"Put on the collar and follow me, I'll show you the estate,"
Erudessa held up the collar.
[i]Once I put it on, it is never coming off. From now on, I will belong to another, body and all, for as long as I live or until I am freed. And someday, I will be free. But it is not this day.[/i]
She placed the collar around her neck.
[i]This day, I will play the role of the slave.[/i]

It attached with a click.

Erudessa followed Lanik into the kitchen. "The kitchen's here," he said. It seemed to her more like a pharmacy, for the herbs and spices outnumbered ordinary cooking elements and completely dominated the counter space. Just to make sure there was, in fact, food for them to cook, she peeked inside a few of the cabinets. Containers of flour, sugar, molasses, and other bulk items sat with varying levels of dust. Erudessa squinted. [i]Has the man no chef?[/i]

"If you can cook, you're more than welcome to," Lanik began.
Erudessa closed the cabinet and peeked over the counter.
"If not...Marië and I usually go out," he added.
She stood up and nodded. "I'll cook."

Lanik then led her back to the living room, where she could now take the time to observe it. "Here's the living room," Lanik commented. "Marië or myself are usually in here." Erudessa brushed one hand over the back of a hand-crafted chair. The piece was a strange amalgam of sturdy wood and cheap fabric, but the combination worked. Were it not for the rough fibers of the seat cushions, she might have mistaken it for the work of an Eastern craftsman. Some of the fibers were loose. [i]Hand-woven? I could have sworn the Imperium had access to professional textile workers. Surely he doesn't...do this himself?[/i] She plopped into the chair and bounced a little to test it. At least the chair was comfortable. The couch along the wall might be more so, though a tad hot if one sat on the end closest to the fireplace. A generic picture of some anonymous great person sat on the mantlepiece.

Then she noticed a violin resting in one corner. "Is that what I think it is?" Erudessa rose out of the chair and strode over to examine it.
Lanik apparently felt the need to defend it. "You'll have to excuse the violin. Marië's just started, and needless to say, she has a bit more practicing to do."
In spite of herself, Erudessa couldn't resist teasing him. "Needless to say? No fear of that, I assure you." She bit back her laughter as he turned to lead her outside.

The two walked through the back door into the garden, where grew an impressive collection of fauna rivalling Sadron's. She waded into the moonlight and trailed her fingers along each plant and flower that passed her by. Some of them entranced her with their mesmerizing glow. Others sprang up and saluted her with wild colors. A few of them intrigued her by their clever traps and savvy defenses. Each one of them was unique.

"And this is...the garden..." Lanik stammered.
Erudessa turned to him, unable to contain the delight radiating from her face. "It's beautiful!" she confessed to him. "Who keeps it?"
"We...do garden here," he added, followed by a curse he thought she couldn't hear. His cheeks darkened, and as Erudessa's delight faded into confusion, Lanik stormed back inside the house. [i]What in the world.[/i] She blinked and shook her head. "You are a very strange man," she remarked to herself before following him in.

Lanik clomped up the staircase to the highest room in the house. He must have meant for her to follow him, for he made no complaint when she trailed behind him. He pushed open a trapdoor in the roof at the end and climbed in. Then he reached down and offered his hand. Erudessa looked up at him. Were his cheeks pink because his body was tilted down, or because of some emotional reason related to her presence? If it was the former, the pinkness would go away when he had lifted her into the room. If it was the latter, they would only get pinker. She took his hand, admiring the callous strength in his fingers, and allowed him to pull her up. While she couldn't quite make out whether his cheeks changed color, she became acutely aware of the color change in her own.

The color drained from her cheeks when she looked around. If she'd woken up in this room instead of voluntarily climbed into it, she'd have described it as a prison cell. A small bed sat abandoned in one corner of the room underneath a pathetic little window. Cobwebs dusted the corners of the ceiling. There was a chair in another corner of the room, but Erudessa dared not sit in it for fear of spawning fat-jokes in the subsequent crash. Lanik walked over to it and picked up a picture on the desk. Erudessa came up behind him and looked at it over his shoulder.

In the picture, a younger Lanik and another man slung arms around each other. Their broad smiles suggested that it was a happier time, and the intimate way they leaned on each other spoke to a closer relationship than that of mere friends. And unless Lanik was a closet homosexual (unlikely, given that he had a daughter), the other man here was most likely family.

She looked up with him at the posters around the room. Shrouded by layers of dust, they escaped her notice on the first pass through the room. Erudessa gasped. The posters held schematics for numerous inventions, some fantastical, some realistic, all of them imaginative. She wiped away the dust on one to reveal a drawing of a clothes-washing mechanism. As she put it together in her mind, the critiques and objections she formed in response seemed to spring up on the margins of the paper. [i]He and I may think more alike than I realized.[/i]

Her concentration was broken by a sudden comment from Lanik. "The attic will be your quarters during your stay with us, at least while we're in Midhaven. Excuse the mess, I haven't been up here in awhile." He brushed himself off and walked to the trapdoor. "Settle in for the night. Marië and I will take you out to the market in the morning to get you some clothes. I'm sure you don't want to be garbed in my things for any longer than you need to."

He began to step down through the trapdoor, but then he stopped and looked over his shoulder. "I don't know if you'll ever be free, Erudessa. The way the Imperium works makes it hard to say. Just...try to make yourself comfortable. It might be awhile. Plus I know I'll-"
He paused. His jaw shifted as he reworded his thought.
"Marië will enjoy your company,"

Erudessa folded her arms. His verbal slip revealed the reason behind his inexplicable awkwardness over the last few minutes: he was attracted to her. [i]I'll enjoy your company[/i] was what he really wanted to say. It explained the pink in his cheeks. As long he kept his hands to himself, there was no harm in allowing it. She could even exploit it and use him, if he were properly manipulated. Unfortunately, manipulating people still wasn't her forte, even with decades of practice, so cultivating his affection would take effort.

So she nodded. "And I hers." [i]Acting shy should help him read between the lines.[/i] She gnawed on her lower lip and brushed back a strand of hair. "I'll see Marië at breakfast."

As Lanik disappeared down the stairs, Erudessa chuckled.

"What an interesting man."