14. N #5
“Soon.” He picked the box up and carried it out, grunting a bit with effort. Triana noticed that the doorway opened automatically for him as he approached it. She registered it, but was too focused on food to think about how the door recognized him. It closed behind him, and she waited.
She counted heartbeats, having no other measure, and had reached five hundred when he returned, carrying a covered ceramic bowl.
He brought it around to her. “It’s a full ration. Gruel. Not tasty, but filling. Go to the step and turn around. Put your back to me, hands to your sides where I can see them. Do that anytime the guard comes with food. Keeping you from getting ideas. Remember, put your back to me. Back to the door.
Every time. Understand?”
Her eyes locked on the bowl, she nodded.
“Then why aren’t you doing it?”
She scrambled to comply, and heard the scrape as he put the bowl into the round Beast cell, and slid it further in. She heard him step back. “All right, you may leave the step.”
She turned and saw the small, covered ceramic bowl. She approached it, afraid this too would be a trick, and picked it up feeling the warmth and the weight. She did cry then, a little.
She took the bowl and sat on the step, opened it, and saw the white, unflavored gruel inside. No spoon. Didn’t matter. She dipped her fingers in and wolfed it down, scooping her fingers into the bowl and gulping it as fast as she could.
The guard laughed. “Hungry little feller, aincha? Eat up, and wash the bowl out. It will be collected later. You get one bowl, so don’t break it. No lid means no food. No bowl means no food. Understand?”
She was too focused on her meal to pay much attention. He walked away, whistling, and got another box. He looked to see where she sat, judged the distance, and set the box near the cage, placing it on the floor near where the full box had sat.
She cleaned the bowl out, rubbing her fingers across the bottom to scrape out any little bits that she might have missed, and licking her fingers dry.
The food settled in her belly in a lump that felt both satisfying and uncomfortable.
It was her first real meal in … days … and her stomach rumble turned into something like a cramp.
She went to the water sluice and opened it enough to fill the bowl with water, which she carefully drank.
That seemed to settle her stomach a bit, and she didn’t feel quite as lumpy inside.
She felt the aches and pains in her arms, back, and shoulders rise as her hunger fell.
Manual labor was entirely new to her, and the work to load, lift, and dump the manure had left her stiff and sore.
She went back to the step and sat, easing herself down on sore legs and sore back.
She suspected the stiffness would pass as she got used to the work. Something tickled her nose.
She sneezed, blowing her nose into the hem of her tunic, as she had nothing else, and tried not to vomit.
What had come out of her nose was brown.
Manure-colored brown. She stared at it. I’ve been breathing this stuff.
EW. She looked at her hands, which had held the shovel, been in the manure, and then were used to sweep up the gray ash …
that it made after it ate. Her hands, which she had been using to shovel the food into her mouth with.
Which had been covered in manure-dust and ash and now were clean-ish.
Because she had licked them clean. Her stomach roiled again, and she had to take shallow breaths and close her eyes to keep from throwing up.
There would be no food to replace what she threw up.
So not throwing up was more important right now than anything else
After a time, her stomach ended its rebellion, and she sat staring at her hands, then got and very deliberately went back to the sluice, and washed them as thoroughly as she could without soap.
She wanted to go to sleep, then shook her head to clear it. She needed to fill … to overfill … the bucket again, to have another meal. Which she would eat with washed fingers, because she was not an animal.
She sat on the step. Here, under Haldeen’s thumb, in this cage, with this Beast, most certainly the equivalent of a human slave. Two arms, two legs, and given a simple repetitive task that didn’t need much watching, cost much money to feed, or needed Haldeen’s ambient magic energy to run.
Her reality came crashing down on her. She was not only a slave, but the lowest kind, the sort of labor thrall that is completely disposable. She started to cry then, weeping into her washed hands. It went on for some time.
When she was done, her stomach rumbled. She had no control over anything, but if she did her part, and they did theirs, she could at least get fed.
She wiped her tears away, stood, and went and got the shovel.
She didn’t dare sleep until the box had been filled …
overfilled, and she had secured her next meal.
She sniffled. At least her nose had run clear from the weeping. The chute rumbled, disgorging another load into the still mostly full hopper.
She bent and reached for the shovel, feeling her back muscles protest.
She looked at the Beast. “Do you have a name? I can’t just call you ‘Rock.’” She flexed to try and work out some of the kinks. “Or maybe I can. Time to go to work.”