Trojan Slave (Book 1)

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Days and weeks all blurred together when the work was monotonous and never ending, with only the occasional difference in activity. Corinna had been pulled from 'normal' duties to help ready the inner sanctum for the festival. The inner sanctum was the most sacred part of the temple. Most didn't manage to leave it without some misconduct, and that would mean severe pain. Elpis did not envy the task that Corinna had been honoured with.

Elpis had managed to find herself in the main temple forecourt, making sure everything was clean and all the visitors were being cared for, the richest being seen first for their sacrifices and business. Elpis took this time to watch the people, imagine the lives they led compared to hers. The rich held most of her attention; they never went anywhere without an army of slaves. Could they do nothing for themselves? She amused herself, imagining them as rather large babes, unable to complete any task without someone else's help.

However, the most interesting people she saw were the poorest. These were the people with finest stories to tell. An old woman, hunched over and shuffling, patiently waited most of the day for her turn. The life and changes that woman must have seen. Had she loved? Had she had a family? For how sweet she looked now, had she been infamous in her youth, a rebel maybe?

Or the young farmer, whose endurance was wearing thin as he waited in the same line for his place at the front. Did he have a young woman in his future, or was he destined to spend his life alone? Would he be called to arms and to fight for love?

Whoever they were, they all had something she envied. The right to call their lives their own. Not that she felt bitter about that at all. It would be nice to know that freedom once more; she had taken it for granted all her life. Nonetheless she had now lost it, regardless of how much she yearned for it once more.

Watching the old woman trip, she waited for someone to help her. Not shocked that nobody did, however extremely saddened by it, Elpis made her way through the crowded temple and reached the woman as she struggled to her knees. Giving her a helping hand, the woman's heavily wrinkled and fragile hands held surprising strength. The woman's thanks died in her throat as she saw who had helped her. There was no need to thank a slave.

The woman walked off, preferring to be in the company of those who had nothing to do with her when she needed help. Elpis felt her place more than ever. She watched the woman disappear into the crowd, left alone once more. Not good enough to belong, yet good enough to help run a place the free men and women put so much value in.

The Temple had become steadily busier over the last few days as we grew closer to the festival. The festival of wreaths was not until next summer, a festival held every eight years for Apollo. This was the festival of Thargelia on the sixth and seventh of Thargelion as to help celebrate the birthdates of Apollo and his twin Artemis. Crops and fruits would be offered, and bread would be piled high. The first of the crops need to be given to the god Apollo so he will be appeased for the year to come, otherwise curses would rain down upon them.

She could not help but disbelieve this level of commitment; this god had not helped her. Why should she help others to worship a god who judges between slave and free man when they choose whom to help? He has never answered her prayers.

Only she did not know what was coming, if she had at that point she may have put more effort into her prayers. She may have believed more. Understandably there was a loss of hope in her at that point, if there had been prior warning, she would not have believed them.

**

The previous time Elpis' life had been torn apart, she had not seen the ships which had taken her from her home. Today, she saw the ships approach. Today, she watched as the small ships became gradually and irrepressibly closer. Today, she waited for something new. It have been months since Thargelia. She was nearing her eighteenth year, her life a blur of the same routine and the same punishments by the same people. She was invisible, simply a piece of worthless property, classed as less than the person she was born to be.