The hours passed as Jolene and I talked. Most of it ended up being completely unimportant stuff, stuff about our lives up to this point. Innocuous things, really.
It was good being able to just talk to someone though. For a while, I’d been struggling to even work up the motivation to properly talk to the people around me. Even more so after everything that had happened more recently.
With Jolene, I didn’t really have that problem. She was a kindred spirit in a way. She knew what I was going through, she had lived it. That made it easier to talk to her about it. It allowed me to feel more comfortable in my own skin, rather than having to pretend to feel some way I didn’t.
In front of her, I was allowed to show a modicum of weakness and not feel like I was going to get shanked in the back for it. And because of that the walls I had built up around me were circumvented. They didn’t come crashing down, I still held a lot of things under lock and key.
But I allowed some of them to be scaled with ladders or dug under with tunnels.
Maybe I was taking the analogy too far. But the point remains. It was a comforting feeling to be able to talk to someone casually. I had missed that opportunity fully with Fiona and her group. Although that was purely my fault in the circumstances, I just hadn’t been interested in trying to communicate my hurt to anyone at the moment, despite her best attempts to get me to open up to her.
It just hadn’t felt right to me at the time. I doubt I would’ve felt much better trying to talk to them even now, however. So that hadn’t really changed with time. That’s the thing about trauma, you generally don’t feel comfortable sharing it with the people around you. There’s nothing exciting about telling everyone happily to ‘look at all the fucked up things about me!’
They’re the kinds of things you hide away at the bottom of the ocean and hope no one ever dives deep enough to see what’s actually down there.
And that’s what makes finding someone else in a similar situation to you so valuable. They understand why you want to keep it hidden, they know why it’s locked so far down. They don’t try to pull it out into the light either. They have their own things they don’t want you to see, and while you can both only see the edges of the darkness the other person has hidden, you both still understand what it is that lurks down there.
Our conversation couldn’t last forever though. Jolene standing up with a sigh cut our conversation… not short necessarily, but it was cut.
“I need to start working. The crew is going to be back fairly soon. Make some more ingredients for me if you would, I’m going to be running out fairly soon.”
With that, she turned around and made her way to the kitchens without waiting for a single word from me. Not even a goodbye.
I just smiled. I was fine with that, I was never particularly good at ending conversations. I preferred to let other people handle that, if someone needed to leave I’d prefer if they just said so and left. We’d talk again at some point, it was just something for me to look forward to.
I got to work doing what she wanted, I was too lazy to go back to my room and it would also mean less distance for me to travel bringing it out here if I just made them here instead. So I got to work, just allowing my subminds to handle the effort while I lazed about.
An hour or so later I could hear commotion at the door to the cell block. Using my localized omniscience I could see the population of our little slave group making their way down the tunnel. David is at the front as usual.
I suppressed a frown. I wasn’t sure how to feel about David. Up ‘till now we’d had an… interesting relationship. I wasn’t sure how to categorize it. We weren’t exactly friends, but it’s not like we were enemies either. We didn’t get along all that well, but it’s not like we didn’t not get along either. No oil and water comparisons are to be made.
My mind flashed back to the idea he had proposed to me most recently and I quickly ran it through the minds that were engaged in some activity or other. Which was only three, now that I counted. One creating produce, one creating baskets to hold them, one observing the area through my skills, and the final one just resting to keep my mana up while I was stationary.
I was granted an additional seven minds from [Parallel Minds] which left me with eight in total. So half of them were tied up. But four minds was still a lot of processing power, especially with my current capabilities. That would only escalate from here.
The idea David had proposed though wasn’t a bad one. In all honesty, it was pretty good. The only downside I could see to it would be Lurks deciding she wanted to… I don’t know. Commandeer the operation maybe? I don’t know that I could actually see her doing that, but I wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t either. I wasn’t sure about a lot of things regarding her honestly.
Commander Drikith I could definitely see being uncaring. He was the kind of person who only cared about his own luxuries and nothing for the people below him. A very pompous kind of person who held no regard for his fellow person.
No, I definitely couldn’t see him caring about anything I did so long as it didn’t directly affect him in any capacity. I also couldn’t see any of the other cell block leaders trying to interfere either. I didn’t know all that much about them, but that just proved my point. They didn’t get involved in affairs beyond their purview. What I did was none of their business, just like what their slaves did was none of Lurks’ business.
So at the end of the day, I really only had to worry about Lurks. And if she had actually cared she probably would’ve done or said something when she had last been holding onto me.
