"It is shameful for you to speak so!" said the girl, angrily.
"I want you to live," said the woman. "And I want you to be happy, truly happy." "Shame," scolded the girl.
"It is my love that prompts me to speak so," said the woman.
"I hate you!" said the girl.
"Have I truly touched something so deep in you, so familiar, so recurrent, yet so frightening, that you dare not face it," she asked, "that you would lash out so at me?"
"You are a terrible person!" said the daughter.
"I am one who loves you, more deeply than you can ever know," said the woman. «Liar, wept the girl.
"No," she said. "I am trying to tell you an end to lies."
"Naked female!" said the girl.
"You said earlier, when first we discovered one another here, both stripped prisoners, the loot of soldiers, on a common chain, when I said that I had thought you might have escaped, that you had not, that the collar was on your neck."
"Yes," said the girl.
"Is it on your neck?" she asked.
"Yes, of course," said the girl. Almost inadvertently, lifting both hands, she touched it.
"Then there is no escape for you," she said.
"I know," whispered the girl. "Nor for you."
"I know," said the woman.
The girl sobbed.
"Surely you understand what this means," she said. "Soon, my lovely daughter, you will learn the delicate, lascivious draping of slave garments and the tying of slave girdles, in such a way as to accentuate your beauty for the pleasure of a master. You will be taught to kneel, and caress, and do things you have not now dreamed of. You will learn to wear chains attractively and to move in them in such a way as to drive men wild with passion. You will be taught to cook and sew, and to polish boots and scrub floors. You will learn to bring a whip to a man in your teeth, on your hands and knees, head down. You will learn to love, and to serve. You will learn to be a slave.
"No! No!" said the girl.
"Soon your lovely thigh will feel the kiss of the blazing iron, and you will be sold," she said. "You will then have entered upon your new reality. You will then have begun your new life.
"Mother," protested the girl.
"Beware of free women," said the woman, "for you will be altogether different from them."
"Do not speak to me in this fashion!" begged the girl.
"I must speak to you," she said. "I do not know how long we might have to speak together."
"What do you mean?" asked the girl.
"At any moment a man might put a whip between us, and stop our talking," she said. "Too, soon we may never see one another again."
"Mother," she said, frightened.
"Surely you do not think we will be kept together," she said. "Soon we will both be evaluated, not as mother and daughter, but merely as women, and be taken on our diverse ways."
"You," asked the daughter, skeptically, "being evaluated as a woman." "Yes," my dear," she said, "the same as you."
"That seems absurd," said the girl.
"I am nonetheless a woman," she said.
The girl looked down, angrily.
"Does it disturb you to think of me in that fashion?" asked the woman. "Yes," said the girl, angrily.
"That is the way men will think of me, and look at me, I assure you," she said. "Absurd," said the girl. "What are you even doing here? Why are you here?" "I am here," she said, "for the same reason you are,"
"Why is that?" asked the girl.
"Surely you can guess," she said.
"Why?" asked the girl.
"I was not brought here, and put here among these women, because I was your mother, I assure you," she said.
"Why then?" asked the girl.
"I do not wish to speak," she said, "before you,"
"Speak," demanded the girl.
"I have been found attractive by men," she said.
"You?" asked the girl, scornfully.
"Yes," she said. "Is it so hard to understand, or accept, that men might find your mother an attractive female, a desirable property, a lovely animal, a sex slut of interest, one whom they might think worth owning, one whom they might not mind having on their chain?"
"You, too, then might have to crawl to men," said the girl, "and to serve them?" "Yes," said the woman, "and with the same perfection as you, my dear." "Absurd," said the girl.
"I will doubtless be taken my way, and you yours," she said, "as no more than separate females. I see the thought offends you."
"Yes," said the girl.
"I am sorry," she said. "But I will be owned, as much as you."
"You would have to please a master, as I?" said the girl.
"Yes," she said.
"I cannot believe that," said the girl. "It makes no sense to me." "Do you think it will be only your fair self, with all its beauty, which will soon be at the bidding of a master?" she asked.
"But you are my mother," she said.
"Surely you must understand that I must have been attractive to at least one man, at least once," she said, and smiled. "Your presence would seem to attest to that." "Not necessarily," said the girl.
"True," smiled the woman.
"You are my mother," said the girl.
"Do you think that means my body is now like ice or wood," she asked, "that I am not a human female, that I do not have feelings, that I do not have needs? "You cannot have needs," wept the girl. "It is improper. You are my mother!" "Your father did not much care for me," she said. "Too, I think you, too, took me much for granted, as little more than an object in your environment. I have been terribly lonely."
"You are my mother!" said the girl.
"I am many things," she said, "or have been many things,"
"You cannot have needs," said the girl.
"Look at me," said the woman. "Do you think a woman so bared and chained, so exposed and dominated, cannot have needs? These things free me to have needs. They free me to be myself."
"Disgusting!" said the girl.
"All my life," she said, "I have wanted to kiss, and lick, and serve a man, and make him happy."
"Disgusting!" said the girl.
"Now, perhaps," she said. "I shall have the opportunity to do so." "I cannot believe you are speaking to me in this fashion," said the girl. "Look at me," she said. "I have a collar on my neck. I cannot remove it. It attaches me to a chain, with others. I am naked. Men may look upon me as they please. There is a number on my breast. I am 261, among the catches of mercenaries. I will be sold. Do not tell me how I can speak. I am, like you, a woman on a chain!"
"I am afraid, Mother," said the girl, suddenly. "I am so afraid!"
"We are all afraid," she said, holding her.
"I do not know what will happen to me," said the girl.
"None of us do," said the woman.
"I do not want to be owned," wept the girl. "Think of it from a man's point of view," she said. "You are quite beautiful. Think of what pleasure men will take in owning you. Think how happy it will make them."
"I would then have value?" asked the girl.
"Yes," said the mother. "In time you might even become a treasure." "No, no," said the girl, suddenly. "We must never think of things from the man's point of view."
"Why?" asked the woman.
"I do not know!" she said. "But what pleases them, what fulfills them, what makes them so masculine, so powerful and strong, so different from us, must be denied to them!"
"Why?" asked the woman.
"I do not know," wept the girl.