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Those thoughts and questions swirl around my body just as much as they do my mind, creating little chemical connections and making me squirm where I sit. My motion draws Avel’s attention for a brief moment. He looks over his captive’s head, straight at me. I look back, feeling an electric moment of raw connection. His eyes narrow slightly at me, as if he is trying to gauge my reaction. I am tucked away in a very dark corner. Nobody else even knows I’m here, but right now I feel as though a megawatt spotlight is being shone directly on me.
The moment passes as Avel turns his attention back to the saurian.
“Please, sir, Avel. I’ll never…”
“You’re joining the reconstruction crew. It will be hard manual labor.”
“He’s too good for that!” I hear the female voice raised high from the crowd yet again. Is order about to break down? Are things about to get out of hand? I look back around and see that some of the Rivet side of the party are standing up.
Avel does not seem even slightly perturbed. He puts a slight twist in his grip on Torin and makes the saurian cry out either in fear or pain. It is hard to tell which. Whatever it is, it stops the crowd in their track. Avel doesn’t have to say a word. The implication is clear. If they get out of hand, it will be Torin who suffers. There is no debate to be had in this chamber of bones and retribution. Here, Avel’s will is law.
When the disturbance has quelled itself, Avel finally says something to the audience.
“Nobody is too good to learn the truths of this world. Nobody is too good to discover what hard work is, or what real suffering entails. Torin has reached the age of majority. He is a man, and it is time he was treated like one instead of being cosseted like a sniveling whelpling. The next saurian to speak will be accorded the honor of sharing his fate. It will not be the first time a mother has taken her son’s punishment, Sirella.”
He looks directly at the older saurian woman in the crowd, and I feel a flash of pure jealousy. It did not occur to me until this very moment that Avel might turn his magnetic attentions on others of the same gender as me. Everything he is doing is so utterly professional. I can see how practiced it is and how comfortable he is in this role. It is not personal, but it is intense. Everybody in this room is connected to him through an invisible web comprised of the force of his personality and the perception of his power.
The objectors fall silent, and Avel turns to those who have been wronged. They have been silent and stoic, trusting in Avel to do his job.
“What say you?” he says to them. “You who have been harmed. Are you satisfied with the punishment meted out? Or do you believe Torin is yet to atone?”
This is an interesting twist. Those who have suffered losses are the ones who decide if a punishment is fair. That has to have all kinds of ramifications, though I’m betting Avel has the final say.
Those who have been wronged do not say anything. They merely nod, one after the other. They seem to be satisfied.
This punishment has been physical, but none of this is really about the physical punishment. This is about being accountable to the community. It seems brutal, but it is actually very psychological and quite progressive compared to most of the justice I’ve witnessed in my time. Torin is not going to forget this. I can imagine the tear he went on to get in this kind of trouble, how fucking cocky and reckless and stupid he would have been. That cocky saurian is gone, and in his place is a young saurian male who is sorry for what he did and is getting sorrier by the second.
He’s not the only one who is realizing the error of his ways. I have been treating Avel like some big dominant purple alien chump. Suddenly, I see him in the context others must see him, and I realize that he must have shown me mercy upon mercy all the times I crossed him, argued with him. He could have just done this to me — beaten me into submission.
But he doesn’t do that to me.
He doesn’t stand over me with his merciless visage and simply whip me until I give in.
He could break me.
He could ruin me.
He’s chosen not to.
I sit with that realization as the entire affair is concluded. Torin is allowed to return his pants to their usual position and is released to the custody of his family. I note that the complainants leave well ahead of the Rivets. I wonder if they will face any kind of retribution as a result. I can sense the tension among Torin’s clan. His mother is still aghast, and his father seems stoic to the point that he could be boiling with rage and show no sign of it.
“Justice has been carried out. Sentence has been passed. The matter is now closed,” Avel says. “Go in peace.”
The crowd leaves, somber. Avel’s golden gaze follows all of them until they are out of the place. Then it falls on me.
I feel a tingle of electricity running through me, the joints in my fingers and toes reacting to the adrenaline of being regarded by a creature as fearsome as he is.
“Come here… oh, that’s right, you can’t,” he says, chuckling a little as he descends the dais. “You are stuck, aren’t you?”
Yes. I am stuck. Stuck by the harness and collar. Stuck in his gaze. Stuck by what I just saw play out in front of me, a display of pure dominance so impressive I feel myself squirm as he comes to me and releases me from the chain. His scaled hands feel so good against my skin, tender and rough and powerful all at the same time as he starts to strip me down.
“Avel… someone could see…”
I let out a little whimper of complaint, but I already know my opinion holds no weight in this place of punishment and bones. Anybody could walk in and see me now, naked and small, completely vulnerable before this creature who means to dominate and master me. They would see my nudity, but that is the least of the shameful things they would see. They would see my surrender and my submission. They would see the softened look in my eyes, the chastening that has happened, though he has not laid a finger directly on me today.
“On your knees.”
He gives the order and I find myself obeying. Before this moment, my response would have been an automatic refusal. Now, I sink down to the floor. My head barely reaches his thighs in this crouched and subservient position. He looks down at me from above, a merciless and powerful figure in his enforcer attire, his eyes gleaming at me while his thick, dark hair falls around his face and neck. I have never in my life felt this completely contained by anybody.
