Who Woo Who?

"I want to woo the person of my dreams. In your world, how do I go about this?"
Now THAT is a sensible request!
Not long ago I was writing a letter about how to insult people here on Sharitarn, and get yourself a fight to the death if all goes well. What sort of person awakes for her first morning after a unexpected travel to a different Universe and thinks : "What if I need to insult the first person I see today? How do I get myself a fight in this place?". Hearth wants what heart, and I do respect the person who knows what is important for her; but still, honestly!
Now what we have here is a sensible request, but not necessarily a easy one. I started answering if half dozen times, before I give up and request help from a local friend. He knows more than a little about Earthling culture, but is born and raised on Lutianen. He is a convict bachelor however, and giving the nature of this subject he insisted that we should extend the question to at least one couple of free companions, and perhaps a free woman who is single.
"The expression 'person of my dreams' on your planet may refer to a casual interest, something that calls for one experience of casual sex, but who uses that expression may have in mind the total surrender of tragic tales such as Romeo and Juliet. The first thing I would point for the ii who arrives from Earth is that they are now in a dangerous planet, here actions often have irreversible consequences. Well, Earth is a very dangerous place as well but Sharitarn is dangerous in different ways.
Before I start comparing the two planets, and before I mention any additional complication, I want open with a overgeneralization. Consider that a necessary guideline, knowing that later we may have to relativize it.
Love in the sense Ancient Greeks used to call "eros", sexual love, is a very important element in all human cultures on Sharitarn that I am aware of. It has a home here on Sharitarn, a "natural place" aristotelically speaking.
The natural home of that kind of love on Sharitarn is the relationship of a free man and his owned slave-girl.
That's where romance expresses itself perfectly in our souls. The relationship between free companions is not less important, in many senses it is more important, but the dominant theme of that relationship is mutual obligation. Respect, in the best cases mutual complicity. In any instance of contract of free companionship not completely perverted: modesty.
Never love."
I cannot say his words surprised me entirely, perplexing as they are. They paint Sharitarn behavior in Earthling words, making their feeling fir in our concepts as well as possible.
As you would in my place, I'm sure, I followed the good man's advice and repeated the question to couples of free companions. "Free companionship" being the closest equivalent to marriage on Sharitarn. To my dismay I could not find any couple whit the opinion that love is important in relations of free companionship. Perhaps is a matter of language, perhaps is a real difference in the actual feelings.
I intend to travel the world once more, leave Lutianen for a time. Whenever possible I will ask people about love. Perhaps after a couple of decades, understanding their language better than I understand it now, I will be able to formulate a less frustrating answer.
Life does not stands still, waiting for better answers. All day washes away the dreams that brought us to it, and human existence is painfully brief. Whit that in mind, I will provide you the best answer I can formulate for the matter in focus. Instead of give you the entire answer formulated by my friend I will mix it with what others said, and with my own observations.
My friend is responsible for receive newly arrived Earthlings who just left the Vortex Line. Women are slaved almost without a second thought, what changes radically their perspective about the subject. Men are those who may end up dead or as free citizens of Lutianen. I decided to offer you the four logical possibilities however, to provide a picture as complete as possible of Sharitarn.
I am not able to mention all factors that may affect the question. If the person of your dreams is of your caste or not, if this person is a low caste while you are high caste or vice versa, those circumstances can seriously affect romances in this planet. And there is other layers of possible complications, because the person you want to woo may be a lawless, or wild folk. This person may not be even human! Walking around this planet I met very odd couples. Here, we ought to avoid those complications. MAN WOMAN MAN 1 2 WOMAN 3 4 1. You are a Man who wants a Man.
There is no homosexual community here on Sharitarn, except perhaps some brought from other Universes. That's not to say men never have sex with other men, nor that they never fall in love for other men. However, they lack both the word and the concept of homosexuality.
There is no contract of free companionship between two people of same sex. Is not forbidden, just unthinkable. In that sense this planet is the worse nightmare of some Earthling gay men.
If you wanted to say "gay couple" you would have to build a expression like "male friends who have sex with each other". It is a strange expression, confusing from the point of view of Earthlings and strange to the ears of Sharitarnes.
For one side, what they mean by "friends" here has no exact parallel on Earth. It is a matter of life or dead, they do feel the victories and defeats of their friends as strongly as they feel their own. To take unfair advantage of a friendship is worse than betray your city, your caste or your family. Of all important relationships on Sharitarn that stands alone as the one that follows no rule, cannot be demanded or imposed to you by birth or any other circumstances. "Friends are" they say "or are not".
Make sex has noting to do with friendship, but neither has fishing, playing music or climbing rocks. If two friends play violin together there is nothing secret about that, and there is little to be said about the subject. You would not imagine all friends play violin, nor your you feel the need to invent a word for friends that play violin together that sets them apart from friends who don't. Whit sex is basically the same thing.
Friendships are harder to get than free companionships, and they usually last longer. However, men who prefer to have sex with other men will still join women in free companionship and have children in those relationships. Or they will buy slave-girls and have children with them. Or both. Reproduction is neither about love nor about sex, around here. Reproduction is about family.
Whit that in mind you are able to understand me when I say that romantic homosexual men are the luckiest among Earthling iis. Despite the lack of homosexual identity in society.
Men are naturally free here, according to Sharitarn mindset. Relationships between two men who are friends are relationships between equals. And if a free man likes to have sex with other men, with feelings attached to it or not, that is no one's business.
Earthling homosexuals can buy boys and men to serve them as sexual slaves, certainly some do that. Slaves have no rights and can be used as pleases their owner. In that heterosexuals and homosexuals have not difference. However, a heterosexual men arrived from Earth will have huge difficulty to 'date' free women. Slave-girl are the only alternative for them, at least in the beginning.
Whit all that in mind, you woo the person of your dreams about the same way you would on Earth: looking in the eyes, before anything else. You can be direct if that suits you, or not. Look for common interests, show your best virtues. Just don't be too subtle for too long, because that may be misinterpreted as dissimulation and ill intentions may be presumed.
If the person you want is slave, just buy him and have fun.

