Chapter 3

Scene trainingbrothel1 Story Boarding

Live with: Ariel

Present this Discussion: trainees, trainers

The next live scene was expected to take place in 4 days time in the main classroom at the training brothel. The trainees would trickle in after Ariel arrived. The trainers would enter and start the class. It would be a intimate exploration of everyone’s body.

All the meta minds were gathered.

Master Craggs started the discussion. “We need to make sure Ariel understands this is not all about her.”

Nora laughed, because if there was one thing clear to everyone, right now, whore training was absolutely all about Ariel. Yes, what they did today would influence future training, but right now all these resources were focused on one immortal.

“Let’s try that again,” Master Craggs said. “Ariel needs to understand that as a whore she needs to be focused on her clients not herself. Like our experientials, she does matter, but not like immortals are used to thinking of themselves.

“We will need to challenge her to realize that sometimes her client will be focused on themselves not her.”

“How will you do that?” asked Artisan Florence Eslinger.

“Fuck her and leave her hanging.”

“She will certainly have immortal clients who do that,” Florence said.

“That will give me an opening,” Gloria Greenway said. She was a weaver and the most uncomfortable of the trainees with what being a whore entailed. “I can approach her later and help her process what happened. I am worried about that sort of thing happening to me. If she takes the opening, she can help me work on my confidence being a Whore.”

“That makes sense,” Florence said. “Bruce, do you plan to start out the show and fondle with Ariel?”

Master Craggs nodded. “We’re all uncomfortable with immortals. She’s going to get singled out at least until she does a lot to convince us she’s one of us. What my experiential said needs to be true: if she meets our standards, we welcome her to the guild. We start out skeptical though, and so she gets a lot of our focus.”

“That fits with how I’m seeing my quest,” Xavier Coggins said. “If she can build enough rapport with the rest of you, then the trainers will see that I’m not going to make it as part of this training section. Depending on whether she’s actively antagonized me or just ignored me, I’ll either work to build anti-immortal sentiment or go away in a huff.”

Xavier continued, “It sounds like we’re not able to fix whether any of you start out as my allies yet. Even Master Kessler is not sure whether she’ll remember a conversation where she starts talking about the importance of protecting the guild from immortals.”

“I’m sure she’s said that,” Florence said, “but admitting that to a new trainee, even with your father’s influence, would be taking a side. It sounds like it is still a possibility though.”

Xavier said, “Yes, if Ariel doesn’t show enough connection and empathy with the rest of us, then we can shift the back story that far.”

Nora nodded. “I’m thinking along similar lines. I don’t think I’m likely to get into a position where I’m second guessing a judgment I’ve already made. If Ariel starts treating our experientials like they are there for her amusement, then I’m fine remembering I have always been your ally in this. If she goes far enough that our alliance fixes in reality and somehow learns to treat us like we matter, then we will find some way that I can revise my judgment even though that’s not easy for me.”

“That all makes sense,” Xavier said. “How big of a mess does Ariel create if she kills me? Is that a reasonable way for her to deal with my part of the quest?”

“You should put in a request to Master Kessler on that,” Bruce said. “I mean obviously if she kills you without provocation on guild property, she gets kicked out. But if she sets up a situation where there’s plausible deniability or where you threaten her ... Master Kessler needs to remember what the rules are about that.”

“Do you think Ariel is going to be ready for Bruce to start out the class focused on her and then leave her hanging like he plans?” Florence asked. “That sounds like it could be challenging.” It was a good question. The ephemerals wanted to challenge Ariel certainly, but they also needed to give her a chance to complete her quests.

“We can prepare an alternate,” Bruce said. “I’ll make a call when we’re live.”

“I would be happy to go first in the alternate,” Princess Aubrielle said.

Bruce nodded.

“So are we ready to talk about my quest?” the princess asked.

“I am,” Nora said. “I’m looking forward to taking you down a peg, perhaps turning the tables a bit and showing you what it feels like when people regard you as something to use.”

“What were you thinking of?” Aubrielle asked.

Nora ran a quick search over things a smith might do that came across as impersonal, cross indexed with an estimate of humiliation. Smith was correlated enough with ostler (they both dealt with horses) and as she expanded the search, some of those results came back. Nora found something her experiential would enjoy—if she could get away with it. “Does your highness remember ever watching a smith or ostler value horse flesh?”

Aubrielle nodded, “I’d be happy to remember that.” They dispatched subroutines to make sure their memories of the process were similar. Given shared scenery among the stables as immortals offered to sell mounts, convergence would be easy.

“I’d like to do that to your experiential: look at your teeth, your mouth, talk about how with a fine body like that, you’d fetch a fine price if you were a horse.”

“Wow, my experiential will be in tears if you do that. It will come close to breaking me.”

“Not rage? I was thinking I might end up begging for my life.”

“We can pre-live it both ways and see how it works out if you like,” Aubrielle said. “I was planning to remember lots of cases where my discomfort with commoners got in the way. I think I want to be motivated to get past that. If you just want to hurt me, I will eventually realize that and destroy you.”

“No! Under all that pomp is a beautiful animal just like the rest of us. I want to take you down a peg so that you realize once you strip away all your noble notions, we are all the same.”

“Animal? Why animal?”

Perhaps she had the wrong word. She understood how it had happened though: she was a new cognate, and there was the discussion she remembered with Foster Goody and her love song. But woman would have been more typical. It could resolve either way.

“So the princess breaks down crying, and we’re hoping that Ariel can bridge the gap between them and help the princess see that Nora just wants her to let go of her nobility and enjoy the animal lust and connection we all find?” Florence asked.

Gloria, Bruce and Nora shook their heads. “Ariel’s all messed up and facing her own challenge,” Gloria said. “I’m helping her out.”

“I was thinking,” Nora said, “that as the princess and I work through things, it could serve as an example to Ariel about how we are all the same: we all love, we all lust, we all cry.

“I like Florence’s idea about the animal lust and connection though.”

“I agree with Nora and Gloria,” Bruce said.

The session quickly wrapped up. Everyone would submit lines. There was even time scheduled on a blocking engine to pull together the choreography.

Cut!

* Scene trainingbrothel1 Live Take*

Live with: Ariel

Action

Immortals say that no plan survives contact with the enemy. Four days later, Nora was thinking that no scene survives contact with a live immortal. All the plans assumed that Ariel would arrive first and the trainees would slowly arrive. But Ariel had been standing outside the door to the training brothel for minutes already. She showed no sign of entering.

Statistically one of the trainees should arrive soon. Nora volunteered her experiential, and so Nora found herself ambling up to the members entrance of the training brothel.

“What’s ya waiting for?” Nora’s experiential asked.

Ariel said she was nervous facing the humiliation of being a Whore, having her entire life on display and sharing the intimate details of things. “I’m nervous too,” Nora said.

“Shall we go in together and watch each other’s backs?” Nora agreed.

All their plans out the window! They had planned for an immortal focused on herself. They assumed that it would take effort to show Ariel that she would need to get close to the ephemerals—value them even—to succeed. But before the scene even properly started, Ariel offered to watch Nora’s back.

Nora’s experiential was thrilled. An immortal had never taken notice of her like that. Ariel was proving easy to get along with.

Things went even more off script when the trainers arrived. Bruce asked if anyone had done anything intimate since the last scene. Ariel had. She described her Cream Pie Quest. She hired Hulda, a whore working at the Roasted Pig, to fuck a bunch of people for her so she could eat up the resulting mess.