There were no women wearing old-fashioned clothes, just the men peering in.
It was clear there were two types of people there. There were those, like the warriors, with deep tanned skin, dark-toned eyes and black hair. These were the women in their sarongs and the men in the hide pants.
They looked at us with curiosity.
The men wearing old-fashioned clothes were different. They had all colored hair and eyes.
All of them were looking in with curiosity too but this wasn’t benign or indifferent. It was lewd.
And it scared me.
Outside the pen, beyond the onlookers, I saw big, round tents and torches. Beyond that, it was dark because it was night but it appeared the ground was dirt or sand and stone broken by intermittent thrusts of dark brush. It looked like a set from Gilligan’s Island but not fake and therefore definitely unfunny.
I had woken up there not an hour ago, panicked and freaked way the f**k out mainly because I was not in my bed in my townhome in Seattle which would freak anyone out but waking up here meant I was freaked way the f**k out.
This caused a minor sensation when I surged to my feet and started to act exactly what I was, scared out of my brain, panicked and freaked way the f**k out. This was not looked upon favorably by the painted, muscled guards. In fact, they made it very clear my freaked out, panicked behavior was highly unwelcome. Luckily, an unknown sense of self-preservation kicked in and I quieted immediately, sat on my behind, pulled my shit together and decided to get my bearings.
At first, I thought it was a dream. In fact, I decided it had to be a dream. This kind of shit didn’t happen to people, right?
But, unfortunately, after repeatedly pinching myself and coming to the understanding that in dreams you didn’t think you were in a dream, I realized it was not.
It was something else.
And that something was way bad.
So as I surveyed my surroundings, I decided that I had to get out of that something bad but I was in a pen, for goodness sakes, being leered at by icky men and looked over by people who appeared to be natives of some weird, foreign fantasyland.
And furthermore, to get out I had to know what I was in.
So I paid attention and took in my surroundings.
And the thing I noticed, outside what was going on on the outskirts of our pen, was that there were different kinds of women in the pen. There were those with black hair, dark eyes and tanned skin – in fact, this was the vast majority of the women. And they did not seem panicked or scared. They seemed content, some chatting to others in a language I didn’t understand, others holding themselves separate and eyeing their compatriots in a guarded or even calculating way (and it made matters worse that a lot of these kinds of looks were aimed at me). Some even preening for the onlookers.
Then there were others who were not like them. Not many, I counted three.
These women looked scared out of their brains.
These women were like me.
And once I made this realization, I decided what I was going to do first. I had no clue what I was going to do second but at least I knew what I was going to do first.
And that was, find out what the f**k was going on.
It appeared we had freedom to walk around and talk so I decided my target, got up and started to walk over to her.
This was a mistake. The guards hadn’t forgotten my minor freak out and dark, forbidding eyes came to me. Also, onlookers who had witnessed my freak out turned their attention to me likely because they were keen to see what happened next. And further, nearly every black-haired, dark-eyed woman in the corral pinned her eyes on me and they did it in a way that didn’t feel all that great.
Um… yikes.
Cautiously, I persevered and walked across the pen to a woman with pale skin, light brown hair and light-colored eyes. She didn’t look panicked, as such. On closer inspection, she didn’t even really look scared. She looked resigned and she looked wired. Like something was about to happen and she was mentally preparing for whatever that was in a way that took all of her concentration.
I made my way across the pen and jumped when one of the black-haired women reached out and pinched me, hard, on the sensitive skin behind my arm.
“Ouch!” I snapped, my hand going to the skin, my eyes going to her.
She leaned forward and hissed at me from between her teeth sounding like a snake.
I jumped further and scuttled away.