I wrote around the beginning of the month about Stephanie, a new alter. She came out rather unexpectedly one night, and the sense we got is that she would be temporary. Why, I don't know. But that's what she told Boss. So it's been nearly a month, and she's still here. We've seen her emerge a few times, and we've learned more about who she is. But not really why she is.
There was a theory when she first showed up that she existed to work through crippling fear and indecision, become stronger, and then merge into Cherish so that Cherish wouldn't be so crippled by her own fears. We've reversed that theory now. Now we think she may have been removed from Cherish, taking away the fear. Cherish has become calmer and more serene, even coming out on purpose a couple of times. And she is more confident in Boss's possession of her. She isn't afraid that he will get rid of her for any little slight, and she is quicker to accept that he may really value her for who and how she is. She has learned that, though she doesn't do very well serving him in a house-servant kind of way, she serves him by calming him when he's unsettled. She is his peace.
Stephanie is also slave to Boss, but not in the way that Cherish is slave. Cherish belongs to him heart and soul and could never imagine belonging to anyone else. If he dismissed her, she would come crawling back to him, begging to continue serving him. Stephanie belongs to whomever bought her and that just happens to be him. She is his property, no more so than the chair he sits in. She doesn't love Boss, only fears him.
I can see Stephanie clearly, too, now. She's twelve; tall for her age and gangly with puberty. Her tight-curled hair is cut short and pulled back into a bun at the back of her head, where it frizzes out. She's got bruises and cuts, and holds her left arm awkwardly - it's been injured at some point, and healed poorly. She's of mixed race, with that awkward beauty that many mixed kids have.
Like Paul, Stephanie came with her own 'creation image'. Apparently I read too many books as a child that imprinted on me, or something. Imagine it's the 1850's. It's evening, and it's raining. A man walks down the street, dragging a little mulatto slave girl beside him, clutching one arm. Whereas he has a nice water-repelling black overcoat, she's soaking wet in her thin cotton gown. His boots splash in the mud; she drags her bare brown feet through it. The man reaches a street corner and stops in front of another man. He yanks on the girl's arm, sending her stumbling forward to fall at the second man's feet. "There, she's yourn," he says. Accepting a small bag of coin from the stranger, he turns back the way he came, leaving the girl with the stranger.
I can see the image in my mind as I write. I can hear the man's voice, hear the rain splattering in the mud, even describe the cut of the big man's overcoat. I don't understand how these images are in my head, but there they are. Some multiples subscribe to a theory that alters are souls that have lost their bodies and come to live in another's mind. I'm too practical to believe such things, but there are days that I wonder if I might be looking at it all wrong...
--from Gracelyn:--
I find it interesting that it is raining in that mental picture. Stephanie comes out when called out by Boss, or on her own when there is water involved. Her initial presentation occurred when we were taking a long bath. We began to doze in the hot water, and then found ourselves unable to make a choice to get up and out of the water. Again this weekend, there was an episode with water. Boss found us sitting down in the shower (because our feet hurt?), letting the water pour down onto our head. Stephanie turned her head back and forth, listening to the way the drops sounded as they hit our ears. When Boss touched us, she was jerked back to an awareness of the world, but immediately tuned him, and it, out when he ceased touching us. Stephanie only speaks when spoken to, and then has to concentrate on it. I suspect that she may rate rather high somewhere on the autistic scale. Her connection to reality is tenuous, at best. I will be doing some research on the condition.
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