Chapter 5 - Violated

	I was married when I was fourteen.  It wasn't a choice so much as an obligation.  By that point, my family had begun to fracture.  Mother's patience was near eternal, but even the most devoted woman has their breaking point.  
	Father was almost never home anymore.  He still worked, the same as he ever had.  He never stopped coming to work, never lost that strength I'd so admired, growing up.  Even as he began to age and his body began to break down, he never bowed.  Not physically, anyway.  He was a rock.  But when he wasn't working, mostly, he drank.  By that age, I knew exactly where he went in the city.  I knew why we never had any money remaining at the end of each day.  
	I don't honestly think my mother ever blamed him for his vice.  I don't even think she wanted more from him, from our life.  She was a good woman.  Happy with very little.  She made the most of what we had, no matter how meager we lived.  She worked herself to the bone same as he and lived in threadbare clothing and a small, dirty hut she could only ever dream of keeping clean.  But we had the best-maintained hut on our street, because she tried.
	My mother wasn't perfect though, as much as I struggle now to find flaws with her.  All I saw was the love she gave.  All I remember was a saint.  But her weakness was her timid nature, her acceptance of her position beneath my father.  She wasn't an indentured servant, but she was a possession.  And she never really thought to challenge that.  I'm not really certain if it's because of how she was raised or because of her character, but either way it was a failing.  She had a son to think about, and her passivity hurt us both.
	My wife, the woman that was chosen for me by my father, was not like my mother.  I know he met her before the wedding, if only once, so I can only assume she must have acted demure and agreeable then.  Perhaps to please him.  Perhaps to please her family.  I don't think she wanted the match any more than I did, so there must have been some pressure involved somewhere.  Whatever happened in that first meeting, I know my father did not see through to the type of woman she truly was, or he never would have chosen her.  
	Ishaya was born of a different caste of workers.  The Vasja, the laborers with specific skills, like craftsmen.  Most Vasja make something for a living, Ishaya's family had been weavers.  But her family had lost their house and most of their possessions in a fire that had consumed many blocks of homes in Hyronses' Capital City, and she was only one of four daughters.  Her parents couldn't afford the dowry to marry her to another tradesmen, but they also wanted to be rid of some of their daughters while they rebuilt their family's damaged fortune.  Ishaya had been just barely old enough to marry, unlike her two younger sisters, so they'd been willing to give her to an unskilled tradesmen.  A laborer.  Really, anyone who would have had her, but my father insisted I'd been lucky to claim such a wife.  There weren't as many golden jackal families in the Hyronses as there were further north, so he and my mother had long worried it would be difficult . . . and expensive . . . for me to find a wife at all.
	By the time I was fourteen I was nearly as tall as I am now, if less filled out, but still very strong and able-bodied.  I was, as my father pressed, an adult.  Or at least, my body was.  Inside, I didn't feel ready to marry.  It terrified me, but I couldn't tell my father that.
	Marriage meant supporting myself and a wife, and potentially a child very soon after.  It meant I would need to become a provider, like my father.  I'd seen what the demands of providing for a family had done to my father.  He'd told me himself it was why he needed to drink.  The weight he had to carry every day, worrying over me and my mother was heavier than anything he had to carry at the kilns.  I couldn't even fathom what lay ahead of me.  All I knew was that soon, I'd have no choice. 
	I'd seen Ishaya for the first time on the day we were married, when the priest had brought her to the river for the binding ceremony.  I remember thinking she was beautiful and feeling some small amount of relief, because I was young at the time and that had been my first, shallow fear.  If I couldn't desire my wife, we couldn't make children.  And without children, we'd never be able to survive when we grew older.
	But for all her beauty, Ishaya was cold, and it didn't take long for that chill to seep into every corner of our lives.  Thinking back on it, I don't begrudge her the distance she put between us, even if it frustrated and angered me at the time.  She was scared.  We were both young, and much was expected of us.  And we'd had little to no preparation for what was to come next.
	We hardly knew how to speak to one another for the first few months.  I was still living in my family's hut at the time, as was customary.  We couldn't live together until we were fifteen.  And that's when we were supposed to start making pups.
	I remember that uncertain year, living under my parents' roof with a wife I could barely understand.  It wasn't just the emotional distance - we literally spoke different dialects, so for a long time we had trouble making any sense of one another.  It couldn't have been a worse match if she'd been a tiger.
	I'd never lived with anyone but my family before, and for all their failings, I knew them and understood them.  So it was terrifying, really.  Waking next to a stranger every day.  Trying to learn her, trying to make sense of her wants and needs while rationing my own.  Ishaya was hard to please, and seemed perpetually ill at ease and sad.  
	I think she was terrified, too.  But not just of being married.  She was terrified of me.
	It frustrated me, which made me no more pleasant to be around, I'm sure.  But I was trying so hard to be a good husband, even if I didn't necessarily know what that meant.  I wanted to make her happy.  I wanted to impress my family.
	I wanted to be better than my family.
	So I made sure not to do the things my father had done that had hurt us, or made mother sad.  I didn't drink.  At all.  I tried to save the coin I earned, and I bought her some things I promised she'd never have to sell.  I even tried not to raise my voice to her, but she made it so difficult sometimes.  No matter what I did that first year, she flinched from me and distanced herself from me, like I had been hurting her.  Like I'd been a bad husband.
	Nothing stings quite so much as being treated like you're the person you want least to be in the world.  
	By the time we were ready to live as a married couple, I was certain things would have to get better, because the idea of them getting worse was just too much to bear.  It seemed impossible.
	Then we started trying for children, and it got worse.
	Father told me the most basic elements before I left the family home, and by that point my body had begun to take its own interest in other bodies.  I didn't have much trouble accomplishing what was necessary to make pups.  At least, not the first few times.  I still found it awkward, strange and not at all as relaxing as the other boys had told me it would be.  The whole of it felt both natural and horridly unnatural, because even if my body seemed to know what to do, it always felt unwelcome.  Ishaya was a beautiful woman, and I wanted her . . . but I don't think she ever wanted me.
	Eventually, I stopped wanting her, as well.  It became something I felt I was forced to do, like work, except it was harder to will my body to be with my wife than it was to carry an entire sack of bricks.  For her part, she never really seemed to respond any different, although eventually I could tell it was at least hurting her less.
	When she finally became with pup, after her third heat we'd spent trying, it was honestly a relief.  I left her alone after that, and I worked very hard to care for her while she carried our son.  And finally, somehow, things began to change for the better.  I remember the first night it began to feel right between us.  Not loving, really.  But at last, after so long feeling a stranger in my own house, coming home to her, eating dinner with her, lying beside her at night felt. . . comfortable. 
	I never desired to be with my wife again.  I suppose for some people, sex is just never what it is for others.  There's so much uncertainty and confusion tied up in my memories of being with my wife . . . I can't stomach the thought of taking pleasure in another's body anymore.  But I can't deny that even for us, it eventually brought us the only happiness we'd ever know together.   
	It was Amon who changed everything between us.  Our son brought us together, as our families, the priests and the Gods themselves never had.