Chapter Two

Valania

The Valania School for Young Women was nearly the antithesis of the Vermont Riding School where Lucy learned a few things about bondage, sex, submission and the art of being a ponygirl. Where the Vermont Institution was well known for its riding instruction and combined training of horse and rider, Valania totally focused on training and adapting the pony. The school’s charter contained nothing that even recognized the rider or riding skills. Therefore, Lucy’s transition from riding school to a pony school was more or less the perfect compliment, or so at least that’s what some people thought.

The Cloister at Valania had been operating for centuries as a retreat for an obscure, closely sequestered order of sisters devoted not only to modest restraint, chastity and silence, but also to a diet of unusual vegetables and fruits. The sole source of income for the order, known as The Valanian Sisters of Restraint, (VSR), was supposedly from the sale of a potent liquor made from the crops the nuns grew on the adjacent hillside and processed in an ancient distillery inside the triple-walled keep.

Over the centuries, priests, bishops, cardinals and more than one Pope, supposedly concerned about the alcoholic preoccupations of the order, conducted secret reviews of the Valanians after hearing hushed complaints from several influential quarters. The complaints always seemed to turn out to be unsubstantiated and the church’s blessed resources devoted to such esoteric matters moved on to other topics.

Not surprisingly, no records ever mention that a significant portion of the church’s clergy still seemed to frequent the cloister, partaking of the sacred liquor and of other more earthly distractions. Oddly enough, no one complained about the non-sectarian sporting events held inside the cloister’s ancient fortress and vast, walled compounds. It was said, (only in hushed whispers), in the nearest village that naked women had been seen pulling carts and running foot races while the members of the order and visitors looked on; in silence, of course.

It was also rumored that dreadful punishments were frequently meted out to the nuns and their subjects. The details were for some reason always sketchy, but more than once, a village maiden suddenly disappeared from the fields or from her home and later was found to have been “acquired” by the order in the cloister. The usual answer as to why these unsuspecting young women suddenly and at times unwillingly found themselves locked away in cells and cages in the old castle was that they were suspected of harboring unhealthy thoughts. The beauty of this system was that even if the young women harbored no unclean thoughts before they were taken, their experiences in the cloistered enclave soon changed that. They quickly gained firsthand knowledge and experience in all manner of human perversions. They also learned that to gain acceptance into the holy order, they had to learn and accept concepts that were initially foreign to them. The nuns were helpful in this regard and usually convinced even the most reluctant women that if they suffered enough, they would find not only salvation, but also acceptance among their peers and their betters. What was needed was education and training and the nuns excelled at both.

While hanging nearly nude in heavy chains, suspended by their thin wrists, usually with leather and iron devices locked to their heads and sex, the novice women absorbed a broad range of knowledge about things which most of them had never even dreamed about. Those who were overweight soon discovered that the diets they suddenly experienced drastically reduced their perhaps too well rounded figur