14. N #4
Which was bad. It also wasn’t moving towards her. Which was good.
Eyeing the ash, she thought that there was probably just enough to fill that box. Her stomach growled at the thought, despite the stink of the manure. She carefully put the rod down in the alcove, picked up the shovel, and went to work.
She’d gotten the box about half full—and the creature had moved about a hands’-breadth in the “right direction”—when the door opened.
A stony-faced guard carrying a blanket in one hand and a wooden-framed cot with a canvas bed in the other.
He shoved both partially through the bars.
By the time she’d dropped the shovel and staggered towards him, he’d already turned and was leaving.
Well, at least she had a place to sleep that wasn’t the floor.
She took a moment to sort out the cot. The thing had a pair of round poles pierced with holes through which cords ran, back and forth, in a sort of lattice.
The thin canvas sack held straw, already dirty by the smell of it.
She set the cot up in the niche, then picked up the control rod …
carefully, with just two fingers and held it away from her at arm’s length while making an expression of disgust.
She suspected the pantomime meant nothing to a creature without any eyes, but it cost her nothing to try, and perhaps somehow get her message through.
She had been here a quarter mark, as they measured time here, and so far, it hadn’t mashed her to jelly. She counted that as a win.
She set the rod on top of the cot, before going back to shoveling.
Her belly rumbled again, and the thought of food made her mouth water.
How long after I fill the box am I getting fed?
That was all she could think about now. Well, that, and how much she ached and how much she longed to lie down on something that wasn’t stone.
The process of filling the box took longer than she expected, and she anticipated that given her situation, “full” meant full, and not almost full.
She had gotten it to within an inch of the top when the thing stopped shifting around, and settled in.
She nearly cried in frustration, before going back over its trail, as close as she dared to its bulk, and tried sweeping up the grains and grit left behind.
That work proved hard, and the rough floor left her with abraded fingertips, but she blew and brushed enough onto her shovel to close a bit of the gap.
Still not enough. She felt her eyes stinging, and then a hot tear etching itself through the grime on her cheek.
Her stomach rumbled again. So hungry. She needed to make the damned thing move without making it angry.
Maybe … maybe it’s really, really stupid. She picked up the shovel again, and moved to the “head” end where the manure was. Sure enough, there was a gap about two hands wide between the end of it and the next pile of manure. So if I can’t make it come to the food ….
Slowly, carefully, she got a shovel as full as she could of the muck—and even more carefully, packed the stuff up against the “front” end.
And jumped back so abruptly that every bruise and muscle screamed.
Her cottage-sized cell-mate lurched towards her.
She dropped the shovel when it moved again, then tripped over the handle as she went to open up some distance.
The creature moved to the muck, opened its mouthparts?
and extended a pair of delicate looking tentacles that it used to draw the muck towards its mouth, which it then ingested with a soft slurp.
A creature the size of a house made of rock, with a mouth and a front end …
which if it followed the usual pattern in how creatures were organized …
should have a back end at the other end that produced the ash.
So, the best way to scoop up what came out that end was to lure it to move away from the small mounds it left behind.
Perhaps she could do away with the control rod, if she could coax it to move.
She piled more just out of reach of its mouthparts.
It shifted to follow, exposing another pile of ash.
Success! She could steer it (somewhat) by using its food to lead it around.
She exhaled a deep sigh of relief. She’d gotten it moving and eating, and all without irritating it.
Picking the shovel back up again, she went to work.
A few more steps, a few more piles, then around its bulk with the shovel to fill the box.
She loaded it to the very top, then a bit more, to ensure the ash mounded enough.
They could refuse to feed her because they chose to …
but not because she had failed to follow their damned rules.
Now that it had started, the creature continued along the path she had set for it. She grew momentarily alarmed that it might expect her to continue laying out a trail for it, but it got to the end and settled down, its underside scraping the floor as it came to earth.
She stared at the entrance to the … stable …
for lack of a better word, and waited for the guard to return, and take away the box.
She got up twice to drink as much water as she could hold to try and stave off the hunger pangs, which led in due course to needing to relieve herself.
She had never really had a shy bladder …
back in her world she hadn’t a shy anything but the lack of privacy and the close presence of the Beast …
Creature … what it was made her feel awkward and uncomfortable.
Still, it had to be done. She suspected that if they were telling her the truth, she would be in here a very long time and would need to get past feeling awkward as she used the drain.
She didn’t have a good way to mark out the time, but she didn’t doubt that marks and marks had passed.
She had tried to lie down and go to sleep at one point, but the hunger kept her awake.
She drank as much water as she could hold, but it reached a point where that hadn’t helped.
Instead she alternated between pacing and sitting, while she waited to find out if she would be fed and tried not to think about food.
After what felt like an eternity, she heard the outer entrance open, and a guard she hadn’t seen before entered. He carried a mop and bucket.
He looked at her in surprise. “Oh, you’re not dead. We had a bet. I figured you’d be a blood smear by now. Loren said you’d make another night.”
“It’s night now?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I filled the box,” she said. “Can I get something to eat?”
He made a show of coming over and peering into the box, then went and got a long pole that he used to hook into the box and slide it out of her reach.
Then, he slid the pole down into the box, verifying that she hadn’t cheated and used something else to fill it.
As though I would have something. Once done, he put the rod aside, and knelt down.
Taking both hands, he placed them on the corners and lifted the box just enough to set it firmly back down, settling the ash.
She was very, very glad that she had left the extra mounded on top.
Otherwise, she expected that she would have come up short.
“What happens if I don’t make it?” she asked. She could hear the tremor in her voice.
He shrugged. “I take the box and you start over with an empty. You get another chance to earn a ration in a half-day or so.”
She moved to the bars, staring as he took a smaller rod and slid it across the top of the box, smoothing the ash, and evidently looking for any place where the ash had not come up to level. He took his time about it. She felt her stomach rumble again, loud enough that she was certain he had heard.
He looked up at her. “You pass. You get fed.”
She felt faint, both hunger and relief. “When?”