Susanne Luka Froom works in the kitchen at the royal palace in Chigo the capital of Normar on Terrae. She’s a small, very petite — 5 feet 2 inches (157 cm), 125 pounds (56.7 kg) including fur and tail, and would wear a 32A bra if they had bras) Vulpid (fox) female who’s about 20-years-old when the story begins. She’s had a bad life. Her parents were Bordé and didn’t want her to become one.
Since Genah (the “Furries”) can’t interbreed a sub-class, called the Bordé, formed of Genah who’s only role in life was to either impregnate, or carry the child of, a mixed race couple. They are often seen as a last resort to for a man to impregnate their wife since it isn’t too much to ask a good friend to do it, but few women want to be a surrogate mother for a friend. The first child of a Bordé woman is with a Bordé man and will become one themselves. To keep genetic diversity, more often than not a female will be impregnated by a non-Bordé male and there is the rare, and horrific, use of condemned women or female prisoners of war to become Bordé.
Her parents came to know an Ursid (bear) named Bruse who works in the royal palace and ask him to take her in. This is heresy. The Church sanctions Bordé and what they do. Bruse sees a little 3-year-old girl running around and feels sorry for her, but can’t do anything. Then her parents tell him simply that if he doesn’t take her, they’re going to kill her rather than let her become a Bordé. Bruse knows they’re telling the truth since it’s not really uncommon for that to happen, so her arranges it in secret. One night in early Marr (March) Susanne’s mother smuggles her to one of the side entrances to the castle, strips her naked so she won’t be wearing the blood-red dress of a Bordé, and gives her to Bruse. Only Bruse and Susanne knows that this happened and really Susanne doesn’t remember much. Bruse never had the heart to tell Susanne that her parents were convicted to death because of how their daughter disappeared.
From the first night in the castle a Porcid (pig) named Nell took a dislike to her. During the intervening years Susanne because the target of Nell’s ire and there was plenty of it. Susanne learned when to stay away from Nell and when to simply say, “yes ma’am” and when to simply shut up and do it. Vulpids are in a minority group called Temnere, which includes “disgusting” Genah like Vulpids, Procyds (raccoons), Mustilids (weasels of all types) and Mephids (skunks) and other Genah who’s animal fragment are small, wild carnivores. Susanne takes the abuse because she has to. Bruse is a good man and wants to protect her, but he’s not directly in charge of Nell and ultimately can’t do anything.
When she was fifteen she met a Vulpid man who told her he would take her away from there, but only did it to get her in bed. The only way to describe how Susanne lost her virginity is horrific. The nicest way to describe it is simply that she was much too small for him and he didn’t care. That coupled with the fact that male Genah have genitalia similar to their animal fragment’s and they stick. After almost an hour of constant pain she limped back to her room. The man left a couple days later and didn’t take her. She knew within a week she was pregnant.
Shortly afterwards she meets a Procyd (raccoon) Jipsee named William. William was a good man. After losing her virginity in a very painful way, William was kind and gentle to her when they made love. And for Susanne, and likely William too, it was love. After several month, and when Susanne was nearly eight months pregnant, he tells her that he’ll take her with him when his tribe leaves. Somehow Nell finds this out (probably through Bruse, who didn’t want Susanne to become a Jipsee) and keeps her from going the day the tribe was leaving to go with him. This hurts and shocks Susanne so much that her baby comes early.
Even though she was a strain on her life, Susan was the only bit of joy in her life. When Susan was four she came down with a fever and a couple weeks later died. It destroyed Susanne. Between Susan dying, increasing abuse since she was mourning and didn’t feel like working and, probably, a Major Depression problem too she was nearly suicidal.
Susanne has sex, but not as much for the orgasm than for the psychological feeling of the act of doing it. It makes her feel complete. Since she knows she has something (a commodity) she may even ask for favors. Combine that with several other factors in her life to make her less than a total whore. She’s cripplingly shy. She’s quite simply scared of people she doesn’t trust. She has the duality of needing feelings to go with sex, but also sees it as more of a casual thing because it’s always been that way for her, so when she does it she connects feelings to it no matter what. So basically she does it more than she knows she should, and feels terrible because of it, but needs it to feel whole.
She hurts herself, if anything by doing things specifically to make the abuse happen. She has lived in abusive “romantic” relationships in the past. I can’t find any proof outside of religious self-mutilation, but she does something I will determine later. Maybe cutting. Maybe basically letting guys rape her. (There’s rough sex then there’s rough sex.) She’s reached a functional level of chronic depression, where she’s almost content to be that depressed. She long ago developed “learned helplessness”, where she acts helpless because she feels that’s normal.
Her intelligence is slightly below normal because of how the abuse wired her brain from early on. She’s also terrified of losing anyone who’s nice to her, even for a few hours or even minutes. This is part of why she needs sex to be fulfilled. She doesn’t want the attention to end, but, in her experience, it always and invariably does. Men use her and leave her. She’s terrified of growing attached to someone because when she does it’ll only hurt her more when they leave her life.