<hr/><div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/a/a1/Onnecamug2.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Onneca de Goni<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Unknown<br/><strong>Date:</strong>June 16, 1874<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Morning<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Onneca's Home<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>(Closed)<br/><hr/><br/>It was sunny in California. It was much too warm for the way Onneca was dressed, but that was the fashion; ladies suffocated and died of stroke in relentless heat lest men's passions be inflamed by the sight of flesh. A young woman, an unclaimed flower like Onneca had to be especially mindful not to show too much skin, for this was the Wild West, and she only a subhuman of the Mexican persuasion, and had inherited her madre's tetas. It had always been this way, vigil stewardship of a little relic of Mexico that was her own body- it had been this way since before she had filled out, when she was just a chest-high dimpled girl following the railroad camp, and it would be this way until she were no longer pretty, but was still Onneca.<br/><br/>It weren't to protect from any man that prompted Onneca to dress up in her padded garments, her sun hat and homemade veil of lace. The sweltering layers were to protect against the stings of bees, for although her darlings would surely never willfully sting her, sometimes finding an olive-toned hand reaching into the hive triggered an instinct, like a dog chasing a fleeing child. And once one bee had stung, it painted a bullseye for all its sisters to attack. The swarm reflex, the literature called it. One brave bee, one act of self-sacrifice, and a whole lot of hell unleashed in defense of la familia. Onneca had to admire that.<br/><br/>The bees hovered by the hundreds as the beekeeper's gloved fingers gently replaced the shelves of her Langstroth hive, slowly, so that no single bee was harmed by the movement of the components. Langstroth was a Southern gentleman, many states away, a beekeeper like herself, a pious man in his autumn years at sixty-six, and quite charming in his correspondence with young Onneca. When he wrote to her, he called her<em>child, </em>and there was comfort in that. But they had never met, and Onneca preferred it that way- she could be much more eloquent on paper, where she had the benefit of her books on English syntax and grammar to help her. In reality she was a bashful mess, and right about now, a rather hot one.<br/><br/>Already she was sweating and panting for breath as she stepped away from the honeybee hives in her apiary. She had the patience and fortitude to gently coax each bee off the surface of her suit, lest it follow her inside and perish in a window, alone and confused. Some of the bees just didn't get the message the first or second time she removed them. "Go on, go back inside," she said to them. "Go and see your sisters." Finally, when she was sure that they were all safe, she came back into the house. The heat was almost too much to bear, and she began to strip just inside the door.<br/><br/>Luxurious, wax-treated waves of raven hair fell in a cascade of silk down her shoulders as she relieved herself of the veil. Stray curls clung to her sweaty brow, and her cheeks were flush as peaches. Even as the padded suit juddered down her shimmying body, she was wearing her white stockings, her cotton drawers, her chemise underneath, the bare necessities for a respectable lady's underthings. Too hot- it was too hot for all that. The beekeeper's suit pooled on the floor of her private estate, and with a whine of complaint the chemise followed. Everything followed. It was unthinkable, unheard of. The only thing that remained was the golden conquistador crucifix she kept hidden between her breasts on a necklace, and that alone remained, because Jesus was always close to her heart.<br/><br/>When her tanned and slender body slumped into a wicker chair, naked as a jaybird, it was so very gratifying. As a girl she had lived with strangers, never able to be naked. As a young woman she had lived on the cavalcade, and there was no privacy at all- the dull-eyed boys used to sneak after and watch her when she peed, and she'd become what they called<em>gun shy </em>as a result. Even during her teenage years, she was caring for her madre, and it was a right and proper house, with no hours of the day for clothes not to be worn.<br/><br/>But now she was a single woman, a bachelorette in her own estate, and for the first time in her entire life, she was allowed to be naked. As she caught her breath, a shivering, delighted gasp escaped with each exhale. Just for a while, she'd oblige herself this treat of the daylight and the warm air on tender skin. And then it would be back to work- because there were too few hours in the day for anyone out West to spend them idly.