Focus

Master's said more than once that a kjaira's three main duties are obedience, passion, transparency. Obeying him, taking care of his property, personal growth, taking pride in what she is and her Master's home. It's something that she needs to remain focused on. When Master and shayla first began talking about her being his, he was aware of her difficulty with trust. She'd told him more than once that she'd forgotten how to trust, that she didn't know how. The past few months have been a real exercise in her trust and faith in her Master. A learning experience, a growth in many ways.

The details, the reasons why shayla lost her focus, are unimportant. Only that in the loss of her focus she managed to lose a good deal more. Her confidence, self-esteem, assurance, belief in herself and her whole environment, all went down the toilet. She regressed beyond the point of when she came to her Master, back to the way she was when she first left her father's home. Nervous around people, withdrawn, defensive, doubting herself, believing that she was always in error or in the way. Feeling that every kind gesture, every kind word, was simply to humor her, keep her passive and quiet. Some days were better than others, some were so bad she couldn't look her Master or miranda in the eye.

Part of what had happened was that for the first time in her relationship with him, Master's actions seemed to contradict his words. For most of her life shayla's been very attentive to what a person said, weighing it against what that person did, using the actions more than the words as a gauge for what was truly taking place. And she started doubting herself, her whole situation. Doubting her worth to her Master, her value to him. It was a spiral that she couldn't find a way to slow or stop for a long time.

Through it all, Master and miranda were backing her. Continuing to encourage her to think positively, of herself and how she was doing. Both giving her firm talking-to's when the need arose. Mostly just being themselves, though in retrospect Master was firmer than he normally is with her. And who could blame him? Shayla's attitude had been awful. There's no other way to put it. Kajirae don't second-guess their Master, question his motivations. When you've come to the point of being collared by a man and becoming his property, any doubts like that should have long since been taken care of.

What made the whole situation worse was that shayla knew that her attitude sucked. Knew that her doubts were nothing more than her scaring herself. Her remorse and guilt, added to the rest of the doubt that she felt, seemed to make things more difficult to pull from this down-turn. It seemed as though the harder she tried, the lower she got. At one of the lowest points of this time, she went so far as to ask Master to release her, told him (a kajira telling her Master what to do, how much farther off track could a girl be?) to get rid of her, believing herself to be nothing but trouble, with no worth for the house or to them.

Looking back over it, the majority of her problem lay in the fact that she was applying her own agenda to what Master'd planned for her. Trying to top from the bottom, though she didn't understand the full scope of it at the time. Had she just focused on what he wanted, instead of what she was doubting, trying to piece together what she was questioning, she'd not have gotten herself into half the difficulty that she did. As it was, she was tearing herself apart with her uncertainty in herself. Making herself unhappy.

At this stage, she's far, far better now. More confident in her value to Master and his home. She's getting more confident in herself. And it's far easier to focus on her Master's wishes, what it is that he's wanting. With all this her joy in service is coming back. Every day it's easier to just obey him, to perform her duties the way he wants his girls to; with a smile on her face and a song in her heart.

Master would have been completely in his right to simply release her, help her get her life in order to take care of herself. It's a measure of his commitment to his ownership of her that he didn't. There's little other way to phrase it, in many ways shayla's been a bitch these past few months. And the whole time Master and miranda both have been right there for her, each of them reminding her of why she's here, what she is, her value to them both. And shayla is so in love with both of them.

shayla