Legacy

The Retreat turned out to be...

Well, it turned out to be a leadership course. Actually, it appeared to be a summer camp in a state of disrepair, somewhere in northern California. Dakota and about fifty other girls were housed in cabins on the property and each day were given schedules of tasks to perform, and she assumed they were graded somehow.

Some tasks were simple: weed the flower beds, check the mail, and so forth. Dakota would put on a pair of gloves and take care of the weeds and then borrow a bicycle to ride down to the road, or else make the mail a part of her workout. It was a three and a half mile jog to the highway, where the mailbox waited. She came to prefer the run to the ride; she would return with her mind clear, her thoughts well-ordered, her body alert and sweetly aching. She would even trade schedules with other girls to get that task. Other tasks, however, couldn't be traded: they were found on everyone's schedule, and they required coordination.

The first week they spent on property cleanup. The girls were divided into ten teams, and one girl on each team was given a leader's chit. She would be the team's leader, and she'd decide where the team would go, coordinated with the other teams. It was a disaster. They spent hours hiking through areas with no garbage at all, or that other teams had picked over. The work got done, but Dakota rankled beneath the mismanaged process. Even worse, if she dared to complain, some girls would volunteer to hand over the chit, offering to place her in charge. Presumably, to accept that role would disqualify her as a submissive and get her sent home, but she longed to do it. Someone ought to, at least, otherwise it seemed like they would never finish. They did, eventually. And she was right that some of them got sent home. She didn't know who at first, but on Friday there were empty places in the dining room.

Speaking of the dining room, that appeared to be some sort of oversight on the task cards. No one was assigned to wash the dishes, and there were no staff members to do it. Finally, one night in the second week, Dakota decided she would just do it herself. Again, someone had to. By the end of that week, she had realized that no one was being instructed to clean the toilets, either, so she took on that role as well. They might be living through someone's idea of Lord of the Flies as enacted by college freshmen, but that was no reason to live in filth.

In the second week, some of their tasks became more creative. They were asked to complete a land navigation exercise, complete with compasses and maps and lists of landmarks. Dakota's team managed to finish, but only because the team leader turned to her and instructed her to take the compass and the map and lead the rest of them. She called it delegation. Dakota called it cheating, but she couldn't protest. Refusing a leader's orders also seemed to her like an excellent way to go home early.

"How is it that none of them have ever done any of these things before?" Dakota whispered to Mara, the girl who'd begun helping her with the dishes each night.

"Done what? Wash the dishes?" said Mara, and she grinned.

By the third week, half their number were gone.

Landscaping and yard work were next. Trimming trees and bushes, installing new shrubs, digging ditches and laying pipe for sprinklers—the work was dirty and exhausting, but Dakota enjoyed every minute of it. It wasn't as though they spent every waking hour performing unpaid slave labor. On the contrary, they were given plenty of free time. Dakota spent much of it working out. She told herself that it was because she still held out hope for a Division I scholarship one day, but she knew that wasn't the real reason. Not anymore. The real reason was to ensure that she always looked good naked. Some voice in the back of her mind kept telling her that would be important someday.

Still, she found time to read as well. Each of the girls had been given several books. Her favorites were Meditations and Havamal. They were quick, easy reads, and then they weren't anymore. As she read them again and again, a single line could become the object of an entire evening's contemplation.

I gave myself to myself.

What is the gift of the self? The refined self? The transformed self? The examined self, perhaps? She began to examine herself in detail, not only physically but mentally and spiritually. If she made a gift of herself to herself, what would she receive? Would she enjoy it? Was she worthy of it?

What stands in the way becomes the way.

She'd heard that line before. She was an athlete, after all; it was the sort of thing coaches liked to say, especially when it didn't make any sense, but she was an athlete, and so it often did. But not now. Not after reading Havamal. Some part of her cried out that she herself was the very thing that stood in her way. How, then, could she herself become the way? While grappling with that mystery, another line shattered her reverie and made her laugh until she cried.

