The Tattooed Princess: Book Two-- Escape to the West

The Girl with Tattoos

It was not long after the elders approved the couples' place in the village to build their homes, that word had gone out among the gentry of Wahesh about Zaria—the girl who had returned from the East with fabulous tattoos. She became a point of curiosity and distinction among the Slavic clans, who did not use such body decoration in their culture. For they had traditionally made colorful woven fabrics and hand-crafted ornaments to wear as strings of beads, bracelets and rings instead. Tsudros, Zara's handsome mate was also heavily decorated with stunning skin art which the people of the Western frontiers would come to marvel at while he worked with Moshtok on their two houses. These dwellings were placed in tandem at the edge of the meadows and near a pathway that was a part of the concentric matrix of houses and roads around a central plaza of Wahesh.

It was the children of the village who were the most fascinated by this couple who were so attractive—and their decorative outer skin only mesmerized them all the more. When Zaria, giving in to the request by a crowd of children to see the entire bird creature which Tsudros had decorated on her arm and shoulder two years before, they went out impressed enough to tell their parents and older siblings of the fanciful spectacle. The mythical animal on her arm was just fantastic enough to inspire wonder in some of the children and a few nightmares in others.

Nevertheless, many of the villagers became highly intrigued by Zaria and Tsudros due to their body art. Not wishing to divulge that she had been a court princess of sorts to the Pazyryk peoples, yet explaining she indeed had been a slave of them, when asked about her decorations, Zaria told them only she indeed had more decorations on her body due to her ordeals. But she further explained to the adult in the village that it was her love for Tsudros, and his amazing talent as a tattoo artist, which had compelled her to proceed with the process, resulting as a testimonial of her great love for him.

Having so much of the other parts of her body decorated, Zaria firmly insisted she would never share with her own people these designs more of her out of modesty and a special compact with the man she adored. For it was Tsudros alone who had come to love her as well and created the special images. She would further insist to those of the curious and and the persistent, that the scenes and alluring creatures Tsudros brought to life on Zaria's young body were designed for and during a special and intimate part of their intense history.

Even though it was rumored that this young beauty had sublime images of majestic dancing leopards cascading down her back, and actually sported an emblematic duality of the human condition as portmanteau on both of her supple thighs, they were to be viewed only when bathing together with Tsudros, or in the nightly firelight of evening with him. They would simply be privy to no others, as much as the children and later the insisting adults from the various clans asked to be shown them.

And then there was, known only to Tsudros and Zaria, that very special, small and symbolic image her artist love had inscribed on Zaria's most private area—delicately and intimately for all time. For it had commemorated the long anticipated consummation of their sexual union. And this was in courageous defiance of Zaria's former cruel master, Sharvur.

Over the months of their new settling in, however, eventually the gentry relaxed about the couple, seeing often Tsudros' dizzying geometrical designs on his muscular arms and chest arms while working, and the breathtaking creature featured in flight on Zaria' arm and shoulder. Like the other industrious villagers of the settlement, all four of the recent additions to the town were becoming accepted and part of the daily scenery while the couples worked feverishly to build their own and private abodes.

While the clans of Zaria and Branka shared the ample and nutritious food production with them—all of which was harvested collectively in the fields and bred and raised in fenced enclosures on the peripheries of the town, their focused work went into cutting the trees and gathering the thatching materials to construct their house frames and roofs. Eventually the two couples were sleeping inside these rudimentary structures by night and worked outside them during the days to make the small but practical homes comfortable and strong.

Tsudros managed to trade the last of his colorful woven goods carried with them on the long trek for much-needed bowls, baskets, utensils and bedding. While the women went to work beautifying and sanitizing the interiors of their new houses, the men worked at making them secure with cross-bracing and denser thatching on their roofs with boiled tree sap for water-proofing.

When after several weeks these homes looked no different than the established houses of the village, the clans of Zaria and Branka organized a banquet with food and dance. It was to celebrate their warm homes, now  nestled into the fabric of the Slavic town. All for now seemed joyous and their future, finally promising peace and tranquility for the couples. Yet there was the gnawing guilt they all shared about Svetlana's uncertain treatment and her brother's growing insistence upon attempting a plan to rescue her. 

At the same time the village was becoming favorably more tolerant of the two foreign men they saw initially and unavoidably has their historical enemies, there were whispers of untimely winds brewing and blowing again across the steppes as storms from the East.

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