"Is that why they're so determined to marry a Reima Two woman? To honor their mother’s business legacy?”
"I don’t know. Maybe. I’m just a pet, Eve. And so are you. We shouldn’t even be thinking about these things, let alone discussing them. You should practice being mindless, then you can be more content and happier.” With that, she turns over on her side away from me.
I look at the shadow of her back, and there are so many things I want to ask her, but clearly she’s done talking for tonight.
I’m lying on my mat on the floor looking at Rafe’s silver ring as I twist it between my fingers, remembering the way he used to twist it on his own hand when something bothered him. I wonder if he still touches his finger now and thinks of me when he can’t feel it anymore.
Autumn interrupts my thoughts. "You looked like you were near death when you arrived," she says out of the blue. "Skeletal. The neural damage was visible in the way you moved. Whatever happened in those last weeks at the Spire nearly killed you."
I think of the shrine and the extremes Lorian and I pushed each other to, searching for any evidence of a supernatural being. And despite how terrible it was, I can’t remember what it felt like to survive it. I wonder if the holographic milk wiped that away too. “Maybe it did kill me, and this is Hell."
"No, this is the land of the living, I’m sure of it," she corrects. “Hell would be more painful… and probably even more boring. I doubt there would be a ball to throw around…. maybe a fiery ball that would burn our hands.”
"You call this living?"
"I call it better than death." She pauses. "Lorian and Rafe used to visit more, but when they hired you everything shifted. I resented you, youknow. I hated that you had been elevated, and I was here naked and collared.”
I put the ring on my thumb and turn to look at her in the darkness. “You resented me?”
She doesn’t look at me. “Yes. The household comes alive when they’re here.”
“Have you had sex with them?” I ask. I don’t want to, but I have to know.
Autumn doesn’t answer my question, but keeps on talking. “But now that I know you, I realize that you were always in the same position as me. Stuck in a role assigned to you by alien men. The only difference is you used to have clothing, and you probably will again, when you’ve completed this human pet sentence.”
I don’t disagree with her. I signed a contract, but that hardly served as any protection from ending up in the place I am now. “I wonder sometimes if things had been different if I’d be heading back to Earth now.”
“No one ever goes back.”
“How do you know?”
She sits up and looks at me directly. “Because I’ve been around twice as long as you’ve been alive.”
This surprises me because she doesn’t look much older than I do. I guess that’s superior alien medicine in action.
“The best thing to do is to submit and to be happy that we have kind masters,” she says.
“Did you have unkind masters before?”
“Yes. Commander Gai saved me. He didn’t even want a human pet, but another officer owned me and was doing horrendous things to me.”
Knowing Gai as I do now, whatever was happening to Autumn must have been really terrible as his bar forterrible thingsis quite low.
“I owe him my life. My master before tortured me. He would keep me awake for days at a time, asking me to beg for things he had no intention of ever giving me: water, sleep, permission to cry. Then when I would break, he would publicly give me to other men who would fuck and humiliate me, and he said it was a reward, and at the same time, he would tell everyone I didn’t deserve to live because I was such a stupid human pet. Then, after all of that, he would make me thank him and kiss his feet.”
The way she says, such ‘a stupid human pet,’breaks my heart. I’ve seen enough of the galaxy in the Celestial Spire to imagine what she was put through. “Do you love Commander Gai?”
She considers this. “I love him like a dog loves its owner. I know that sounds horrendous, but I do. It’s not a romantic love, although we do have sex, and I enjoy it. But it’s all just physical love, nothing really emotional. I enjoy pleasing him more than anything else. I guess he’s conditioned me to be that way.”
“It doesn't matter what kind of love it is if you’re content,” I say, not fully comprehending what she was trying to say, but wanting to be supportive.
“I have a choice; I can either be content or not. Not being content only harms me. You should try to be more content, Eve. Time will pass more quickly that way.”
“I don’t think I can. I’ve always been this way. Even when I knew that life had very little to offer me, and I had no reason to believe I deserved better, I always expected more…”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “character flaw. And now I have a serious problem.”