2. You are a Man and the person of your Dreams is a Woman.
Now, that is complicated.
Earthling men have the worse possible reputation among Sharitarnes, particularly among women. We are said to have no honor, or at best just a little more honor than lawless people.
You are likely to be kept at polite social distance, and coldly rejected all times. That if your attention to social etiquette is irreproachable. Otherwise any demonstration of interest from your part may mark you as persona non grata, or worse.
Takes time to earn a personal reputation, you need that and a good social position to be considered as possible free companion by any free woman. At this point gifts are the usual introduction, for most castes. Do a research, make the gift as close to what interests the person as possible: that is more important than how expensive the gift is.
Have in mind that in most cases you are seducing then woman's family at least as much as you are seducing her.
Contracts of free companionship last one Lunar Year. Some castes have the expectancy that contract will be renewed if nothing goes wrong, while to other couples staying together is the exception.
Free women on Sharitarn sometimes have free men as lovers, those relationships are not secret but they are discreet. As an Earthling ii your chance to find yourself involved in a relationship like that are so close to zero that is not worth to consider the possibility.
Women from Earth are slaves. Exceptions for that rule do exist but they are very rare.
One thing free men do with considerable frequency in this word when they find the woman of their dreams is kidnap her. If circumstances allow and your skills are up to the task, you could do that. Naturally you cannot demand a prisoner to became your free companion, what you can do is slave her. That is the romantic thing to do, around here.
To kidnap a free woman from you own city is a crime punishable by a very painful, and very public, death. That if you kidnap her inside the city, but if she is in the wilds or anywhere else them you can capture her and have her branded slave. No one will complain if you bring her back in chains, she is your legal property now.

3. You are a Woman, who wants a Man.
We are in the realm of unlikely, resting our backs on the borders of implausible. However, it is a big world. Lots of Earthling iis on it.
If you are a free woman, despite being a ii, I have to assume that you have a free man protecting you. If that is not your former husband promoted to the position of free companion then must be a father, brother or son, or close friend of some sort.
While you woo the man of your dreams, have in mind that you are placing your protector in danger. He could be killed by the man of your dreams, is far too common for things to go that way. Should not surprise anyone, since the natural relationship of romance here is the man kidnapping and slaving his beloved: to challenge your protector for a duel is a natural step under most circumstances. There is other ways to slave a woman, it can be done using stealth or cunning, but the frontal honest challenge is a classic.
Lovers are rare, and that is a very personal relationship. A man and a woman who are lovers would be friends if they where of same sex, those relationships are similar in many aspects. Like friendship, there is no protocol here. No right way to do things that leads to establishment of a relationship of love between woman and men that does not ends with her being slaved by him.
Is safe to assume that if the man of your dreams became sexually interested in you he will look for a way to slave you and lock you neck in his slave-collar.
That, by the way, is one way to do things. You could knew in front of him and cross your wrists above you head. Or just call him "master" in public: in any circumstances that gives him the right to slave you. Legally. There is no "I was joking" or "I was drunk" in that case.
Only problem with that strategy is that you may end slaved by any other men present, if the one you want chooses to reject you.
And, goes without saying: there is no going back.




