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

Chapter 19: Forty-Nine Minutes

A warm glow emerged from the back doorway of the house, and it filled the disheveled yard with a flickering bath of light. It made the twisted branches of the trees look alive, like they were moving over Kanna's head. It also made the skin of Goda's face swim, her expression looking soft and hard in turn.

There was a shadow in the door, backlit by the candles inside. Kanna was hiding beside Goda, tucked into the corner of her master's robes, both her hands tightened along the neck of the sack she was carrying.

They had just walked in through the hole in the fence, and Goda had stopped suddenly, and so Kanna had stopped with her. At first, Kanna hadn't been afraid of the form in the doorway ahead of them, but then she had noticed Goda's reaction—one that reminded her of an animal stiffly sniffing the air—and she had grown wary.

It was a new person, a person who was stepping into the yard to join the two of them, but Kanna could not see their features until they passed through a patch of moonlight.

A woman with large brown eyes and a hardened face stared at them through the dark. "Are you the priestess?" she asked. She was looking at Goda; she did not even seem to notice that Kanna was there.

It took a moment for Goda to answer, but rather than confirm the woman's assumption, she replied just as she had earlier in the day: "What do you want?"

"I'm Kahm Marahn, Mia Marahn's wife." She flicked her head back, as if gesturing towards the door behind her. Kanna realize then that she hadn't heard their host's name the whole time they had been there. Perhaps Goda had asked while Kanna had been avoiding the house. "Is it true that you've come to help our son?"

"We've come," Goda said. The tone made the sentence sound finished, but Kanna still emerged slightly from her place under Goda's wing to give the woman a questioning glance.

Nonetheless, their host seemed satisfied with the answer. She turned and seemed to expect them to follow, but her movements were slow, exhausted. "There's dinner inside," she said. "We can eat, then discuss the...details." Kanna could sense a resistance in her along with the resignation.

When they sat at the wooden table near the kitchen—which was decorated with a centerpiece of candles surrounding an image of the Goddess—Kahm Marahn slid over to be next to her wife. She propped her elbows onto the table; she rubbed her face with her hands.

"He's worse now," she said. "Much worse. I really don't know how much longer we can keep this going. We can't even force-feed him anymore."

There was food already served in front of them, but no one was touching it, and though at first Kanna's hand had hovered over her plate in desperation, she forced herself to pull back. She thought that her hunger was too ravenous and that she'd be unable to politely pick at the sausage and cheese and yaw in a way that honored the gravity of the conversation.

She dropped her hands into her own lap. Her fingers brushed Goda's thigh accidentally on the way down, but the woman didn't seem to notice.

"Has his breathing grown ever more shallow?" Goda asked. "Eyes dark? Veins on his forehead pulsing?"

"Yes," their original host—the woman who was apparently named Mia—answered. Her hands were folded and resting on the tabletop, and she too had yet to touch her food. "But you knew this. You suspected that he would get worse, didn't you, Priestess?"

"At his stage, it only gets worse. He may not survive the night."

Kanna was taken aback by Goda's bluntness, but she held her tongue, and she glanced at the two women to see if they had been offended. She had to force herself not to turn away once she saw their faces; their paired streams of misery washed over Kanna, and she stiffened against it because she felt that this was no time to feel a rush of empathy. It was uncomfortable; she had never felt it quite so raw before.