Free Claimed: The Warriors of Nur by C.C. Coats Page B

young age not to let that intimidate her. 
    She’d become aware of being ‘different’ early on.  Most Gwerriera Nies females were not much smaller than the males, at least not in height, but Na’Dwah was an Aljeni hybrid.  Her mother’s people were smaller even than Na’Dwah, some of the males barely cleared five feet, nine inches at maturity.  Her mother had only been five feet tall herself.  The combination of her mother and father had left her with a height of 5 feet, 8 inches, petite by Gwerriera Nies standards.
    “You would dare to question the Tobba ?” she demanded.
    Amusement sparked briefly in his gaze as it raked her from head to toe. 
    The front of her miġbuda was made completely of tightly strung beads that draped in layered lengths around her neck to cover her breasts.  Her sex was covered by strips of fenek fur, held in place by intricately beaded chains at her hips.  She was dressed as any other Tobba , the only distinction being the absence of the ritualistic markings.  Those were earned only at the time of your first summoning of the Mother Goddess.  The Tobba believed that the essence of the Mother Goddess entered the physical form of the female, there to mingle with her own, strengthening the link between the two.  It was only after this that the individual markings appeared and one was no longer considered a novice, but a true Tobba Priestess .
    “I would dare much for my brother, even to question a Tobba Priestess .  But you, even more so…little novice.”  He crossed his arms over his broad chest: a deceptively relaxed pose.
    “I answer only to the Goddess Mother…warrior.”  Mocking his perusal of her with one of her own, she strode imperiously from the chamber.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    Leo’Nya flexed her fingers in an effort to dispel the numbness caused by being forced to sleep with her arms chained beneath her.  She listened for the soft wailing that’d gone on for the last few… days?  Weeks?  She had no real way to mark the movement of time.  Her body had yet to settle into the longer sun cycle, and she found herself dozing often. 
    She was also bored beyond all possible mental limitations. Really bored.  The initial threat of death was gone, and the more pressing one of rape became less immediate as the hours passed.  She was brought vesi fruit every few hours, and since her ‘conversation’ with the grieving widow, she’d been fed just as frequently.  Guess they’d taken her at her word.
    The food wasn’t bad.  It usually consisted of meat, in some form, a kind of flat red bread, and some sort of citrus fruit that tasted like a cross between an orange and a mango.  It was an odd greenish-blue color, but it smelled and tasted delicious.  She was taken to a bathing chamber every so often to relieve herself, and then returned to what she was unaffectionately calling her ‘cell’. 
    Her first ‘bathroom’ experience had been humiliating.  The chamber , was equipped pretty much like any other bathroom; there was an area for bathing, an area for simple washing, and an area for, well…everything else.  What she considered to be the ‘sink’ area was made up of three large bowls, which looked kind of like gravy boats without the handle, set in a row on a mid-level ledge.  Well, to them it was mid-level; to her it was shoulder level.  Each bowl rested above a small fire, the water kept fresh by a cascading stream of water that constantly fed it from above, while the lip drained into a small channel set into the wall of the ledge.  The declining slant allowed it to drain into an opening at the base of the wall.  The bathtub was of a similar design, only much more gi-nificent.  To fill it, water was directed from a larger channel, which directed the cascade of water, much like a dam.  By removing a larger stone, the water was allowed to funnel into the tub.  The fire beneath burned until the water reached the desired temperature and then