[identity profile] dedra.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] tamingthemuse
Title: The Whore
Fandom: None
Pairing: None
Warnings: None
Summary: Sometimes it is harder to forgive yourself...



With her braided hair and scarlet robes, she was exactly as she looked to the crowd. They parted as she passed, not willing to touch her flesh or hem and contaminate themselves with her sin.

She had followed him for years. From the first moment that she had listened to him speak, she had been enthralled by the mesmerizing tone of his voice and the charismatic personality that it conveyed. She had been even more enraptured when she met him at the wedding they were both attending. He was caring and kind to his mother, watching her tenderly with a fond expression on his face for the youthful woman who bore him. A man who treats his mother with respect was a man worth respecting.

It had been easy to fall into a pattern of men and drink. Easy to forget the teachings that she had been raised on and let herself follow the soldiers into the life of debauchery that had made her the person that she now was. She didn’t fault the people for their view of her. To them, she was a whore. She was, in her mind as well.

Still, when she heard of the man and his words of forgiveness and love, she followed and she listened. She stopped sleeping with men indiscriminately and drinking herself to death every night. She bathed for the first time in years, washing away the memories of nights long past and the flopsweat of a lifetime of hedonistic pleasure, feeling clean, finally clean, after all the years of self-flagellation. She brought offerings of food and clothing to him, weaving him a robe of the finest wool and presenting it at his feet, to the utter disgust of his friends.

When he looked at her, she knew that he saw her to the depths of her soul. There was such love and compassion in those eyes—they were as bottomless as the well in the center of the town, dark and piercing. They looked inside her to her mind; she felt him there, seeking and finding and forgiving all the illicit nights and wicked days, all the sins committed over a lifetime that she had left behind.

With a sighing breath, she dropped to her knees and dragged out a bottle of scented balm that she had carried with her for years. It was one of her most precious possessions that she had carried with her for years and years, never used until now. With tears in her eyes, she opened the wax seal and spread the balm on his tired and callused feet, massaging the soles with her strong thumbs and drying them with her hair.

She barely listened to the angry words that passed from the lips of the jealous friends. Gathering her dignity around her, she stood and left, a soft smile on her face. She was forgiven. She was reborn. That was all that mattered to her. He had seen inside her soul and forgiven her of all her faults. If he could forgive her, then she could forgive herself as well.

Date: 2007-03-18 09:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] smwright.livejournal.com
Gathering her dignity around her, she stood and left, a soft smile on her face.

As if the dignity were the reward for her internal change and her outward manifestations of it.

You've done it again. Brava.

Date: 2007-03-18 12:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] authoressnebula.livejournal.com
I don't know how you do it, but you do it so well sweetie. This was absolutely fantastic. Wow. Just...wow.

I need me an icon that says I'm an adoring fan of yours, because yeah. Wow.

~Nebula

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