So I guess I was pretty much available to do what I wanted then. It wasn’t a bad idea, hell it was probably a good one. It might even create an opportunity for escape if I worked quickly in certain areas. It would basically have to happen overnight. If it didn’t Lurks would know about it and nip it in the bud before it went anywhere.
Nodding slightly to myself I made up my mind. I waved David down as he passed close by and gestured to the table in front of me, not interested in trying to yell over the growing din of noise.
He said a few things to one of the men standing next to him. Someone I didn’t recognize. He was relatively tall, and like most of the other men, pretty muscular. He was bald, so no hair to make of and he walked around shirtless. He had a few tattoos that covered his body, some writing that read ‘The Brotherhood’ or at least the closest approximation of it in English, anyway.
I then froze. My head fully snapped over to the man and looked at his body and read the tattoo again. And again.
Huh.
I could read it. Why could I read it? I wracked my brain trying to figure out how I could all of a sudden read the common writing that people used. At least in the imperial and Seltas regions.
Was this another ‘benefit’ of Lurks occupying my mind? In return for her taking stuff from me, I gained something in return. I wasn’t sure, it was possibly the most likely thing. Our minds had spent a lot of time essentially occupying the same space. It would make sense if there was some bleedover from her side, bits and pieces of information. Maybe mannerisms or personality influences.
Or possibly an inherent understanding of a shared language? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know enough, and I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. I would take this as a blessing now that I didn’t need to spend several years trying to learn the language.
Truly a blessing indeed.
David sat down across from me.
“So? Whaddya want?” He asked casually.
“I’ve had time to think about the offer you made me the other day,” I started waiting to see if he remembered or had ‘conveniently’ forgotten the deal he had offered. He motioned for me to continue.
“I’d like to know a little bit more about what exactly you’d be looking for from me, but otherwise I’m interested in accepting.”
He nodded slowly, his face slowly morphing into a smile.
“I knew you’d come around. I knew you would,” He said gleefully, “Alright. So I’m not looking for anything ridiculous. This more or less would hinge on how much you yourself are able to produce in what time frames. There’s also Lurks we have to consider, no knowing when she’ll just abduct you for days or weeks at a time. But that will be a them problem.”
I nodded in agreement.
“So far, she hasn’t been particularly active in snatching me,” I said slowly thinking over my words, “But given the most recent time she did she holds onto me for days at a time. It’s… hard to tell how much time has passed with her.”
David shrugged, “How much time passes with her isn’t really all that important from a business perspective. In fact, taking up this opportunity might make her a little more reluctant to grab you or even hold on to you for any amount of time, given that you’re more than likely to endear yourself to some of the soldiers and cooks.”
I thought about that for a moment. I could definitely see where he was coming from with that.
But…
I shook my head, “No, that doesn’t really sound like her. In fact, she might just hold on to me longer just to spite the people that complain about it. Her personality, from what I can gather, is very… controlling. Abusive? Overbearing is a good descriptor.”
I shrugged, “It’s not going to scare me off, but I wouldn’t bet on her changing her mentality just because someone complains to her, I’d be impressed if any of them even bothered to bring it up to her. I know I wouldn’t want to be the one that did, on the off-chance that she took offense to it she’d make you wish she just killed you instead.”
David grimaced at that and leaned back in his chair with a sigh, “Yeah, I guess you’re right on that front. She doesn’t really seem like the type to back off of anything. It was a thought, not a good one though I guess. Ah well. No offense, but it’s gonna be a problem you’re going to have to deal with. I can’t really help you there.”
His eyes flicked across my face searchingly, probably trying to probe my mood and how I reacted to what he said.
I wasn’t upset by that, it was just the reality of the situation. An unfortunate one, but there wasn’t much either of us could do about it.
I just gave him a self-deprecating smile, “Yeah, not much we can do there. I’ll just handle it as it comes up.”
David stared at me for a moment longer before giving me a firm nod.
“So I guess the next thing we need to hash out is how much do you think you can reasonably make? I know you’re already doing stuff for Jolene,” He said gesturing to the baskets currently being made, “How much extra do you think you can handle?”
I glanced at the baskets that were slowly starting to pile up and hummed thoughtfully.
“Honestly, not all of this needs to go to Jolene. I haven’t been consistent in my making of them, I’ve just been kinda creating a stockpile for them. If I did it more consistently I should have enough to push out for everything. How much are you looking for? Use one of these baskets for reference.”
“Hmmmm…” David tapped a finger to his chin as he looked at it and thought.
