Chapter 29

From the Video Blog of Ariel, the First Immortal Whore

Today I’m on-call for midwife duty. Which of course means that I am woken up a couple of hours early to help with a birth. The good news is that this is my second birth where I am in charge. I am technically supervised since I am an apprentice, but the other whore—one of the girls who came to assist me in dealing with my moon blood—doesn’t say a word. Master Kessler is trying to get me ready for Artisan; this birth will get my apprentice midwife requirement out of the way.

I am astonished how fast we get used to things when they are presented as normal. I’ve become used to the aspects of birth, both those that are common to the immortal world and those unique to Phoenix Rising. It is still challenging to build a sexual connection with someone who is focused on the pain of labor. But the idea that I’m supposed to do that, even with the father standing there, no longer embarrasses me. Today is one of the times where the father is the key: The love and connection between the two of them is deep. It doesn’t take much to have a connection good enough for Whorecraft to let me know that the baby is doing well and to assist the mother. He wasn’t above having a little fun himself if it meant I got to use his connection to help out his lover.

Most of the rest of the labor would be familiar to any midwife. I’ve grown used to the pain, to providing reassurance, and to helping mothers out as they bring their baby into the world. I get a chance to practice Life Magic, but even that might look like some sort of meditation practice focused on reducing pain.

I guess there’s another bit at the end that would be strange in the immortal world. The mother is holding her baby nursing. I collect the afterbirth and the rest of the mess and take it over to be processed into magical and alchemical reagents. There’s a lot of power in bringing someone into the world, or so I’m told. That sort of working is well beyond beginner magic.

Since I am already here, I agree to take a community service shift.

About an hour into my shift, Master Kessler arrives.

Ariel: <It feels silly to have the guild master here watching me cast Remove Pregnancy and Cure Disease.>

Annika: <Don’t forget all the conversations about whether people are ready to be parents.>

Ariel: <Ah, how could I? Three in a row.>

Annika: <And it’s been several shifts since you did something amusing.>

Ariel: <I was trying my best. You told us to help the client feel good about themselves.>

Annika: <And we said that diseases are something to be dealt with not something that should cause shame. I know, I know. And you did great. But the look on your face when I suggested that next time you could just use your hand!>

Annika: <But I’m your trainer. And there are still some things you haven’t dealt with. Call it a tradition, whatever, but we try to be there for our trainees.>

Ariel: <And I do appreciate it.>

The next few clients pose no significant challenge: a few people in for birth control and prophylactic Cure Disease followed by a woman in for a prenatal checkup. I have found my rhythm.

That is all disrupted when Gloria Greenway walks in. Our trainee class has been checking in on her from time to time, but I haven’t had an opportunity to look in since before David was introduced. She was doing fine. Now, her face is tear-streaked, and her clothes rumpled. I apply mana to Smell of Sex. I smell her lovers of course: two recent, the scent of their semen still strong, and one harder to pick out. But that is not why I activated the skill. I want to understand her emotions. She is afraid, hurt, and something else I’ve never smelled before. It is negative.

Annika: <Ah, fuck. She’s your client. You have my confidence, but when you need me I’ll be here to help.>

Ariel: <What’s going on?>

Annika: <You are a trainee and I think you can handle this. It’s your job to find out. But if I’m right and you need me, I am here.>

Gloria looks at me and shrugs her shoulders. “Of all the whores in the city, I come in here and find you. I guess that avoids me figuring out whether working up the courage to ask for you is a good idea.”

“If you decide you want someone else, I will get them for you.” I am not entirely sure why she’s at the community clinic: her family has money. However if there’s some reason she cannot spend that money, things will get complicated for her if she turns down the first available whore. “What brings you here?” I have a sinking suspicion in my gut, and if I’m right, then I will do whatever it takes to get her whoever she wants.

“I was raped.”

Fuck, why does it have to be someone I know? I’ve been there when one of the community service trainers handled helping out with a rape. But I just watched and listened. This is the first time I am doing this myself, and having it be Gloria only makes it that much harder.

