The Courier Ch. 26

For the next year Cecilia would be obedient to Jason, up until the moment her collar came off. Then their relationship would go back to normal and she would return to spanking him every time they made love. After all, nothing aroused Jason Schmidt more than having his bottom warned by Cecilia, especially after he had been a naughty boy.

----------

While Jason and Cecilia were gone, Maria Elena noticed one of her fellow ex-Royal servants coming into the Club alone. He was one of Kim's clients, the young missionary from the US who had been convicted to a 10-year sentence for proselytizing a foreign religion. He looked a bit disoriented because it was obvious that he was visiting the Socrates Club for the first time.

Maria Elena felt nervous seeing one of her fellow ex-Royal servants in the Club, but she realized that she needed to get past the trauma she had suffered under Anyia. After all, she had only been in Anyia's place for one week, and there were servants who had suffered under her for two years. Maria Elena stood up and greeted the American, and in broken English invited him to sit at her table.

The missionary's name was Anthony. He introduced himself and talked a little about his background and his sentence, speaking a mixture of English and Danubian. It turned out that his home was only a few miles from where Carmen's grandparents lived, and that Carmen knew exactly where his former church was located. From that point forward Anthony and Carmen chatted with each other about their lives and places they both had visited.

Carmen talked at length about her experience as an exchange student and the reason she had decided to wear a Church collar. Anthony talked about his own experience, first as a convicted criminal and then as a Royal Servant. Prior to his internment in the Royal Residence, his religious convictions had encouraged him to stay aloof from his fellow criminals and therefore he had never visited the Socrates Club. His traumatic experience under the Grand Duchess, the dramatic way it ended, and finally his participation in the Day of the Dead march, convinced him that he needed to accept what he now was; a Danubian collared criminal. He said sadly:

"I'm not a missionary anymore. That's something I don't think I'll ever be able to do again...because my faith...it just isn't there...it's totally gone. And, anyhow, everyone points at my collar and calls me by a number...and I've realized...that whatever I was before I got arrested, right now I'm now I'm just criminal in this country, no better than a drug user or a burglar."

Carmen invited Anthony to dance. They continued to exchange details about their lives as they became more intimate. Then they danced more closely and touched each other's bare bodies. They were attracted to each other; that was something Maria Elena could see very clearly as she watched them on the floor. Interesting...Carmen and Anthony had met only because Maria Elena had invited him to sit at their table, and she had invited him simply out of being polite to someone she vaguely knew. And yet, from that simple invitation the lives of Carmen and Anthony would be changed forever.

She knew that Carmen would eventually become more serious with Anthony, and he would be the reason she'd end up staying behind in Danube City after her classmates left. Her decision to remain collared would simply be the result of falling in love with someone serving a long sentence, someone who could not leave Danubia, and who she would not be able to leave behind.

----------

Socrates' Mistresses completed the presentation of their new songs. Kim asked if there were any requests before the group left the stage. A couple of hands around the room went up, requesting "The wall that divides my soul." It was an old song, but the clientele of the Socrates Club never tired of hearing it.

As she listened to her Spokeswoman and her partner Eloisa perform the final song of the evening, Maria Elena cuddled in Victor's arms, knowing that she was indeed where she belonged. Her old life was gone, ruined through her own stupidity, but there was no point in worrying about that. Over time she would learn Danubian and forget Spanish, she would raise Victor's kids and run his business. Every day she would give thanks to the Creator for having given her a second chance, one that she really did not deserve.

Maria Elena touched her collar. Yes, the collar marked her as property of the Danubian Ministry of Justice. She knew that she would never again experience freedom in the way that most people understood being free. And yet, at that moment she was happier than she had been at any other time in her troubled existence, because for the first time the world seemed to make sense to her. Her destiny would be to serve her husband, her children, her friends, and her new country.

Criminal # 101025 had found her Path in Life, her proper place in the Realm of the Living.