“I’m thinking maybe fifty or so baskets a week? You seem to have a pretty good capacity for making them reasonably. While you could probably make a hundred with a little work, the idea is that we kind of want to create an even further artificial scarcity. We can make the same amount of money for less effort. At least until your production ramps up.”
Fifty. That was a decent amount, but at the same time not as much as I had been thinking. It was a good amount, in all honesty, we controlled the market so artificial scarcity didn’t really exist as far as I was concerned. We could dictate any price for the goods.
Yeah, I think I was fine with this.
“That sounds fine, I can do that.”
David smiled, “Excellent, how long do you think it would take you to get that all prepared?”
I ran some extremely simple math in my head, I was currently able to make around 10ish baskets in an hour. So five hours or so of work. Give or take an hour.
I said as much to David.
“Perfect, go ahead and get started on that whenever you finish what you want to make for Jolene.”
I glanced down, I already had a little over ten baskets for her. That was more than enough. I had also received several notifications that I had pushed out of my mind. I could worry about those later.
“I think this is enough for her, I’ll go ahead and get started on it now,” I said to him.
He just nodded, “That works for me, get in touch when you finish. I’m going to start working to get this up and running for us.”
I nodded at him as he stood up and walked off.
I wasn’t entirely sure how exactly he planned on going about setting this up or how he would prevent the soldiers from just taking what they wanted from us, but that was a his problem to worry about. I had my own objectives that I needed to handle right now.
I leaned back with a sigh and stretched, letting out a long groan as my tense muscles loosened up slightly.
Just as I was about to stand up Max and Kayla appeared next to me.
“Hey, Alex!” Kayla greeted me energetically as she practically bounced over to me.
Max was much more sedate in his approach, raising a hand in greeting.
I smiled, “Hey.”
Kayla frowned, “That’s it? Just ‘hey’? Nothing else?” She asked.
I just raised an eyebrow at her as Max just gave her a look of exasperated amusement.
“Well… since you’re offering,” I drawled, “you can help me take these baskets to Jolene so she has some stuff to work with.”
Kayla sputtered as Max just laughed. Eventually, she resigned herself to helping me grumbling a little bit, but she had a smile on her face the entire time that she struggled to hide. It was kind of cute on her.
And for the first time since I’d been here I thought to myself,
‘Maybe it’s not so bad.’
The hours passed as Jolene and I talked. Most of it ended up being completely unimportant stuff, stuff about our lives up to this point. Innocuous things, really.
It was good being able to just talk to someone though. For a while, I’d been struggling to even work up the motivation to properly talk to the people around me. Even more so after everything that had happened more recently.
With Jolene, I didn’t really have that problem. She was a kindred spirit in a way. She knew what I was going through, she had lived it. That made it easier to talk to her about it. It allowed me to feel more comfortable in my own skin, rather than having to pretend to feel some way I didn’t.
In front of her, I was allowed to show a modicum of weakness and not feel like I was going to get shanked in the back for it. And because of that the walls I had built up around me were circumvented. They didn’t come crashing down, I still held a lot of things under lock and key.
But I allowed some of them to be scaled with ladders or dug under with tunnels.
Maybe I was taking the analogy too far. But the point remains. It was a comforting feeling to be able to talk to someone casually. I had missed that opportunity fully with Fiona and her group. Although that was purely my fault in the circumstances, I just hadn’t been interested in trying to communicate my hurt to anyone at the moment, despite her best attempts to get me to open up to her.
It just hadn’t felt right to me at the time. I doubt I would’ve felt much better trying to talk to them even now, however. So that hadn’t really changed with time. That’s the thing about trauma, you generally don’t feel comfortable sharing it with the people around you. There’s nothing exciting about telling everyone happily to ‘look at all the fucked up things about me!’
They’re the kinds of things you hide away at the bottom of the ocean and hope no one ever dives deep enough to see what’s actually down there.
And that’s what makes finding someone else in a similar situation to you so valuable. They understand why you want to keep it hidden, they know why it’s locked so far down. They don’t try to pull it out into the light either. They have their own things they don’t want you to see, and while you can both only see the edges of the darkness the other person has hidden, you both still understand what it is that lurks down there.
Our conversation couldn’t last forever though. Jolene standing up with a sigh cut our conversation… not short necessarily, but it was cut.
“I need to start working. The crew is going to be back fairly soon. Make some more ingredients for me if you would, I’m going to be running out fairly soon.”
With that, she turned around and made her way to the kitchens without waiting for a single word from me. Not even a goodbye.
