I let him cage me in the confines of a tribe. The effect upon my mood is horrendous. The women are accessories here, the men are too obnoxious. The day I arrived here, I was ready to leave. Within twenty minutes of minding my own business, a male singled me out to be prey.

What possessed me to spare that man’s life, I’ll never know. I care not for expulsion, so why did I hesitate? I care for Drek’tal, it seems. I care that he could be hurt by a raucous, dangerous mate. I am a liability. I am helpless here, by virtue of not being helpless. If I were to act on desire, on impulse, on a whim, I could place him in harm’s way. And I care for him too much to do that.

So I sit. Restless. Angry. When the men of this tribe speak of women as chattel, as charges, as mere ‘things’ with no intrinsic value, as though we are incidental inclusions in the universe whose sole value is instrumental to them, I boil within. My blood, it heats up and coagulates and I almost choke to death on my own bile.

My life is foreign. Baptized by fire. A girlhood stained by otherness. When I was old enough I was alone. When I was peering up at my would-be executioner, I showed him my worth. Bought and sold and made into a peerless woman. A plea bargain for a greater existence. Even when I was a captive, I retained more dignity than these women here shall ever have.

And yet I sit here, watching men ‘take’ women because these are the ‘old ways’. And not one sensible utterance is made that this is, entirely, a load of entitled bullshit from overfed, overdressed macaws.

I want to kill these men. And I could, no doubt, kill several of them. I think of my own father, weeks before his death, frightfully peering at his grown daughter from under his hood. Good Zufli. Bad Zufli. ‘Zeeva’. ‘Dzivah’.

How long until the fire dies down? Sometimes, Primal, even love is not enough.