Call it a "Social Experiment" (Valerius, Nya)

[Valerius Nitrozian]

As the creature pulled the food back to her and started eating, Valerius smiled, pleased. „See?“ he said. „The food isn’t spoiled or poisoned. I don’t poison my slaves. Poison is such a messy affair.“ As she practically started shovelling the meat into her mouth though, he stopped smiling. She had bad table manners. He’d let it slide this one time because it was obvious that she was starving, but tomorrow she would have to learn how to eat like a civilized being. He didn’t think he would be able to stand watching a second time. As she looked at him, he looked back at her, furrowing his brow slightly. What was she thinking? That he would force her to take her clothes off and rape her like some of his relatives without a doubt would? The mere thought made him sick. Aunt Amanda had asked him to study her, and he was trying to come up with the best way to do so. He didn’t think his aunt would be interested in her lack of table manners. What should he ask her first? She would probably be in a better mood now that her stomach was full, but he still needed to be careful. As she belched, he stared at her as if she had just committed a crime. Valerius never belched. If he felt like belching, he suppressed it. Then she belched again, and he made a step back, disgusted. As she emptied the contents of her stomach on the floor, he was torn between hitting her and running because he couldn’t stand the look of it or the smell. „You did this on purpose“, he accused her even though she had just apologized and warned him this might happen. And then he opened the door and screamed for his slave. „Tuuli! Get here right now and remove this mess! Bring some water and a towel.“ The dark skinned girl that had washed Nya before appeared. As she saw the mess on the floor and how miserable Nya looked, her eyes widened. „What happened?“ she dared to ask. He didn’t reply. He didn’t owe his slave an explanation. Realizing that her master wouldn’t answer, Tuuli bent down to clean the floor, and then she wiped across Nya’s face with a wet towel, hoping that it would make the Kelvic feel better. She looked really sick. „Never do this again!“ Valerius warned her in the meantime. „You won’t get anything to eat now until this evening.“ He would give her old bread and water as she wanted, he decided, but he didn’t say it out loud. He would let her worry for a while. Old bread was cheaper then fresh meat anyway.

[Nya Winters]

Nya glared at the boy. Stupid, cruel, no better than any of the guards down below. It was another game. The whole place was a lie. This was just another torture, another pain to keep her hurting and to make her forget. She snarled at the boy a moment, then turned her back on him. When the other slave came in, she apologized to her and answered her where the boy would not.

"The food was too rich. I tried to warn him. I've only eaten water and bread for a long time, rats occasionally too." She didn't add that they'd given her fresh meat, but it was in the form of street urchins and she'd had to kill them herself. Nya nuzzled the slave as she wiped her mouth, then rose, turning her back on the boy.

Was he going to do nothing? Say nothing? If he was, then she was grateful. And no food until nightfall? At least that was food. If not today, then tomorrow or the next day. And he was in for a surprise. Every home had mice. Every home had rats. She'd survive.

Nya crawled up onto the bed, then curled up. She tucked her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs so she was curled in a ball on her side. She didn't care if the man wanted to talk to her longer. She was done. He was ignorant and a fool.

[Valerius Nitrozian]

As she snarled at him, Valerius wished he had his whip, but it was in another room, and he was too lazy and too tired to get it and then go back here and punish the slave. So he just stared at her for a moment, and then he left her room without a word. He would come back in the evening and talk to her then, he decided. Questioning her was important, but not important enough to be in the company of a sick woman in a room that reeked of vomit. There were limits to what he could stand. Aunt Amanda would just have to accept it. While Valerius left, Tuuli stayed to take care of Nya. Once the young man was out of sight, she quietly closed the door and then turned to the Kelvic who had curled up on the bed in the meantime. „He isn’t a bad master“, she tried to comfort her. „If you do what he says, life here is tolerable most of the time. I don’t think he knew that rich food makes you sick if you haven’t eaten anything for a while. He’s never been hungry or thirsty, and when he’s sick, his parents send for a doctor that asks for more money than we’ll ever see in a lifetime. He doesn’t know what things are like for a slave.“ „Here …“ She gestured towards the bowl of water she had brought. „I’ll leave the water here. I don’t think the master will mind. You can use it to rinse your mouth, to make the taste of vomit go away. You should try to get some rest before he comes back. You’ll feel better afterwards.“ Once she had said that, she went back to cleaning the floor to make sure that the smell would be completely gone by the time Valerius came back. She knew that he couldn’t stand it. He was easily disgusted. Unless Nya had anything to say, the girl would eventually leave, and the Kelvic would be alone until after sunset when the door was suddenly being opened again.