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

Of course, in her own mind, she had made a simple substitution of one of the words: waste no more time arguing what a good slave cunt should be.

By the end of the fifth week, she'd realized what was going on: leaders got sent home.

In the sixth week, they had to build a pair of bridges on the property. Some of the work had been done; they only needed to fasten the boards in place to form the pathway. Even that proved too much for some. Driving huge nails under the hot afternoon sun, it was all Dakota could do to keep biting back her snide comments about their so-called leader's ludicrous ideas. She rolled her eyes at one point and the leader reminded her that a good submissive doesn't disrespect her dominant. Dakota's reaction came in two parts: first, an icy clench of terror in her stomach as she wondered if she would be sent away this week; second, the sudden and certain realization that she was not and would never be truly submissive.

"You're overthinking it," said Mara as they were washing dishes that evening. "Like, you were born with blue eyes, but you weren't born sub or domme. You get what I mean?"

"You're saying that if I work really hard at it, I could start to like it when that moron starts bitching about nothing?"

"No, that's—"

"I saw that look on your face when she grabbed your ponytail."

"What look?"

"That one that said 'oh shit my panties are wet.'"

Mara blushed furiously. She lowered her head and looked away.

"Don't be embarrassed. We all know why we're here."

"It's not that," Mara mumbled.

"What, then?"

Mara's throat quivered as she swallowed. Dakota finished the dishes and turned off the water, sighing as she pulled off her big yellow rubber gloves. She stretched her aching back and thought about bed.

"Well?" she said. "What's got you all twitterpated?"

Mara whispered: "I imagined it was you."

Well, there it was. Further proof that she wasn't cut out for this. The most submissive girl in the class looked at her as domme material.

The next several weeks were building and painting and repairing, hammering and sawing and measuring and nailing and screwing. Then one morning Dakota got a chit with her card, and her stomach dropped. Their assigned task was to map the layout of a ropes course on the ground, clear brush and trees, and mark the area for construction crews later. It actually sounded like a fun challenge—a combination of several of the things they'd been working on over the course of the summer. But the fact that Dakota was being placed in charge seemed to her like a death knell.

It got worse when they actually reached the site. There were only six other girls remaining by then, none of whom wanted to use a chainsaw. Dakota and Mara had to cut most of the trees themselves, and the others were less than helpful when it came to clearing brush because most of the underbrush in the area was covered in thorns. By the time it was all said and done, Dakota was scratched and filthy, and Mara was bleeding badly enough to require bandages out of the first aid kit. Dakota felt like congratulating her. Perfect slave material, even though the work assignment had been a complete failure, and they hadn't come even close to meeting the deadline. This entire summer had been a waste of time. At least she'd been able to enjoy the outdoors.

She wasn't surprised that evening when she found that her bunk had been stripped. Someone had packed her bags and taken them outside. A clipboard waited for her with a page marked EXIT FORM at the top, filled out with name, date, and everything else.

What stunned her was that Mara got one, too.

The administrator greeted them both at the camp office, shaking their hands and offering congratulations. Mara looked bewildered. Dakota, however, was incensed.

"You don't have to do that," she spat, her tone dripping acid. "I know we're being sent home—and I probably deserve it. But Mara doesn't. Just because she—"

"You're not being sent home, Dakota," said the administrator. "Phase one is concluded. Three months. You're done here. You and Mara are the only ones getting passed to the next phase."

"I..." Dakota stammered. "But why?"

"In Mara's case, it's clear that you know why," said the administrator. "In your case, it's because you cleaned toilets and washed dishes. Good luck!"

They shared a car to the airport. On the plane, Mara fell asleep against Dakota's shoulder and drooled a little. Dakota didn't wake her; she eventually woke on her own, blushed again, and kissed Dakota's cheek.

"Where are we going?" said Mara.

"It's in the booklet. Didn't you read it?"

"Didn't seem important."

"Bitter Creek, Colorado," answered Dakota. She opened the booklet to provide Mara with a glance—but not for long. The inner pages of the booklet were filled with frank nude images of beautiful young women in every imaginable kind of distress.