Chapter 65 Learning How to Be a Pet, Eve
LEARNING HOW TO BE A PET, EVE
"You're doing it wrong," Autumn tells me in slow Imperial.
I look up from my bowl and try to wipe all the food from my chin and fail. Eating without hands is harder than it looks. "How can I eat wrong?"
"We must be beautiful even in debasement." She demonstrates how to eat out of a bowl with grace, lowering her head elegantly. "Commander Gai values aesthetics."
"Commander Gai can—"
"Careful,” she whispers. “The walls have ears, and defiance is…corrected."
I force down another mouthful of kibble, trying not to gag. Not from the taste; it's designed to be palatable, but from the humiliation.
"How do you stand it?" I ask later when we're settled on our sleeping mats in the dark. No proper beds for pets.
"Stand what?"
"This. All of this. Were you ever free?"
Autumn replies, "I’ve found peace with this life."
"This doesn’t look like peace to me. It looks like surrender."
She's quiet for a long moment. Then, so softly I almost miss it, she says, "Sometimes peace and surrender are the same thing, Eve.”
That statement makes me toss and turn all night.
Will I surrender like Autumn?
Or even more frightening:
How long until I become completely compliant like Autumn?
Already since my Imperial “rebirth,” I can feel my anger only as half-muted. It’s as if my body is giving into this new life. And every day, it’s harder to remember why I don’t want to submit.
It doesn’t take me long to learn the routines in Rafe and Lorian’s childhood home.
Autumn and I wake at dawn and must use the bathroom while being observed.
Then we are bathed using the pet facilities, which means no privacy or dignity.
Attendants wash us as if we were animals, then they comb our hair, all of it, not just the hair on our heads, trimming, polishing, even perfuming it with oils until every trace of human scent is gone.
Finally, we are presented for inspection to the housekeeper.
I thought that I’d become used to the humiliation, but after weeks of the same thing every day, I still blush when my ass cheeks are pulled apart to check for feces or when she caresses me between my legs for too long and calls me a “good human.”
Afterward, we aren’t allowed to lounge like house cats; we have to serve Gai breakfast and are expected to kneel beside his chair while he eats and endure his casual touches.
He strokes our hair like we're particularly well-trained animals, only breathing for his pleasure… when he remembers we exist, that is.
But it’s odd because he also talks to us, I guess in the same way some people talk to their dogs or cats on Earth.
He often comments on something in the news or if someone is walking up the garden path to the main house, and it’s unexpected.
It’s an odd existence, especially since he doesn’t expect a response unless he authorizes it.
For the rest of the day, we follow Gai around. Only taking bathroom breaks when we are given permission, and again they are all monitored.
When I got my period, I was hooked up to the same machine Dr. Veil used, but this time, Gai stroked my hair while it did its work.
It was strange, but he told me Autumn used to have to be tied down.
She hated it so much, and he didn’t want me to be scared of the machine in the same way.
Again, I wasn’t allowed to answer him; he just talked to me and made all the decisions for me, like a well cared for pet.
In that moment, I was happy that I had never owned a cat or dog.
I couldn’t fathom how frustrating it might be to be talked to in this way and just have things done to you.
The only thing Gai does for us is take us for walks around the palace grounds.
He honestly believes that Autumn and I enjoy throwing a ball back and forth to each other.
Frighteningly, I do find it more exciting than sitting next to his chair watching him read the newspaper.
But the worst part isn't the humiliation.
It's how normal it’s all starting to feel, and every day I enjoy throwing that stupid ball more than I did the day before.
Every evening I’m made to stand in a mirrored cubicle as part of my pet training, naked except for my collar, and repeat the phrases and motions the computer tells me to do.
For example, it usually begins with, “I am a good human pet,” which I have to repeat.
Then other phrases like, “I enjoy my leash,” and “I want to be cared for.”
And as for the physical tasks, I must kneel, beg, stand, bow, and obey on rotation. When I first entered the mirror cubicle, Gai told me it would teach me better Imperial pronunciation and pet posture, but as far as I can see, it’s only teaching me how to disappear.