[Nya Winters]

Winter thanked the woman and drank the water, all of it, ignoring the taste in her mouth. She was thirsty and dehydrated. She could have drank ten more bowls. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. A numbness spread across Winter's soul. She acknowledged the slaves kindness with a polite thank you and again expressed her remorse for getting sick. Cramps followed her into the bed and she curled tight around herself wondering why she wasn't dead already. Hadn't she been sent above to die? That's what a woman had said, a woman with a deep hatred for Winter and all of her kind.

She'd stolen something from Winter, something important, but the Kelvic could not remember what it was. Pride most likely, perhaps even possessions. And then she'd sent Winter to the institute to die.

Winter was only able to lay still for a few bells. By then her stomach had calmed down and she felt more like herself. Hungry, her door not locked, she left the room quiet as a cat and padded barefoot to the kitchen following her nose to try to make friends with the cook. She was back a few bells later and her stomach richer with a few mice and her thirst completely quenched.

The kelvic didn't have a stitch of clothing on and was sprawled out across her bed sleeping deeply when the door was thrown open. Winter didn't wake. Whomever it was would wake her anyhow, and being fairly certain awake was worse than sleep, she took advantage.

Valerius could really look at her then. Her body was skeletal, flesh stretched across bones in a most unhealthy way. She was scared, badly, from neck to torso by something that looked like it had rendered her flesh wide open. There were other wounds from knives, and even a stab mark over her heart that looked nasty. She had a shadow of a mark on her sternum that meant she'd been married once but no longer. And on her back, the swirling mark of a hurricane blowing full force in a double circle spiraled across her shoulder.

Stormwarden.

If Valerius recognized it. She had a brand on her hip and signs of torture elsewhere. She was almost grotesque in her gauntness, having nothing appealing about her as a woman to a man. And while her hair was long and brindled, there was strands of it all over the little bed she was sprawled across, as if it were falling out. Truth be told, it looked like she'd been starved and beaten for a long long time, and had more than once been on the brink of death.

[Valerius Nitrozian]

Valerius opened the door and made a face. The creature was naked. Before, when she had been wearing clothes, she had looked almost normal. He hadn’t been able to see what her body really looked like. She was ugly. She was so thin that she looked like a walking (or in that case lying) skeleton, and her body was covered with numerous old and new wounds. He wondered if Aunt Amanada knew. His aunt was well aware that he valued perfection, and this creature was anything but perfect. She looked like she had led a violent life so far. He wanted slaves that behaved, that either didn’t fight or fought so well that their opponent wasn’t able to touch them. On top of that it seemed as if her hair were falling out. He hated it if there were animal hairs in the bed. It was the reason why he never let his dog sleep in his suite. Hadn’t Tuuli washed her hair properly? He would order his slave to shave Winter’s head. No, that would make her even uglier than she already was. He would see if there was some kind of special mixture that would keep her hair from falling out in the future. And that mark on her sternum, was that what he thought it was? He had seen similar marks on some of his friends. Apparently the creature had been married once, but who would marry an animal? He knew that they longed for company and would sometimes bond with their masters, but this went deeper. He wondered what had happened to her husband. Had he died? Had he left her? Had she had children? He would need to ask her about it. There was a second mark on her shoulder as well. Valerius moved closer to inspect it. He didn’t know what exactly it was, having never met a Stormwarden, but he knew enough to be aware that it was something special. He put the old loaf of bread he had procured from the kitchen (the cook had been about to throw it away) on the table and announced, loudly enough that the Kelvic would wake up, „I’ve brought you food, old bread, as you wanted. But first I want you to tell me how you got the mark on your shoulder. Who marked you and why were you marked?“

[Nya Winters]

Nya bared her teeth at him and rolled over and half sat up. She noted his disgust at her body and was gratified to see it. His kind had made her what she was. Who was he to demand such things? Winter shook her head.

