Disclaimers: Oh, wait, I wasn't gonna do these anymore, was I? O.O



Kanani and Spowaban went out the next morning again at dawn, but this time there was little 
talk. Spowaban tested Kanani's physical abilities until she was rubbery and could barely walk 
on her own.

The morning after that, Spowaban, having decided to stick to that regiment of exercises, told 
Kanani to do all over again.

Again, she hurt. Only this time, it was different: Her pain was merely physical. What with all 
the hard work she was doing all day, she had no time to think about Jukilo or Erfen. All she 
knew was the throbbing ache of tired muscles and the sharp pang of hunger attacks that seemed 
to constantly overtake her.

All day long she was running, swimming, hitting far away objects with her sling, and doing an 
endless amount of other exercises. Spowaban had her memorize everything she was to do and in 
what order she was to do it in. After a week of that order and ferocity, she did more and 
different things in a new and more painful array.

After about a month, though, she realized that she was getting stronger and the pain was 
somewhat less intense. Her young body was as strong as it could get, but Spowaban seemed to 
be trying to make it even stronger.

On that one month anniversary of her first month of training with Spowaban, she was given a 
free day to do as she pleased; even go into the nearby city if she so desired.

However, Kanani opted to stay at the cave and think. She'd had no real time to evaluate her 
life with Spowaban and recall why it seemed important to her to stay there. He wasn't nice to 
her at all. The more painful something was, the more he made her do it. And yet, on the first 
day, he had given her the puzzling option of doing what she pleased and not obeying him 
constantly. Of course, she ignored it without a second's fancy... She could never, after all, 
simply not obey a direct order from a man. It was simply not done.

And yet, how the thought appealed to her! To simply say "no" and go about doing what one 
pleased... It seemed too good to be true at all! Spowaban was giving her the option of 
complicating his own life and liberating her from the prison that Orlov had built for her. 
She could never accept, she knew; it was out of the question. It certainly appealed to her, 
though...

Sighing and kneeling by the river, she consulted her Spirit to help her in clearing away her 
troubling thoughts .

A little happier, but only barely so, she sat by the sparkling river and went over all of her 
most distant and sacred memories of the Ancient Spirits in her mind. In a way, she was more 
comforted by these sleepy, if chaotic and strange, deities than she was by her own Spirit 
Guardian. The Ancient Spirits were the creators of everyone-men and women-and thus she seemed 
to respect them more. They couldn't help it if they got angry... She would have also if her 
perfect world had been torn apart by her own silly, inconsistent creations.

Sighing, she whispered their names out into the wind, smiling in content as the winds and 
water seemed to respond quietly and warmly.

It was her first true infraction of an Orlovian policy. Calling out those names was forbidden 
by all but the most holy of men... They were banned from women and all "lesser" people.

Everything else was excusable, but to do what she had done was worthy of a punishment of 
death. She was hardly even a woman; a simple girl had called out the names of the most feared 
and odious Spirits the people of Orlov had ever produced.

The next few days were filled with slight disobediences that Kanani seemed to delve into with 
quiet enthusiasm. She not only called out the names of the Spirits, but she didn't so every 
little tiny thing that Spowaban might wish her to do. Of course, she never showed her 
deliberate disobedience, but she would simply pretend she hadn't heard him, and thus led to 
her first lie.

On Orlov, people merely did not lie. It was not only against courtesy, but it was essentially 
an unwritten law. Even the memories of the people didn't specify the ills of lying. It was 
just not done by any decent persons on Orlov. There had been lies in the distant past, but 
since the takeover by the men, lying had been nearly bred out of people.

As it was, Kanani didn't happily indulge in such things, but she found that little "white-lies" 
were quite helpful to her current state of life. They seemed to make things just a little 
easier for her to bear. If she didn't want to obey a menial little order, she would say she 
hadn't heard it, of she had forgotten. Every time she did so, Spowaban knew, and he always 
smiled very slightly.

