Gypsy: Chapter 1 :The Rat and the Rose

~Chapter One~

The Rat and the Rose.

The sway of her body was hypnotizing. The ting of her chains hitting each other created a steady rhythm to the chaotic music all around her. She danced with her eyes closed, as if she didn't care that she was the center of a large crowd of bruiting men. Their eyes focused on the movements of her body, piercing gazes as they tried to see every last enticing movement. She danced the dance of her people, the dance to celebrate life and to bring forth a new and prosperous year to those who were blessed, but these men did not understand. The dance they saw was seductive and exotic and the only meaning they saw behind the graceful sways of her arms was that she must go to bed with them. They gawked at her, cheering and raising their mugs at the young girl in mere rags as she danced on the bar. Coins and liquor were thrown at her chained ankles as she swayed and popped to the drum beat and hollers. Her owner just watched and smiled as he greedily scooped up the silver and put it into his sack, a sickening grin etched across his rat like face. The music ended and the gypsy girl opened her eyes just to remember where she stood, old, drunken men at her feet clawing at her like rabid lions,wanting a piece of her golden flesh.

The rat faced man jumped onto the bar beside her grabbing her wrist and bowing, the patched and worn tunic practically hung of his bones. The pale snicker and the greed in the mans eyes were masked by the kind yet frightening smile that stretched across his face, showing his rat like teeth as they jutted out in every direction.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen, the beautiful Dessert Rose!" he said gesturing to the slave who was soon after rained down on with coins and booze. "Thank you, thank you." he said kindly. "Now that you have had a little tease of what my show presents i can expect you all to be there right?!" his little voice was drowned out by the hoots and hollers of the drunken party, but the girl just closed her eyes again, a slight sway in her hip.

I watched the girl as the stood on the bar, her eyes closed and her hips gently swaying like a breeze in the Knepler Fields. The Rat pulled her down from her perch and drug her through the wave of hormones. Men groping and fumbling to touch the exotic deity, and desires were shouted without sensors.

The Rat just pushed her through, swatting away hands that were too anxious, laughing. “There will be a time for that if you come to my show gentlemen! The Dexirious Traveling Train, here for the month, if the income is well. Come! Come see my goddess! The Desert Rose, plucked at her blooming from the exotic sands of Berinese, here for your pleasure. And I do mean all of it!” he chuckled and threw his hand to his face as if to tell a secret, but sang out loudly despite it. “But that’ll cost you extra.” He danced around the men with the girl, showing her off, advertising his life.

"We have snake charmers from afar, a two headed monster from the south, the gorgeous No Tongued Loua and of course, more of my secret beauty” he said holding the girls arms up. “See her hypnotizing curves as she swings them to the beat of every man’s heart in this room” he grinned running his pale, aged hand down her body, the golden glow from her skin made his look dead. His hand floated out away from her as a gesture but his eyes remained glued on the girl’s face, her eyes closed and she seemed as if she were in a daze or a dream at peace. Not here, not in this tavern where she is thrown about indecently for this man’s glory

The man’s rat nose scrunched at the foulness of defiance. “I said; see her hypnotizing curves as she swings them, my flower…”

I watched the girl, part of me hoping she would not move, that she would stand there in her entirety and keep her pride. But another, more animalistic side of me begged her to do just that. I wanted to see her move, to see the grace and the power of her hips as she isolated them, to see the movement in her stomach as the coins of her scarf chimed an enticing melody. To watch her as a story unfolds, to see the movements echo throughout her body and the secret joy of her face, but she just stood there. The men around us began to shout and taunt, doubting her ability and the Rat man’s integrity which made the Rat’s face change in color as he shouted cruel and threatening words to the men and then back at the girl.

Her eyes slowly opened and my heart dropped. A rare, exotic beauty stood before me and her eyes were stunning but dulled with a lack of emotion, and were undoubtedly beautiful. The teals and violets of the scarf reflected in her eyes like an ocean of amethysts, the finest cut amethyst that a man could buy, plus some. I stared at her as she began to dance for the men and for her owner, but her mind appeared empty, her eyes emotionless and her body intoxicating.