"I don't know. I can't tell you where any of them came from. I don't remember. But you know that. Your Aunt told you I was conditioned and trained... safe for you to take home and study. I'm not supposed to know where any of these markings came from or what they all mean." She said, stretching like a cat and reaching for the bread. She snatched it quickly and drew it up against her chest, taking her honest answer as permission to have it (the bread) and eat it. Dipping her head she broke into it and it tasted sweet for all that it was old. There was no mold and it was not damp, so to Winter it was perfect.

Winter ate with a ravenous appetite and despite the lack of gracelessness she showed in consuming the food, it was gone in almost no time and he could hear her stomach settling, rumbling, almost demanding more. She didn't turn green, didn't look immediately ill, and in fact seemed to gain a little color with the bread settling in her stomach.

"Maybe they mean I was special." She said, flashing him teeth. This time her expression looked more like a grin than any sort of threatening posture. She definitely seemed to have settled down, mellowed, and then she reclined back, seemingly willing to talk. "They hit me in the head a lot. They talked a lot to me in voices that echoed inside my brain. And when that didn't work they took their pleasure of me a lot, and fed small children to me when I couldn't stand the need for fresh meat any longer. It's hard to remember anything from that time. I know I was there almost a year. I know because I marked the passage of time. And I know I was not alone." She said softly, then turned her head to lick at a bare shoulder. The gesture was cat-like but seemed so odd coming from a human.

They asked me a lot of questions. But they never asked me about the marks." She said once more in a voice as soft as before.

[Valerius Nitrozian]

As she told him that she didn’t know where her marks had come from, he furrowed his brow. Was she lying? Keeping things from him on purpose? To what end? And how could he make her tell the truth? Violence? Persuasion? Should he pretend to be her friend even though she was an inferior being? Would she even fall for that? „Why are you not supposed to know where you got those marks?“ he wanted to know. „Why are you not supposed to know their meaning? What did my aunt and the people in this other place do to you? That mark on your shoulder, it reminds me of a gnosis mark. It’s important. I want you to try and remember how you got it. I will not tell anybody else about it. You will not be punished.“ He wasn’t aware of what the Ebonstryfe had done to her, so it seemed like a rather good offer to him. He was pretty sure she knew more than she let on and that she was merely afraid of being punished for some reason. He even feigned a smile to reassure her a little. While he had mostly been disgusted before, he didn’t particularly care about her less than appealing body now. He would overlook all those things about her that he didn’t like until his curosity had been sated. He even overlooked the fact that she had started eating without permission. A Kelvic with such marks was rare. When Aunt Amanda had handed her over to him, he had thought she was just another animal, but apparently there was more to her than met the eye, and he wanted to know what exactly it was. Maybe she could be useful. „So they tortured you in a number of different ways“, he summed what she had told him up and shrugged. If she wanted his pity – bad luck. He didn’t particularly care about what they had done to her. She was only a slave. „Why did they do that? To train you? Who was with you during that year?“ As she informed him that they had never asked her about the marks, he looked at her incredulously. „I don’t believe that“, he stated. „The marks are what interests me the most about you. Even if they supposedly didn’t care about them, I want to know more.“ As she licked herself, he shuddered briefly as if she had just done something inacceptable and vaguely obscene, but he calmed down again quickly and went back to looking at her in that almost friendly way.

[Nya Winters]

"I don't know." Winter repeated the words. She tossed her head and stretched out on the bed. She brought a knee up to her chest, which covered a good portion of her chest but revealed her sex. Totally shameless she got more comfortable and curled, rolling up onto her stomach. There. Most of her was concealed.

