Her stepmother’s voice echoed in her memory and Elli pressed her fingers to her temples, rubbing hard to try to drive it away.
“I’m sorry!” she muttered. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry!”
The old shame writhed inside her like a poisonous serpent and Elli writhed with it, turning over in her narrow cot to stare at the blank white wall as she kept massaging her temples. The priestess’s sleeping chambers were more like cells than actual living spaces. Bare and white, their only furnishings were a single cot and a tiny kneeling mat for meditation and prayer in the corner.
Lately, even Elli’s mat had been removed so that during meditation she was forced to kneel on the hard metal floor without it. The punishment was meant to make her reflect on the sins of the flesh she had committed. But to be honest, what she mostly thought about after kneeling for hours, was the pain in her knees. They were black and blue with bruises—not that anyone would notice with her long white robes in the way.
At that moment the lights came on all at once—a blinding flare of brilliance that meant it was time to start her morning.
The day of a priestess started much earlier than that of a regular person living aboard the Mother Ship. They rose hours before anyone else to worship the Mother of All Life, first meditating in their cells, and then going out to the Sacred Grove to have a communal Veneration of the Goddess.
After morning meditation and veneration, there were chores to be done. Some of the priestesses stayed to tend the Sacred Grove, making sure that the green and purple trees that grew there were healthy and whole, as a sign of their devotion to the Goddess. Others cleaned the communal living spaces or cooked in the food prep area which was exclusive to the priestesses.
The food prep area was important, since the priestesses weren’t allowed to eat what everyone else ate aboard the Mother Ship. All the food prepared and served to them was extremely plain and dull, without a hint of spice.
To Elli, who had been raised with four big brothers who liked to try and outdo each other in pepper eating contests, the bland food was a punishment. She missed the spicy veronie stew of her home world and the tangy, brine-shrup, so sour they made your mouth pucker with every bite.
Of course, not all the food on the Mother Ship was like the plain laba wafers and ualla bread soup served to the Priestesses, she thought resentfully as she knelt for meditation—wincing as her bruised knees connected with the hard metal floor. The humans who lived here ate all kinds of things—like the sugary, multicolored cookies they’d had at the Christmas party. Those had been delicious.
She sighed, reminding herself that she was supposed to be meditating on her recent sins and transgressions, not critiquing the food. But sometimes she wondered if she was going to be stuck here forever, trimming trees and singing hymns and eating bland paste for First Meal, Mid Meal, and Last Meal with never a break in the endless monotony.
There weren’t even any animals here to train and love! Elli thought with longing of the magnificent zorels she and her brothers had worked with on their ranch on Torl Prime. It wasn’t considered ladylike for a female to be good with such large animals, but her oldest brother, Pern, had defended her right to help in the family business.
“Elli’s got the lightest touch and the sweetest voice of all of us,” he’d said, when their stepmother had complained that it wasn’t right for a girl to be out riding and breaking the huge animals. “She can get even the most savage buck to do what she wants when the rest of us have to run lest we get trampled or clawed or steamed. It’s not her fault she’s a female.”
Elli sadly missed her lovely zorels—especially Thune, their best stud buck who responded to anyone else with savage kicks and hissing but who was as tame as a lambkin with her. She wondered how her brothers were managing him without her—he could get into a terrible temper if he wasn’t treated just right…
She had heard that the Earth people had animals called “horses” that were a little like the zorels of her home world—well, the back end of them was like a zorel, anyway—having powerful hind legs and hooves. But the front part of a zorel looked more like the mythical Earth creature called a “dragon,” with claws and scales and the ability to snort hot steam or even flames, in the rarest bloodlines.
Elli had never seen a ‘flamer’ but Thune could scald the skin off you if he was angry—not that he’d ever worked up a head of steam near her. They had been friends from the moment she looked in the buck’s golden eyes and touched his proud, arching neck with its long, feathered mane…