Ariel: <This is too important for it to be a training opportunity. If I’m screwing it up, I expect you to step in.>

Annika: <She’s someone you know; someone you cared about enough to stand up for her in front of your entire class. That probably matters to her.>

They make us practice the first part of working with someone facing trauma. I am glad: I would not have gotten anything out without practice. “I am here to help you. Different people need different things, so we’ll need to figure out what you want. Some people want a shoulder to cry on. Some people don’t even want to be touched.”

I feel unprepared and shabby. I’ve been conveniently ignoring the sexual violence of this world since shortly after Gloria left our class. I feel good about myself facing my little challenges: worrying what my fans will think, worrying how people will respond to David, and worrying about how I’ll respond to Nama’s Child. And then there are people like Gloria who face actual challenges. I have been so caught up in my own little world that I thought my challenges mattered in comparison.

I might be succeeding at playing a game. But this is not a game for Gloria. Most of the time I feel sexy. But now I just feel shabby, there in my revealing slutty clothes. I represent everything she rejected when she stepped out of our class. How am I going to help someone who was so uncomfortable with the sexuality inherent in being a whore? It’s present in how I dress, in how I approach people. What will I do?

I have a few moments to stew in my inadequacy while she considers what I said. “Touch ... no, I don’t want to lose that, especially after how hard it was to become comfortable.”

“What do you want from me right now?”

“I don’t know.”

She did not quite say she wants touch, but it sounds like she’s worried about losing the capacity for closeness. “Would you like me to sit next to you and hold your hand while you figure out?”

“Yes.” She slumps onto the examination bed; it is the only surface you can sit on in this drab little room besides the observer’s chair that the guild master occupies. I sit next to her. She clutches at my hand. Her hand is cold.

I am even more self-conscious of how slutty I am. It is something I’ve cultivated over the last month. But now it feels like a mockery. On top of everything else, I am self conscious of my smell. There are my clients last night, my sweat from helping with the birth, and the smell of the clients I fingered on my community service shift clinging to my hands. I cannot imagine Gloria picking up Smell of Sex, but she is sitting right next to me. Smell hits right to the emotional centers, right where she’s hurting most.

No matter how tawdry and inadequate I feel, I respond when she begins to cry. My arms wrap around her. She ends up crying a good ten minutes, slumped against me. For the moment, her sobs subside. “I’m sorry. You must think me a hopeless mess.”

I pat her back. “No. It’s okay. All I see when I visit your shop is a skilled craftswoman.” That sets her off again.

Ariel: <What did I do?>

Annika: <It probably happened there.>

Ariel: <I am hopeless at this. You were right; no matter how hard I try, this won’t be real for me the way it is for the ephemerals.>

Annika: <We’ll disagree about that later. Right now, you have a client and you are doing as well as anyone might.>

Gloria calms down again. “I knew it was going to happen. But that way! My parents standing there ... not doing a thing!”

“Oh Gloria.”

“And my dad ... they said that for an order that big, I should”—she gulps and starts again—”and he lets them do it. He doesn’t even ask me.”

Annika: <Oh, that’s got to be horrible for her parents.>

Ariel: <How could they? And how could you take their side!>

Annika: <There are no easy answers in situations like this. How could they? Probably because it was that or face the death of their entire family, or so they feared. Take care of Apprentice Greenway; her parents are not our concern now.>

Ariel: <She made it to artisan weaver shortly after leaving here.>

Meanwhile Gloria continues to cry and I continue to hold her.

“You probably think I’m pathetic,” she says. “If it was you, well, you’d say no, and the Whores Guild would back it up.”

She laughs bitterly. “No, you’d probably take their money and enjoy it.” Her words sting.

She continues, “Although it’s not like they would pay someone if they could get a girl thrown in just for crooking their finger. But still, if I were like you, I’d enjoy it and it wouldn’t be so bad.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think I’d like that at all.” Gently, I turn her face up so it is not buried in my shoulder. “But it doesn’t matter. You are not me. They violated you; it is their fault not yours.”

“I know that. But it only helps so much.” She sags against me. “Right now, I feel dirty. It’s hard to even be angry.”

“I am angry on your behalf. You were just starting to get over not being a whore last time I saw you. I want to make them pay.”

“And how are you going to do that? How are you going to take on an artisan swordsman going for master rank in a few levels and his god touched priest friend? They are both over level 35.” I feel trapped and frustrated. And realize that trapped or something like it is what I’ve been smelling on her. No wonder.