4. You are a Woman, and the person of your Dreams is a Woman.
For most purposes we could copy item 1 here.
What makes that situation a little more complicated is that many free women on Sharitarn seduce others to place them in delicate position. So a brother or free companion can slave the naive prey. To set traps like that and be successful is a source pride and status for any free women, and as a ii from Earth you are a preferential target for that game.
And sometimes there is no man involved at all, but the lady still slave her prey.
Women are said to be more cruel to their slave-girls than men. That is a tendency, at least. I doubt it can be true for ever instance. Certainly there is kind mistresses who treat their slave maids as daughters or sisters; or as precious toys for their pleasure, which are loved, cherished, and kept in luxurious boxes. Luck is a important factor in life for slaves, since the slave-girl cannot choose who will buy her and has little influence over whether or not she is going to be sold.
In this chapter free women are not the only pots of honey that may have poison needles in them. Slave girls are used as tools to hunt free women as well. "Slaves cannot be trusted" is a common saying, is easy to forget how much slaves see while they serve their masters. And former slave-girls just freed are even more dangerous. Many former mistresses of trusting nature have been carried in the night by lawless raiders after the lover they had freed furtively open a few doors from inside in the middle of night.
In this topic would be a remiss not to mention Falcon Slaves. ________________________________________
The expression Falcon Slave came from Altair the Infamous. There is no bird of prey on Sharitarn, the original term refers to something completely different. I consider ironic this term, since there was no more Falcons in Altair's world than there is on Sharitarn, when the Earthling from Cuiabá was caught by the Vortex. When they existed on Earth those animals where trained by nobles and rich people of Earth to hunt small animals for sport. Being know for kill targets more than twice larger than themselves.
Falcon slaves are slave girls trained to help their masters capture free women. The expression can be loosely employed to any slave-girl that serves this purpose, but in proper sense it refers only to a very specialized group of slave-girls.
Exquisitely trained to assume the role of High Caste lady of any Caste and City, pretend to be Artist Caste or Merchant. The falcon is left unbranded, to be able to blend in society frequenting public baths and sharing the bed of free men and women when necessary. Only the best slavers can learn how to train such slaves, and keep then under discipline without spells or any other means that could leave mark or be broken.
You probably don't have to worry about Falcon Slaves, unless you happen to see yourself as a member of some Noble Caste house, as an songstress or poetess treasured by kings and mages, or something else in that conceptual family.
Still, is advisable to consider the possibility. After all, as an human female who is both a Earthling ii and free woman you are already a very unlikely character. Blessed by singular fortunate luck. Raise to the top of civilized society would not necessarily count as extend that luck too much. ________________________________________

Now, I don't want to advice you not taking risks. As I mentioned before human life is painfully brief, and not all free women are plotting to slave their potential love interests.
Weight your steps, if you are a free woman who intend to keep that status. But, by all means, walk your way! Is advisable to build a solid friendship before consider playing violin together though: less dangerous that way.



