There is one question at the forefront of my mind. I heard them all speaking their native tongue to one another, but he also knows how to communicate with me.
“How do you know how to talk to me? Why do you know the standard tongue?”
He sits down in a chair that is carved into the wall itself and beckons me over to his knee. I go slowly, am captured by his big hands and drawn down onto his knee where I sit perched and nervous.
“You are not the first to come here. For a time, there were many humans caught in storms, dashed against our planet. Most of them perished, but some survived.”
“There are other people here?”
“There are.”
“I want to meet them.”
“They are owned.”
* * *
Isu
Her eyes widen. “What do you mean, they are owned?”
She thought she had found freedom, but freedom does not exist in a universe where the strong dominate the weak. She will be mine. I will claim her. I will give her everything she was begging for on the surface, but I will not free her to the world at large.
“They are the property of the Fendinn who own them,” I explain. “We are the Fendinn. We live on this planet, beneath the surface. As you can see.”
It is strange to try to explain my world to one as innocent as this. I told her to ask questions, but she hardly knows what questions to ask.
She can barely make eye contact with me, and when she does, her gaze darts away almost immediately. She is afraid. I am sure she has spent her life in a state of one kind of fear or another, but this is different. We Fendinn are different from the Vargons who farm her species. We have no interest in humans as food.
“You own people?”
“Humans need to be owned,” I explain. “Left to your own devices, you people cause chaos. We’ve seen it time and time again. So don’t worry, little one. I will be a good owner. You will flourish in my care.”
Her lower lip trembles. “I don’t want to be owned. I want to be free.”
“What do you know of freedom, human? For you, freedom was going to be starving on the surface until you were consumed by a greater beast. Here with me you are safe, you will be fed instead of being food.”
She’s hardly listening. That’s another human trait. Their attention is often scattered. They choose one thing, then another. Their minds flit and fly without sense. Concentration is limited.
“They were taking me to be sold,” she says softly. “But it didn’t matter, did it? I was going to be taken anyway.”
Yes. Her fate was sealed from birth. She was made to be taken, designed to be claimed. Everything about her is soft and vulnerable. I am anticipating defiling her in so many ways, it is difficult to know where to start.
* * *
Aspel
He brushes the hot pad of his thumb under my eye, gathering the tear that dissipates almost immediately against his skin. I feel another one of those traitorous flashes of heat charging through my body. This alien beast is a walking aphrodisiac.
“Aspel…”
For a very long moment, I don’t recognize the sound as having any significance. Then I realize he is looking at me, and recall that he said I had a name now. Aspel. That is the name.
I don’t know if I want a name. I have never had a name before. Never needed one. The chip under my skin could be scanned and I was identified by number. What do I care about a name when I find myself captive in darkness? Will I see the sun again? Even the farm had sun rather than this eternal night.
“You must try to remember your name, Aspel.”
“I will try,” I say, immediately acquiescing just as he wants me to.
“Good girl. But you must also call me Master, remember?”
“Yes, Master Aspel.”
“No,” he says. “Aspel is your name. Isu is mine.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
There is tension in his voice, a low growl that rumbles through my flesh. “Do you truly not understand? Is it so hard to recall? Or is this reluctance on your part because you don’t like the name?”
“Yes.”
“Yes to which?”
I know how to be obedient. I also know how to comply in a way that is completely useless. I am hesitant to obey him because I am hesitant to be his. To be anyone’s. I was rescued from the farm by the Vargons who stole me from the parts machine. I should be dead now, but I’m alive, and my instincts tell me it should be on my own terms.
Isu should never have asked me if I agreed. That simple question has set off a cascade of answers and other questions in my mind. I don’t want to be trapped in darkness. I want to see the light.