She was slowly, very slowly, becoming her own person. Kanani was no longer Kanani the 
Near-Slave, but she was Kanani the Girl.

It was fitting that in that time, she biologically became a woman. Relying on her memories to 
aid her and keep it from Spowaban.   She, amazingly, flourished under this painful experience. 
She had to suffer the normal pre-menstrual aches that women everywhere suffered, but also she 
had to train as hard as her body could handle. However, it kept her from thinking too hard 
about any one thing and thus she was happier than she could ever remember having been. She 
scarcely gave a thought to her mother and Erfen, and gave even less thought than that about 
Jukilo.

What she did find disturbing, however, about her new state of mind was that she was forgetting 
things about these people. Was Murre's hair really that straight or did it have a slight wave 
at the ends? Did Erfen have a scar on his left hand or his right and did it come from a knife 
or some other blade? Was Jukilo that much taller than her? Did Murre show affection on one day 
long ago, or was it begrudged respect? Maybe it never even happened and she was imagining 
things? She always tried not to weep at these thoughts, but it was hard. She felt she was 
betraying her past by forgetting these slight details that she thought would always be 
imprinted on her memory. When she would cry about it, she would hear Erfen's final howl exactly 
as she had heard it seven years before and could barely move for the pain searing her insides.

//I'm awful. I've never been good enough. I never will be good enough... Murre was right all 
along to hate me so. I should die right now. No. I must suffer for how terrible I am. I must 
never tell anything but the truth and I must obey all orders given to me before anyone can love 
me. I'm a fool and an insult to my people.// That was her ongoing mantra. It was what pounded 
through her veins and ate her alive with her every waking breath. Whenever she trained and felt 
ready to collapse she pushed herself a step further, almost killing her body with the torture 
she subjected it to.

Meanwhile, Spowaban was furious that she had emotionally slipped so. He had no real true 
insight into her past and thus couldn't begin to understand that pain she went through 
everyday. He had no clue why she was suddenly being so obedient, and so was utterly 
flabbergasted. He had thought she was almost ready for learning the basics of hand-to-hand 
combat when she suddenly became this little slave.

Upset and confused, but facing more and more pressure from the Emperor and Empress, he was 
forced to try and teach her anyway, although he knew very well she wasn't close to being 
emotionally ready.

It turned out, on the first day, that he oughtn't to have tried. She wouldn't hit back, only 
stand and cry. He tried begging, yelling, insulting, bringing up what he knew of her past-
every technique he tried was a failure. She only protested that she was to never hurt any 
person, especially a man.

On that day, battered and bruised, she ran off to train more before nightfall, only hoping 
to appease the big green man. She collapsed that night on the cold stone floor of the cave, 
barely two feet from her "bed."

The next day, armed with new ideas, Spowaban tried it again and, like before, failed 
miserably. Kanani was getting more and more disturbed emotionally, and would become useless 
if she got worse. However, pressure was increasing astronomically on him, and he felt that he 
would crack soon if some improvement wasn't shown.

Normally, he would've simply beat at her until she fought back, but he found that he couldn't 
bear to hurt the girl. As tough and cold as he was, he learned that this disturbed, unhappy 
girl had wriggled her way into his stony heart. As much as he wanted to deny it, he loved the 
girl and never wanted to harm her for anything. He fancied that he would rather die than 
injure the fragile child before him and consequently made his life far more difficult than he 
wanted it to be.

Kanani, meanwhile, got more and more upset and depressed. She pushed herself until she almost 
passed out and then tried to serve Spowaban more. She was constantly in terrible pain and 
often shook uncontrollably at night from the physical torment her body was going through. All 
she wanted to do was die, since she felt so worthless, and Erfen haunted her more and more 
often in her waking hours. Often, she would have days when all she could hear was Erfen's dying 
scream resonating in her ears. After a couple of months of unsuccessfully trying to teach her, 
Spowaban opted to have another talk with her.