I just smiled. I was fine with that, I was never particularly good at ending conversations. I preferred to let other people handle that, if someone needed to leave I’d prefer if they just said so and left. We’d talk again at some point, it was just something for me to look forward to.
I got to work doing what she wanted, I was too lazy to go back to my room and it would also mean less distance for me to travel bringing it out here if I just made them here instead. So I got to work, just allowing my subminds to handle the effort while I lazed about.
An hour or so later I could hear commotion at the door to the cell block. Using my localized omniscience I could see the population of our little slave group making their way down the tunnel. David is at the front as usual.
I suppressed a frown. I wasn’t sure how to feel about David. Up ‘till now we’d had an… interesting relationship. I wasn’t sure how to categorize it. We weren’t exactly friends, but it’s not like we were enemies either. We didn’t get along all that well, but it’s not like we didn’t not get along either. No oil and water comparisons are to be made.
My mind flashed back to the idea he had proposed to me most recently and I quickly ran it through the minds that were engaged in some activity or other. Which was only three, now that I counted. One creating produce, one creating baskets to hold them, one observing the area through my skills, and the final one just resting to keep my mana up while I was stationary.
I was granted an additional seven minds from [Parallel Minds] which left me with eight in total. So half of them were tied up. But four minds was still a lot of processing power, especially with my current capabilities. That would only escalate from here.
The idea David had proposed though wasn’t a bad one. In all honesty, it was pretty good. The only downside I could see to it would be Lurks deciding she wanted to… I don’t know. Commandeer the operation maybe? I don’t know that I could actually see her doing that, but I wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t either. I wasn’t sure about a lot of things regarding her honestly.
Commander Drikith I could definitely see being uncaring. He was the kind of person who only cared about his own luxuries and nothing for the people below him. A very pompous kind of person who held no regard for his fellow person.
No, I definitely couldn’t see him caring about anything I did so long as it didn’t directly affect him in any capacity. I also couldn’t see any of the other cell block leaders trying to interfere either. I didn’t know all that much about them, but that just proved my point. They didn’t get involved in affairs beyond their purview. What I did was none of their business, just like what their slaves did was none of Lurks’ business.
So at the end of the day, I really only had to worry about Lurks. And if she had actually cared she probably would’ve done or said something when she had last been holding onto me.
So I guess I was pretty much available to do what I wanted then. It wasn’t a bad idea, hell it was probably a good one. It might even create an opportunity for escape if I worked quickly in certain areas. It would basically have to happen overnight. If it didn’t Lurks would know about it and nip it in the bud before it went anywhere.
Nodding slightly to myself I made up my mind. I waved David down as he passed close by and gestured to the table in front of me, not interested in trying to yell over the growing din of noise.
He said a few things to one of the men standing next to him. Someone I didn’t recognize. He was relatively tall, and like most of the other men, pretty muscular. He was bald, so no hair to make of and he walked around shirtless. He had a few tattoos that covered his body, some writing that read ‘The Brotherhood’ or at least the closest approximation of it in English, anyway.
I then froze. My head fully snapped over to the man and looked at his body and read the tattoo again. And again.
Huh.
I could read it. Why could I read it? I wracked my brain trying to figure out how I could all of a sudden read the common writing that people used. At least in the imperial and Seltas regions.
Was this another ‘benefit’ of Lurks occupying my mind? In return for her taking stuff from me, I gained something in return. I wasn’t sure, it was possibly the most likely thing. Our minds had spent a lot of time essentially occupying the same space. It would make sense if there was some bleedover from her side, bits and pieces of information. Maybe mannerisms or personality influences.
Or possibly an inherent understanding of a shared language? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know enough, and I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. I would take this as a blessing now that I didn’t need to spend several years trying to learn the language.
Truly a blessing indeed.
David sat down across from me.
“So? Whaddya want?” He asked casually.
“I’ve had time to think about the offer you made me the other day,” I started waiting to see if he remembered or had ‘conveniently’ forgotten the deal he had offered. He motioned for me to continue.
“I’d like to know a little bit more about what exactly you’d be looking for from me, but otherwise I’m interested in accepting.”
He nodded slowly, his face slowly morphing into a smile.
“I knew you’d come around. I knew you would,” He said gleefully, “Alright. So I’m not looking for anything ridiculous. This more or less would hinge on how much you yourself are able to produce in what time frames. There’s also Lurks we have to consider, no knowing when she’ll just abduct you for days or weeks at a time. But that will be a them problem.”
I nodded in agreement.
