**SEEKING FRIENDS ONLY**

"Slavery has many effects on a woman," he said, "It softens her, it enhances her beauty, it gives her a profound sense of herself, it fulfills her, it increases, considerably, her sexual responsiveness, it increases a thousandfold her capacities to love, but one effect it does not have, it does not reduce her intelligence."
-Witness of Gor


my Oubliette girl has been set free, trained by the best. Sometimes she curls up at night outside of that iron door that kept her hidden - she can't go back inside, because she doesn't hold the key and what if...what if she gets locked back within that darkness? It's too much to bear.

Beyond the iron door is a forest. i can see it in my mind, thick and green and pulsing with life. Sometimes she just lays down and listens to it all, running her fingers through the leaves and moss. Those are the best times; accepting of her place and marvelling in it. There's a spring, with clear water that she stares into for hours, drinking from it until she can hold no more.

Sometimes she runs through the forest. she is not running from the forest, but is anxious to know all of it. Sometimes she crashes through underbrush and branches, compelled by something inside her but left with lines of blood etched in her arms, her face, her legs, her belly. she is frantic at these times, afraid of something, but somehow comforted by the sting of pain lashing at her.

There is someone else in the forest. Now, all she can see is a form, leaning against a tree or watching from across a clearing. The face is hidden, and sometimes...sometimes in her agony she runs for that form, reaching and crying and hoping. Not yet, though. Not yet.

Sometimes...oh, sometimes, she stares at the iron door. It was safe in there, with only the shaft of changing light as company. No one cared to come in, most people never even saw the iron door. But as close as she gets, sometimes pressing her cheek to the door and leaving splotches of wetness, she can never step back in.

The forest calls to her. The form in the forest calls to her, and though she stays near that iron door, each day she explores further and further away.