Goda's Slave (Lesbian, Dystopia, LGBT Fantasy)

Chapter 15: Driver

At first, Kanna had not noticed the dawn. It came as a smudge of pink and gold reflected against the clouds on either side of her, but because she was staring at the dim image of the roadside ditch whipping past, it took her awhile to wake up to the light. In time, she felt the warmth of the sun emerging on the back of her head, and when she peered into the windshield at her reflection, it looked like a halo that had arisen behind her.

She was leaning away from Goda. When she had mounted the truck hours before, she had kept her distance out of social habit, because she thought that there should have been an awkward air between them. She was thrown off to find that there wasn't. Goda's posture was relaxed and the silence didn't seem to carry any heaviness to it—it was only empty space, oozing between them and fusing with the landscape that spread around them.

Still, it was only proper to be embarrassed, Kanna thought, so she stayed put and tried to summon that familiar shame. Every once in awhile, as the light grew, she glanced quickly in Goda's direction. She was trying to parse the tiny expressions on the woman's face, to see any sign of judgment that she could use to fuel the shame, but instead Kanna's eyes always seemed to land on that stoic mouth: the mouth that had pressed against hers; the mouth whose teeth had scraped once or twice on her lips, but had not taken a bite; the mouth that had nonetheless consumed some part of her—albeit a part that was less physically apparent.

Kanna could not shake the taste of that mouth.

"How long until I'm rid of you?" It had been a private thought at first, but Kanna spoke aloud anyway and she didn't care anymore if Goda heard.

"Maybe a week. Maybe more. It depends on the conditions of the roads as we move onward. If it gets colder and starts snowing, that'll slow us down, but I have about two weeks maximum to deliver you, so we're still making good time. Once we get to Suda—the capital city—I'll pass you off to some administrators that specialize in foreigners. You won't see me again after that. They'll file away all of your paperwork and put you in the registry, and then they will hand you off to your new master."

"More bureaucracy," Kanna complained.

Goda smirked at her. "That's how the Mother keeps track of her children." As usual, Goda ignored the strange look that Kanna gave her in response. She pulled on a lever to make the rickety truck move faster, and before long Kanna realized that they were rising up a steady incline, and that the trees on the side of the road had started to lean into the hill along with them.

"Where are we going now?" she asked. As she turned her gaze upwards, she could see that the hill was about to grow steeper, and that it sprouted up high enough that there was no way she could see the horizon. This unnerved her, even though she had noticed the hill from a distance some time before; it had seemed smaller back then.

"We're going to resupply at a city called Karo. It's close to here."

As the truck rattled Kanna's bones and fought its way loudly up the hill with heaving breaths, Kanna became very quiet, very still. Karo, she thought. It was the city that the priestess had told her about—the city with a train to the Upperland. Each moment, the key was growing heavier still in her pocket. Her mind wandered into that near future, and she was filled with resistance in the face of choice.

But a sudden jerk of her whole body at once snapped her attention back to the present. Because she had been holding herself tense, it was a painful jolt, and she turned to give Goda an irritated look.

The truck had shot forward with a sudden start. It reared back like a horse that had been spooked in the middle of the road, and Goda yanked some lever quickly to keep it from rolling back.