"I don't know, boy. I don't remember. When you get hit in the head so many times, nothing is easy to remember except the guards and their violence and them spilling their seed in you repeatedly until you want to die. No one would kill me though. They wanted to toy with me instead. I answered their questions and it made no difference. I answered until I forgot the answers and then I made up answers and they didn't even care about those. I don't know who was with me but they hurt them too. I remember pain. I remember hunger. That's it. I watched my youth and beauty fade to this... whatever this is. There is so much more to me than this... or there once was. But now... it is hard to see and even more painful to remember." The kelvic said.

Winter said, rolling again. She was making a mess of the bed. This time she was on her back, her legs stretched out flat, a hand casually thrown across her chest. More hair came out. It was from the starvation. She wouldn't have lasted much longer in the prison without major organs shutting down. Her hair loss was just a byproduct of that.

And really, she was paying no respectful attention to Val.

[Valerius Nitrozian]

„What do you mean – you don’t know?“ Valerius asked, as if she had spoken a foreign language. Even thoug he had decided to be friendly just a chime before, he was already losing his patience again now, and his voice was a little louder. „How can you forget something that important? You are lying!“ He didn’t care about the fact that she revealed all those parts that were usually hidden. He didn’t care about her kind. The fact that she insisted on calling him a boy though angered him though. „Don’t call me that! I’m far older than you, and it would do you good to remember that!“ He raised his hand as if to strike her, but abruptly lowered it again a moment afterwards. „They should have held back a little“, he remarked a little more calmly as she talked about the torture she had suffered at the hands of her captors again. He didn’t pity her, not exactly, but he disapproved. Valerius was perfectly fine with violence as long as it served a purpose, no matter what the purpose, but they seemed to have tortured her for a long time afterwards. „I would have stopped after I had received my answers“, he informed her. „A broken slave that cannot even remember her name is of no use to anybody. Maybe the memories will come back when some time has passed, and you’ve begun to forget what they did to you, when you’ve begun to realize that you will not be tortured unnecessarily here.“ He noticed that more of her hair had begun to fall out and frowned. „I will send Tuuli to you again later today“, he decided and pulled his gaze away from her bed. „Maybe she has some kind of medicine for you. I don’t want you to leave your hair everywhere you go and have to order a slave to clean up after you.“

[Nya Winters]

Winter sighed. "Yes. If you knew anything at all about my kind you'd know that we have no interest in lies. Humanity, like you, invented the artform of deception. The only way we 'lie' is when we have coats that match the woods or look distasteful to predators and are actually very yummy. Your scholars call it mimicry. Otherwise we have no interest in lying. That is all on your kind. Most kelvics, you'll find, are as honest as the day is long. And our needs are simple. Eat, sleep, be treated fairly, and given a job." Winter said softly, shifting to scratch at her hip. Her skin was irritated, most likely from the conditions in the prison, but it was nothing time wouldn't heal.

"I can tell you are far younger than me. You keep demanding things that I have no answers for. IF you were older, inside, where it matters, you'd understand that healing doesn't work that way and that once the mind is hurt, its hurt and it takes time to heal just like the rest of the body. My mind has been very hurt. Don't you understand that?" She said, growling a little now, almost angry that he accused her of things she was virtually incapable of.

"They should have held back? What do you know of it? Are you an expert at torture?" She looked him up and down and sneered. "All you look to me is as if you are an expert at Ravokian fashion and etiquette. I'd recommend a day or two in the prison to learn how prisoners are treated and what actual torture is like. You could understand, a bit maybe, if the guards held your pretty face down and your mouth open and used it as a toilet." She snorted, slipped off the bed, and faced him at a crouch. "You wouldn't last. They'd break you down so fast you wouldn't know your name. And it wouldn't take a day. I bet it'd take a bell for you. One slap across the face or one boot to the gut. If they broke a few fingers, you'd be sobbing and asking them to stop. They like that when you beg, you know. And they like it when things are broken." She said, getting right into his face. "Then when you know what its like, you can ask me what I mean when I say I don't know." She added.

"Things inside, after so much, just don't work right. Ever." She said, growling again.

Then she reached up and grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled hard. It came away in a clump. She tossed the clump in the floor in front of him and while kneeling there, began to pull more and more of it out. She pulled so much her head looked bald. It made her even uglier. Looking up at him, she defied him to stop her as the pile grew.

She looked a little crazy.