“So far, she hasn’t been particularly active in snatching me,” I said slowly thinking over my words, “But given the most recent time she did she holds onto me for days at a time. It’s… hard to tell how much time has passed with her.”
David shrugged, “How much time passes with her isn’t really all that important from a business perspective. In fact, taking up this opportunity might make her a little more reluctant to grab you or even hold on to you for any amount of time, given that you’re more than likely to endear yourself to some of the soldiers and cooks.”
I thought about that for a moment. I could definitely see where he was coming from with that.
But…
I shook my head, “No, that doesn’t really sound like her. In fact, she might just hold on to me longer just to spite the people that complain about it. Her personality, from what I can gather, is very… controlling. Abusive? Overbearing is a good descriptor.”
I shrugged, “It’s not going to scare me off, but I wouldn’t bet on her changing her mentality just because someone complains to her, I’d be impressed if any of them even bothered to bring it up to her. I know I wouldn’t want to be the one that did, on the off-chance that she took offense to it she’d make you wish she just killed you instead.”
David grimaced at that and leaned back in his chair with a sigh, “Yeah, I guess you’re right on that front. She doesn’t really seem like the type to back off of anything. It was a thought, not a good one though I guess. Ah well. No offense, but it’s gonna be a problem you’re going to have to deal with. I can’t really help you there.”
His eyes flicked across my face searchingly, probably trying to probe my mood and how I reacted to what he said.
I wasn’t upset by that, it was just the reality of the situation. An unfortunate one, but there wasn’t much either of us could do about it.
I just gave him a self-deprecating smile, “Yeah, not much we can do there. I’ll just handle it as it comes up.”
David stared at me for a moment longer before giving me a firm nod.
“So I guess the next thing we need to hash out is how much do you think you can reasonably make? I know you’re already doing stuff for Jolene,” He said gesturing to the baskets currently being made, “How much extra do you think you can handle?”
I glanced at the baskets that were slowly starting to pile up and hummed thoughtfully.
“Honestly, not all of this needs to go to Jolene. I haven’t been consistent in my making of them, I’ve just been kinda creating a stockpile for them. If I did it more consistently I should have enough to push out for everything. How much are you looking for? Use one of these baskets for reference.”
“Hmmmm…” David tapped a finger to his chin as he looked at it and thought.
“I’m thinking maybe fifty or so baskets a week? You seem to have a pretty good capacity for making them reasonably. While you could probably make a hundred with a little work, the idea is that we kind of want to create an even further artificial scarcity. We can make the same amount of money for less effort. At least until your production ramps up.”
Fifty. That was a decent amount, but at the same time not as much as I had been thinking. It was a good amount, in all honesty, we controlled the market so artificial scarcity didn’t really exist as far as I was concerned. We could dictate any price for the goods.
Yeah, I think I was fine with this.
“That sounds fine, I can do that.”
David smiled, “Excellent, how long do you think it would take you to get that all prepared?”
I ran some extremely simple math in my head, I was currently able to make around 10ish baskets in an hour. So five hours or so of work. Give or take an hour.
I said as much to David.
“Perfect, go ahead and get started on that whenever you finish what you want to make for Jolene.”
I glanced down, I already had a little over ten baskets for her. That was more than enough. I had also received several notifications that I had pushed out of my mind. I could worry about those later.
“I think this is enough for her, I’ll go ahead and get started on it now,” I said to him.
He just nodded, “That works for me, get in touch when you finish. I’m going to start working to get this up and running for us.”
I nodded at him as he stood up and walked off.
I wasn’t entirely sure how exactly he planned on going about setting this up or how he would prevent the soldiers from just taking what they wanted from us, but that was a his problem to worry about. I had my own objectives that I needed to handle right now.
I leaned back with a sigh and stretched, letting out a long groan as my tense muscles loosened up slightly.
Just as I was about to stand up Max and Kayla appeared next to me.
“Hey, Alex!” Kayla greeted me energetically as she practically bounced over to me.
Max was much more sedate in his approach, raising a hand in greeting.
I smiled, “Hey.”
Kayla frowned, “That’s it? Just ‘hey’? Nothing else?” She asked.
I just raised an eyebrow at her as Max just gave her a look of exasperated amusement.
“Well… since you’re offering,” I drawled, “you can help me take these baskets to Jolene so she has some stuff to work with.”
Kayla sputtered as Max just laughed. Eventually, she resigned herself to helping me grumbling a little bit, but she had a smile on her face the entire time that she struggled to hide. It was kind of cute on her.
And for the first time since I’d been here I thought to myself,
‘Maybe it’s not so bad.’