“Some day.”

She sighs. “And I believe you actually mean that. I’d like to be upset at you: you are all the things I hope to be in order to be safe. But I can’t.”

“It would have been easy,” she says, “except for what you did the day I left class. I said it would mean a lot in a couple of days.

“It did. I didn’t feel as much like a failure then, and I had a group to belong to.”

“You are not a failure.”

“You made me feel like it was okay that I couldn’t do what you did,” she says.

“It is. And now we’ll help you out.”

She nods. “And I guess I am glad it is you helping. I’m going to need the normal things.”

“Making sure you are not pregnant and dealing with any disease?”

“Yes, that.”

“Is that all you are going to need?”

“I don’t see how you can help with the rest. I found someone after I left; it has been good.”

I nod. “You’ve been glowing like someone was making you happy.”

“And now ... I don’t want to lose that. But I’m afraid.”

“You’re worried that when you get together, all you will feel is what happened today?”

Her head nods against me. “He makes me feel special. I don’t want to lose that.”

“If he cares about helping you out after this, you can work together and I bet you will make it happen. It won’t be easy; some days will be harder than others. Don’t be surprised if something works one day and not the next.”

“You think we can?”

“If you care about each other and he tries to understand, you have a good chance.” Of course in this world, he may be facing his own trauma soon enough. Somehow I doubt that makes it much easier.

“Someone I respect deeply told me some things that help them out,” I say. “Would you like to hear their advice?”

“Yes.”

Goody Brown shared her story with me so I would have advice to give in situations just like this. I try as hard as I can to project her confidence as I share her advice. “Find a way to separate the experiences in your mind. Find something that you or your lovers can do when you are getting together that remind you this is something good you choose and separate it from your rape.”

“Like what?”

“The woman I was talking to said that for her, undressing her lover was enough. But I think you will need to find what works best for you; everyone is different.”

“That’s going to be easy enough. I wasn’t likely to do anything with Hans in the show room before and now ... certainly not.”

“If that feels like the right separation, I think it can work well.”

Ariel: <Do you think she’s calm enough for me to try and get her cleaned up and then see if she’s comfortable enough for me to work sex magic?>

Annika: <I see no harm in trying.>

Annika: <You realize that nothing beyond Cure Disease and Remove Pregnancy are covered under the community clinic pricing.>

Ariel: <You are not going to get all in my face about money and rules are you?>

Annika: <Not now: give Artisan Greenway what she needs. But you are a whore, and she is your client. That discussion needs to come between the two of you eventually.>

Ariel: <Understood.>

“How about we get you all cleaned up,” I say. “There’s not a bath in this building, but there is one next door.” The clinic is next to the training brothel.

“I guess I need that. But I’m dirty on the inside, not the outside. I don’t know that a bath is going to help.”

“It’s not going to hurt. And Gloria,” I say.

“Yes?”

“You are the same beautiful person you have always been. It’s just harder to see that.”

Her lips quirk up briefly. “It’s funny hearing that from you.”

“How?” I ask.

“You probably don’t remember, but my last day, you started out telling your adventures. I was so frightened because I couldn’t do any of that.

“Then Nora made a comment. I doubt anyone else remembers, but it stuck with me. At first because of how crude it was: she talked about how you could clean her cunt whenever you liked.

“Later, after I left—after you stood up for me—I kept coming back to it. I thought about how you took all the gross physical stuff about being a whore and made it exciting and good. No wonder Nora wanted you to do that.”

I laugh. “Oh, I think we all remember Nora’s comments. She was even more crude than you remember.”

“You all remember? What did she say?”

“It was about me cleaning up her cunt slops. And yeah, it kind of became a joke, whenever anyone got particularly dirty. Well, yeah, I’d clean them up. And I guess sometimes it was a lot more than a joke.”

“So you turn being dirty and disgusting into something the rest of the class can feel good about?”

“I guess you could see it that way. But I don’t think it is disgusting; that’s kind of the point.”

She nods. “But it could be, easily, and you push that away.”

She chews at her lip. “Do you think...”

“Do I think what?”

