The Golden Rule

Ch 10: Adapting

The next day Acci awoke feeling slightly drowsy. She was forced to wear a long white shirt to sleep in after Mrs. Mary led her to a room to wash herself in. After giving her a smelly,waxy block and a bucket of water, she said that if she rubbed its foam on her body and washed it off with water it would clean her. She did not believe her and just used the water. It was the first time that she willing had water poured on her, so she enjoyed its cooling rush on her dry skin though it tasted awful.

She heard more than two voices in the room, so she looked towards the table where Mrs. Mary was sitting with two other people, an older girl and a young boy whose skin color was too light to be Nyx skin and too dark to be Pearlie skin. They all were to be eating more the sweet bread when the boy saw her.

“She's awake! Prec! She's awake, look!” He pointed at her.

“Shut up, boy. You're makin my head hurt!” She yelled back, but it only made her head feel worse.

“ She's still drained from yesterday,Jameson.” Mrs. Mary said. “How are you feeling today, Acci?”

“Leave me alone, oldie. Mind your own.” She was getting tired of everyone trying to pry into her head.

“You were right about her being rough,” the girl said. She turned her seat toward her . With this view, Acci could see that her skin wasn't the only thing unusual about her. Her mostly black hair was longer on the left side than the right, her white shirt dripped with red and yellow stripes and was kept from falling off her shoulder thanks to two pink shoulder straps and her skirt was pretty sky blue with even jagged edges.

Finally a real Nyx from the city like me. The thought of having someone like her in the strange town eased her headache.

“I'm Precious, Mrs. Mary's gran-daughter. It's nice to finally meet you.” Precious said.

“And I'm her brother,Jameson. Welcome to Stone, ” Jameson continued.

“What's a brother and a gran-daughter? Uhh. My stomach.” She felt a rumble went through her stomach. “Do you have any more of dat sweet bread?” Angeline stood up and walked toward the table.

“Well gran-daughter means that I'm the child of her child and brother means that he's related to me because we have the same father, and I'm his sister. Why don't you... Oh right, they don't have families where you come from,” Precious said.

“What does that mean? So they're like orphans? How does that work?” Jameson asked.

“They all live in a big house as children until their old enough to leave,”

“I don't know where you heard dat,” Acci said, taking a big chunk of the sweet bread from Precious. “Never lived in a Child's Place.”

“Oh. It's just that Cryer told me that Nyx lived in there,”Precious said.

Acci stuffed more bread in her mouth. She hated the way they were staring at her. They all had this same pitiful look that everyone seemed to give her. She could handle confusion, embraced arousal, adored fear, but hated pity. She wasn't a weakling like Cryer and wasn't going to stay there while they treat her like it.

“Well I'm not him. They paid my dad to take care of me like that Ben guy paid her to take us in. Now where are my clothes, oldie?” she demanded.

“I know it may be hard for you to believe, but no one's paying me to keep you here. I did it to help you, and that's it. But if you want you're clothes they're on that chair over there,” Mrs. Mary said

So I'm her slave then. I'll break her if she forces me in anythin. When she went over to the chair, she noticed that the clothes were different.