taut was hidden well below her cleavage. The woman also donned a pair of loose men's trousers that were held up by a large belt with excess hanging down in front of the brass buckle. Strapped to her belt was a mean, short sword enclosed in its steel sheath that clinked against her leg when she walked. Lastly, she wore brown, leather half-boots with a hidden surprise, if need be. She made her way outside finally...

She looked on in the bright sunlight, as people and machinery screamed and hummed with life. She watched as the Capitol of her city was being rebuilt from the ground up. She looked up as a young woman walked up to her briskly, and pushing a clipboard into her hands. Villetta looked at it. Another manifest and shipping clearance form. Pay Distribution and district authorization. She quickly signed the documents and handed them back to the young lady. She bowed and scurried off. Bowing...seemed so natural, but in Rouen that would not be the traditional custom. She leaned on the railing and watched the workers. Where was Tatyana? She needed someone to talk to.