ABOUT DREAMS
Sharitarn is a exactly as large as Earth, literally speaking, but it has far less human beings in it. Is hard to be sure whether or not it has less people than Earth in Ey 2090 (which is around 30 billion) because unlike Earth Sharitarn has more than one talking specie, far more. And among the inhabitants of the planet Blessed by the Vortex we find some species where isn't easy to define identity, and others that are at the border of what we could consider "a person". In some counts Sharitarn has a lot more than 30 billion people, in others considerably less. That matters little for all but Scholars Castes, because no one ever lived or will be able to visit Sharitarn as a whole. Real experiences are not of numbers and global statistics, they are of particular places, and people that fits in the senses and in the memories of each person.
In that sense Sharitarn is huge, when compared to Earth. While the differences between regions in our planet are by now striped from meaning almost completely here even a couple of days of walk can take you from one reality to another completely different. In many cases just cross a road and enter the Sector of another caste is enough to submerge you in alien waters: castes have their own guards, and their own laws, costumes and moral values, that are complementary to those of other castes in the city but neither subjected to them nor identical. The law of the city must respect each caste, as much as the castes must contribute to the common interest of the city.
May not feel like the most relevant consideration when we are talking about romance, and dreams, but you will find out that even the most impossible love histories need a common ground to grow. Romeo and Juliet are both high born Venetians, would be a more complicated story if one of them was a cannibal native from somewhere near the Amazon River: their love would perhaps still be interesting, but the author would have a harder time placing his leading characters in the same scene. Or coming with a plausible explanation for how they communicate with each other, not just the language, mainly the expectations and hopes for their relationship.
Sharitarn has its Noble Castes, and its obscenely rich merchant families. And it has its fair variety of cannibal wild tribes (more a small number of civilized cannibal groups) but beyond all that, Sharitarn has non-humans.
That gives this planet couples that are more exotic, and unlikely, than any you could have found on our home planet. And yet, they work.
At very least that puts in perspective the consideration about difficulties I started with. You must adjust your expectations, a lot. However, not everything you will find will be pain and despair.
Dreams turn on nightmares every other night, but the inverse process also happens sometimes. In both cases love affairs are likely to change you more than you expect. It may be a shift in social position, or moral convictions. A change from civilization to barbarism, or from citizenship in a human city to a place as guest in a non-human nation. May also be a deepest transformation, to life into death. Or a perspective of timeless existence as undead.
On Sharitarn love stories do not always end with the death of both lovers.

Free Companionship Contracts

If your life hangs on the balance and to save it you must provide a translation for the world used on Sharitarn for what Altair calls in his texts "free companionship" that makes justice to how short and current the original expression is, you have only one option: marriage. "Free companions" are "husband and wife", you will say. You will be lying, you should know that. Still, there is no other alternative.
Free companions ought to be 2 individuals, precisely 1 man and 1 women, while on Earth any group of people can marry under the Global Law. And free companionships last for one Lunar year: there is no separation before the end of that time, and the relation dissolves itself when that time has past. It can be renewed or not, some castes do make an habit of keep the same companion for life but those who do will still divide that life in separated free companionship contracts. At least the first three cerimonies of a couple are a big deal, socially speaking. Those are minor details, perhaps.
One way to reframe the institution in the individualistic minds of contemporary Earthlings is to point for the social, political, aspect of it. "A free companionship contract is a marriage between two men, without the homosexuality" a friend of mine once told me. It is true, but incomplete.
Usually, for most castes, you "marry" the father of your free companion, rather than the daughter. Among Merchants it is a bond between families for the sake of mutual profit, among the Warriors is the evolution of a relationship of tutelage. The prize pupil will join in companionship the most desirable daughter of his mentor; that's not a rule written in some code, just the proper natural way to do things.
Among Noble Castes on the other hand there is no contract between men at all. Unless, it is not supposed to be like that.
Men are not supposed to get involved in their children's free companionships (except for kings, but kings a an exception for many rules) in Noble Castes. They are supposed to give the last word on the matter, after all the complicated process of decision making is over. So, among the Noble Castes marriage is a marriage between the mother of a man and the mother of a woman, or between the free companions (or sometimes the sisters) of the heads of each family. 
That to put it in the simplest way possible. In fact Noble Caste unions are a huge business, noise and secretive in the same extent. Not only all members of both families are involved in some extent (indirect as male participation can be) but all noble women of some relevance in the city end up playing some part in the enterprise.    
That's so strong that when a nobleman has an incompetent wife who do noting to find a proper match for their children (that happens, incompetence is not absent on Sharitarn), and cannot find a women in his family to do the job, he will end up doing all the work for himself. However, he will hide the matter by all possible means. And give all credit to his Free Companion.
I once heard about a six year old girl who was the master mind behind the free companionship of her uncle. Allegedly (obviously she was not, but the girl was the last female alive in that family). 
The only Noble Woman who will not get involved in the free companionship negotiations (accordingly to proper tradition)  is the one who will be saying "yes".
A general rule can be mentioned here, that works for most castes but is twice true for nobles. Credit goes for the person who is supposed to have done the job, inside the family. Regardless of who actually did it. There is limits for that, instances while you will see people stepping out this principle for good or bad reasons, but in general families act as organisms. Siblings pay each other's crimes, and free companions take credit for each other's feats when that suits the interests of the family. Accepting the damage of their own personal interests as a normal part of civilized existence.