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

Chapter 24: Stories

As it turned out, the boy's name was actually Preema—and he had a voracious appetite for both food and gossip. He sat next to Kanna on an old log, his arm slung over her shoulder, his eyes still wide and darkened from what Kanna could only imagine were the effects of Flower. With pupils that looked like the mouth of a bottomless well, Kanna couldn't fathom how he was staring at her so intently, without squinting, with the sunlight beaming down directly on them.

"So, how did the two of you really get to know each other?" he whispered to her so that his higher mother—the one named Kahm—wouldn't hear. The woman seemed distracted anyway. She was crouching not too far from them, on the other side of the yard, holding a wooden panel up to the hole in the fence while Goda swung against it with a hammer. "Obviously, she picked you up at the confinement center in the Outerland, but I've never seen her act like this with a slave. What happened? Did you break through that wall of hers with your feminine wiles? Tell me, tell me!"

He was shoveling handfuls of yaw into his mouth while he babbled at her, and though Kanna couldn't blame him for being hungry after his long ordeal, it was making it even harder to understand what he was saying. He barely even took a pause between feedings. As soon as he would finish a plate, his lesser mother would magically appear from inside the house with some more.

"Preema, what on Earth are you whispering about? I hope you're not asking our honored guest inappropriate questions. We didn't teach you to be like that!" she chided him, though there was a huge grin on her face, and she didn't seem too invested in her admonishment. She turned around without waiting for an answer and practically skipped across the yard back into the house to fetch another plate. Kanna had never seen anyone so happy to cook for someone else.

More bewildered than before, she tried her best to think of a response that wouldn't reveal too many details that were none of the boy's business. Kanna was only just starting to consider the fact that the situation between her and Goda was highly unusual, that Goda must have treated her differently from other slaves and that people were bound to notice eventually.

When did she start doing that? Kanna asked herself. Or did she treat me differently the whole time? The boy had brought up a good point. Kanna didn't know how the porter typically worked with prisoners, and now that Kanna was no longer Goda's slave and was only playing out the role—or rather, for the moment, playing the role of a slave playing the role of a wife—she wasn't sure how to untangle all of the falsehoods.

Her tales had become as messy and intertwined as a writhing ball of snakes.

"I don't really know how to explain it," Kanna finally told him. She decided to change the subject. "How do you know Goda?"

"Oh, my lesser mother is good friends with this old Outerlander named Haim who owns a tavern in town. Ever since I can remember, he's stopped by the house every week and given my mother some wine and me a bag of fruit. One day, when I was around eighteen or nineteen or something, I followed him back and he seemed happy, and so he asked me if I wanted to work for him sometimes," Preema rambled, then stuffed a huge block of cheese into his mouth.

Kanna scratched her head. She didn't want to be rude, but the boy seemed to be speaking in incoherent stories and Kanna couldn't make the connections that he seemed to expect of her. She wondered if that was also an effect of the Flower.

After swallowing, he waved his hand and helped her out: "Goda knows the tavern owner, you see. She buys some of the special products in his basement. That's how we got to know each other."

Ah, the bootlegger, Kanna thought. Goda had mentioned him the night before, when she had told Kanna that she had traded a favor for some fuel and supplies. "So you met Goda in that tavern in the alleyway, then." She thought it was an odd coincidence—but these sorts of connections seemed to keep surfacing, and she wondered if it wasn't a coincidence at all that they had stopped by there recently.