"Kanani," he said as gently as he could, "I'm not going to train you today, so I want you to 
stick close to me and not go off and try to further your training on your own. Understood?" 
Kanani nodded and sighed deeply. She was hungry, but since Spowaban seemed to want her 
undivided attention, she wouldn't have dared cook anything.

He took her arm, noting it was thinner than before, and went down by the huge Tree Lake into 
which the massive Tree River flowed.

He told her to sit on a stone by the lake and asked her some questions about her current state 
of mind, trying to pinpoint her problem.

It was then that she cracked. She shook violently and sobbed so hard he was worried she would 
burst a blood vessel somewhere. He took her quaking form into his arms and gently lulled her 
into calm once again. Her desperate cries slowly lessened into hiccuping sobs as she clutched 
him desperately, as if trying to bury herself into his broad chest.

He slowly levitated in a cross-legged position and gently held her on his lap, as the last of 
her tears ran free. She then told him about what had happened in her short life; about every 
single detail she could remember. She screamed, cried, whispered, laughed... Every emotion she 
had been denying herself came flying out with full force.

She gave a wavering sigh and explained why she was doing what she had been. About the terrible 
thoughts she'd been having about her own inadequacy.

He sighed and hugged her tightly, trying to will away her pain. She was terribly unbalanced 
emotionally, and so he tried to communicate to her that she wasn't worthless.

Cradling her like an infant, he told her that she was special and wonderful. No one ever had. 
All her life, no one had ever really told her that she was important.

Finally, Spowaban said, "Kanani. You will obey everything I say no matter what, right?"

The girl nodded glumly, frowning and sniffling.

"I have one for you, then: Don't obey me unless you, Kanani, want to. If you don't 
particularly want to do something, don't do it, understand? Do what you please and only what 
you please. You can only live a good life by living by your emotions,   and I want you to have 
a good life, so please do as I say only this one last time."

She swallowed thickly and scrubbed away some tears as she nodded lightly. "I'll try, Spowaban."

He nodded and gently let her go. He reflected for a moment before asking her if she considered 
herself a member of her people any longer.

"No," she said sadly, stifling back more tears.

He nodded again and took her back to the cave, saying little more.

They ate in companionable silence, both too engrossed in private thoughts to be concerned 
about what the other was thinking.

*~*~*

The next day was much like the days before it. Kanani tried as hard as she possibly could to 
fight Spowaban back, but it seemed impossible for her to do. Every time she raised her arm to 
strike, she wound up flinging it back down.

Spowaban, meanwhile, relentlessly continued trying to arouse her self-defense. He was 
constantly on the verge of leaving it as a lost cause and trying again with some blood-thirsty 
young person.

However, Frizzghigge's economy continued in it's horrible state with no sign of release 
anywhere except that pesky neighboring planet that would be so easy to be rid of with Kanani 
to help. The Emperor and Empress were breathing down his neck, pressuring him to get her 
trained as soon as he possibly could. He tried. He pushed himself emotionally and mentally as 
hard as Kanani did physically, and yet he felt it was coming to no solution. Kanani refused to 
let herself hurt anything. Anything at all.

Her temper, however, was quickly reaching its peak. Her nights were filled with memories of 
times when Spowaban's actions would have been barely tolerable. Her body's very first impulse 
was to try and slam her fist into his face as hard as she could. However, her mind was in chief 
control over her body and thus she never managed to let herself actually do it. Her basic 
mindset was that if it hurt someone it was something Murre would do, and since she could never 
be like Murre then she could never hurt anyone. She knew, deep inside, that her logic was off 
by a great deal, and yet she clung to this belief with everything she possibly could.

Every night, Spowaban would go over the day's actions and tell her in detail what she ought to 
have done other than stand there. She listened attentively, and learned a great deal, but to 
no avail. At least, not until she finally hit someone; though it certainly wasn't Spowaban.