What do you Want from Me?

I rode in towards the supply wagons to exchange empty bota for full plump ones. Taking a moment to eat a bit of jerky. I was alone among the moving wagons for a time. No one was around. Then blue came along and asked to serve me .. I told her I had served myself. She asked me then if I liked slaves.

What an odd question. I replied. "I like slaves as much as I like anyone .. why?"

She said she did not see slaves serve me much. I figured I did as much as anyone. But I can do for myself and if there is anything I despise more it is a slave who believes she has a right to serve me. Or that I need her in any way. A slave knows if I allow her to serve me ... there is my pleasure behind it .. not just the desire not to have to do it myself. She mentioned something about a slave wronging me. I asked her what she meant and she said she had seen bell wrong me. I asked her if she really believed any slave could wrong a man. She said hurting or betraying a man wronged him.

I shrugged. I told her bell's words to me were not easy to hear .. but she had neither wronged me nor betrayed me.

She said that telling a man he was a mistake wronged him.

I said .. it was true. I can not be wronged by truth.

She said truth was a fickle bitch and people could bend truth to fit how they wished to see it.

I chuckled. If I found such to wrong me .. if I took such personally I would find people in general impossible to like at all.

Then she asked me if I liked people.

Sometimes.

She asked why only sometimes. I replied that sometimes people were not likeable.

She asked me what made a person likeable. I replied that I was attracted to people who were interesting .. intelligent .. easy on the eye did not hurt .. and people who had enough of an identity on their own that they did not need to borrow from mine.

She said she hoped I would let her serve me. I replied .. you do. She said yes .. in some ways. I then asked blue what she wanted from me.

She replied to me that she did not want anything from me. She wanted to be things for me.

So I asked her why.

She said because I deserved it. I asked her how she intended to go about this. She said she had no plan .. she was just available.

huh.

She said she was not doing it for personal gain. That she had no emotional attachment to me. She looked for nothing in return. It was a gift.

huh.

She said I asked this question of all slaves .. yes I did. She asked me if I was used to slave's wanting something from me .. yes I was. I said to her .. that she would not keep returning to my feet if she did not want something from me.

She said that was not true.

I told her to go away ... to want nothing from me while she walked on the other side of the wagon.

She asked me if she had said something wrong.

I told her there was no right or wrong .. but she could walk over there and want nothing from me just as easy as she could walk over here and want nothing from me.

She begged to stay at my stirrup. I said ... Ah she did want something from me.

I asked her .. one more time ... what she wanted from me. She gave me a list of things she wanted to give me.

So I told her to go away and not approach me again until she had a better answer.

I wonder what answer she will come up with. I wonder if she got it. Or if she missed it by the sheer simplicity of it all.