“Would you clean me—make me not dirty and disgusting?”

Oh come on! Why does this game do this to me? I guess because I am playing a whore and so I’m supposed to get sex quests. But seriously? Cunt slops for a rape victim?

Ariel: <What do I do?>

Annika: <What do you want to do?>

Ariel: <Licking up cunt slops from the people in my class is all well and good. But what happened to her is disgusting; it’s not right.>

Annika: <You can tell her you’d be happy to show her how beautiful she is after she gets cleaned up. But it sounds like what she’s hoping to hear—hoping to believe—is that she’s not disgusting now. You tell her that she is still beautiful; she wants help seeing that.>

Annika: <If you are only comfortable with her as a lover after she is cleaned up, she is going to hear that she is not beautiful now. That will be hard to hear but she will recover. Your boundaries matter; do not push yourself places you are uncomfortable going.>

One thing is for sure. I don’t want her to think that this is her fault. This world has a lot less shame associated with rape, but ephemerals are just as vulnerable to feelings of inadequacy as anyone else. I won’t do more than I can handle, but I want to find a way to help Gloria. I can at least explore what she wants.

“Gloria,” I say, “I can show you that I see you as desirable. But you’re the one who needs to feel beautiful not dirty. Would me cleaning you up like that let you do that?”

“I want it to,” she says. “I’m hoping you can show me that sex doesn’t have to be dirty. But I don’t know if it will work.

“It’s okay if it doesn’t, right? We can try, and if I have to stop, it’ll be okay, right?”

“Oh honey, yes. You can stop any time.” I hesitate. “It might be me stopping though. I’ve never done it like this. Before, the other person ... well, they think differently about being dirty.”

She looks down. “Oh, no! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

I lift her chin. “No, we’re in this together. We’re going to see exactly how good of a whore I am. But we’re both trying something hard, and so it needs to be okay if either of us needs to step back.”

I continue, “Would this be easier if we get you cleaned up, have a bath first?”

“Easier, probably. But not better. If you can show me now that I’m not dirty ... if you can do that then ... then I hope that I won’t be dirty for Hans either.”

“And you specifically want me to clean your cunt—do you even use that word?”

“Only that once, telling you what Nora said. Asking you is the naughtiest thing I’ve ever done. But the image from that day stuck in my mind. I couldn’t clean someone dirty there normally ... and today, if you could show me I’m not disgusting ... if there’s any way you could do that, please?”

I think I’ve figured out what my hang up is. Cunt slops have always been about people getting dirty for me—about me enjoying the leavings of their lust. Here, I’m not enjoying what has happened to her at all. But when I think about the idea of eating her out to show her that I desire her, I could do that. This time, it’s going to be more about slops than usual; what her rapists have left behind is filth, because of who they are and what they did. And yeah, cleaning that up with my mouth rather than say with a wet rag is gross. But it’s not actually going to hurt me, and if approaching her with confidence and acceptance helps her fight what happened, I think I can do it.

I have some very sharp words for the game developers. But I’m not going to take that out on her. No matter how ephemeral she is, she’s my friend, and she’s in pain. I can help, even if I think the world that has this as a quest is all fucked up.

“So you want to do this here and now?”

She nods.

“Do you want to undress yourself?”

“Would you?”

“Sure.” But first, I remove my own clothes. I had planned on a striptease, but she shivers as I stop touching her. So I make it quick.

I return to her. “You okay?”

“Being held feels good.” Slowly and carefully, I remove her dress. My hands run over her arms then up, gently caressing her face and neck. My eyes drink her in. I inhale her scent. She is frightened and hurt. I’m going to change that; I will draw forth the scent of her lust and pleasure. And with that, Smell of Sex ignites. With as much mana as I’m feeding the skill, there’s no wonder that I can latch onto anything and get my passions flowing. And the goal of seducing this beautiful woman and showing her the goddess inside is basic enough that it resonates with the animal lust that Smell of sex awakens.

In spite of the passion building within myself, I move slowly. I unlace her corset. I tease at the warmth of her breasts through the thin fabric of her chemise. “Taking this slow is an agony. When I see you doubt yourself, I just want to let my passions loose; let them fill you. But I want to worship every inch of you.”