Before, my anger carried me. Now I have to decide, consciously, every day, that what was done to humans still matters—even when my body no longer insists on it. And every day, I feel the collar around my neck getting tighter, heavier, and soon, I know, I won’t have the energy to think for myself.
Gai has visitors today. Older Imperial men he served with in the fleet. Already I can tell I don’t like them as they’ve referred to me as “the terrorist-turned-pet” more than a few times while they’ve had lunch in the dining room.
Now, one of them has purposely dropped his glove. Autumn makes a move to get it, but the man stops her and says, “Fetch, Little Terrorist. Fetch,” as everyone looks at me and laughs.
When I hesitate, Gai gets up from the table, comes over, and swats my head with his hand. “Go,” he says.
I crawl on my hands and knees on the polished black floor and retrieve the glove with my mouth and present it to the man like a dog.
“That’s a good human pet,” he says and then grabs me instead of the glove, then he and the men around me stroke my vulva. I want to get away, but I can’t break free. “You’re still such a wild thing.”
I bite the man’s hand viciously on pure instinct.
He releases me, and I run away. I hear all the men laughing behind me as I run into the hallway.
I hear Autumn take my place and I feel guilty, but when I peek back in, I swear she looks as if she’s a purring pussycat on the same man’s lap. Maybe she likes the attention? Maybe if I stay here long enough, I will too? That’s a frightening thought because it doesn’t scare me as much as it should.
"Tell me about Rafe and Lorian," I ask Autumn one night when we’re supposed to be sleeping. "What were they like when they were younger?"
"Why?"
"Because I miss them." The admission burns. "And because I’m trying to understand why they sent me here."
"They sent you here to save you," she says. "Just as their mother saved them."
"What do you mean?"
"Seren was brilliant,” Autumn says, surprising me. I had assumed she would have hated Gai’s wife, but apparently not. “She was everything an Imperial woman should be, but bad luck struck when she fell in love with Commander Gai, and love makes us all fools.”
"What happened?"
"She defied the Empire’s class system for him and was punished with twins.
Twins are seen as bad luck in Imperial culture.
Even with all the technology the culture has, they still have some archaic beliefs they just can’t shake.
And in Imperial culture, twins are viewed as half a soul the goddesses separated again for punishment. ”
“Half a soul?”
“Imperials believe their souls were split between a man and a woman. It is not unlike a soul mate on Earth, but they actually believe it. So twins are half of a half soul, and that’s why they are meant to never be apart and share the same wife and all.”
“I see the logic, but …” I trail off.
“Imperials may look like us minus the grey skin, but there’s no culture on Earth that I know of like them.
Anyway, Seren believed she had twins because she and Commander Gai didn’t marry.
So instead of raising Rafe and Lorian as Outcasts, they moved to Reima Two.
Seren lost her titles, her wealth, her position—everything.
Started over in a strange new world with two young sons and a husband who never quite adjusted to living outside their beloved Empire. "
"But they built the Ascendant Alliance—it’s so powerful."
"Yes, she built its foundations here,” Autumn corrects. "Every connection, every contract, every UC. It was all her. Commander Gai only provided the Imperial padding, but Seren provided the genius. And when she died..."
"When was that?"
"The twins were nineteen. Old enough to understand what she'd sacrificed for them, but still young enough to feel responsible for it."
“What happened? I didn’t think people died so young on this side of the galaxy.”
“She was murdered by another woman. That woman was put to death by the Ascendant Alliance. Justice was served, but they couldn’t bring their mother back.”
“No, of course not,” I say solemnly.
“No, you misunderstand. These people literally have the power to bring people back from the dead, but they couldn’t do it because their father forbade it.
In the Empire, they have strict rules against it.
Gai kept saying, ‘It goes against the goddesses.’ It was all we heard in the house for months until it was too late. ”
I’m speechless for a second. When I find my voice, I reiterate, “So they could have brought her back to life but chose not to because of religious beliefs?”
“Yes. And there is a timeline. If more than seven months have passed, it’s illegal to bring someone back.”
“Why seven months?”
“I have no idea.” Autumn sighs. “There are a lot of strange things on this side of the galaxy. I don’t question most of it anymore.”
"Is that why they're so determined to marry a Reima Two woman? To honor their mother’s business legacy?”