Rain

"Marcus: shayla, time for you to realize if you haven't already...I'll do *whatever* it takes to keep you as perfect as a kajira can be in your collar.

shayla: she knows, Master, she has no doubt of it.

Marcus: Remember that when my discipline starts raining down on you like a storm that beats limbs off the trees. Do you understand how I mean the word discipline here? It occurs to me that I do not intend it in it's most common definition. Discipline comes from the same Latin root as disciple, a student. As in an academic discipline.

So, as in when my teaching, my training rains down on you, not just my punishment, remember what it is for, and that I do it only because I care about you. Did I not, when you were displeasing, I'd just kick you to the curb."

When Master said that to shayla, months ago, she had no idea of just how much he meant that. From the time she arrived at his home, he has been training her in his service. From how he likes his food cooked to the way she walks and speaks. There are any number of things she has already learned, more that she is in the process of mastering, still others, she knows, that Master's not even mentioned yet.

At times, it's a bit overwhelming. Master will introduce her to one thing, and she'll learn it, integrate it into her behavior. Sometimes more successfully than others. But always working towards the level of acheivement that he wishes. And no sooner does she master that task than he introduces something else for her to learn. Occasionally, when introduced to a new task, she somehow loses her finesse at a previous item he's trained her on. Focusing so intently on learning what he's introducing that previous learnings slip. In some ways shayla is harder, more driving on herself than her Master is. Because she knows what he is trying to do, what he is attempting to have her learn. And she wants to learn it, to be successful at it. Behind all this, motivating her, is her deep desire to please him.

Why all this desire to please? What does she do all this for? Shayla had written a post some months ago for a discussion board that seems to answer those questions well...

"Why serve? Because there is a need in a slave. It is there in each natural slave, and the drive to serve in her is irresistible.
The drive, the need, to serve and to please, shayla believes, is not something that is learned, it is something that is naturally a part of a girl. The girl perhaps cannot even verbalize what it is that she is feeling. She only knows that for some inexplicable reason, she needs to serve and be pleasing. Not for what she can gain, not out of a feeling of obligation or that she owes it to a person, but because she cannot help but serve. For her, it is as necessary as breathing. Add to that the response, the showing by others that she has been pleasing, and the desire and need increase ten-fold. The need is simply there...to do for others...for the simple, deeply visceral joy of giving of one's self whole-heartedly, and the equally potent knowledge that her efforts have caused one to be pleased with her."

This in no way means that all this learning and re-learning is *easy*, quite the contrary. She is re-establishing habits that have been long in the usage, making them something else. A good deal of what he is teaching her is also completely new to shayla. Either she's not encountered it, or, more often, not had an opprotunity to learn it as she's wanted. For much of what he is teaching her and wanting her to learn, she's always wanted to learn. But, for one reason or another, did not have the chance, could not make the opprotunity to learn it.

And there are always the times that, despite her efforts, she does not succeed in something as well as she or her Master would like to. Frustrating, to say the least, given how much she wants to succeed. Though Master's given her some insight on that facet as well. Mentioned to her that, to reach the level of capability she is wanting, she must go through the various times she doesn't succeed. Move through them and towards where she wants to be. A very helpful way of looking at it, shayla believes.

So she keeps at it, keeps learning and pushing herself. Working on not letting her errors and mistakes get to her. Focusing on doing what she is learning, stopping when she stalls.

All a journey, all lessons to be learned. Baby steps towards where her Master and her both wish her to be. Let it pour.

shayla