The Fire Inside

Amoret

Mor was kneeling in front of the coffee table separating her from the therapist. On the table were boxes of pencils, markers, and crayons, resting on top of a stack of white sheets of paper. Miss Louise was on the other side of the table, watching her patient draw as she did the same.

Her task was to 'draw her feelings' about moving in with her family. Miss Louise had to teach her how to hold a pencil, but she was making due with it in a tight fist.

Louise glanced up from her paper to see what Kova had drawn. She had tried the talking method, but her patient seemed to respond much better to this exercise. On the originally pristine paper was a mediocre drawing of pansies, sitting on a table by a large, comfy looking bed. Over on the side, without any correlation to the other two drawings, was a tree decorated with ornaments and a little star on top. For someone who had never held a pencil before, the drawing was very well done. Kova started grabbing colored pencils, trying but failing to read what they said on the side. "What're you drawing, honey?"

She didn't look up from her paper. "My favorite things since I got here." She set down her purple colored pencil. "These are pansies, and that's my new, really big bed, and the tree I got to decorate..." She smiled at the picture. "I like it."

"It's very pretty," Louise said. "And how do these things make you feel?"

Mor thought for a moment. Looking down at the picture, she smiled. "Lucky."

"Why lucky?"

"Because. Look at all the nice things I have. I never had these things." She continued coloring the page. "I like flowers."

"I like flowers too," she answered.

"What's your favorite flower?" Mor moved to coloring the stem with a dark green.

"I like tulips. You'll probably see some this spring, when they change out the plants in the garden."

"What do they look like?"

"Like roses with pointier tops. Honey, can you look at me for a moment?" Louise waited for Kova to look up at her. "I want to go a little farther back now, let's talk about the trip you took when you and your friends got rescued. Did you know where you were going?"

Mor waited and nodded. "We were going to my old master's house."

"Okay. Do you know why they were taking you guys there?"

Mor looked away this time. "They were taking me back to him."

"Who's they, sweetheart?"

"The soldiers." She picked at her cuticles. "They were his."

"Why were all your friends going with you? Was he their old master, too?"

She shook her head, but instead of seeing the light gray walls with colorful pottery all she could see was the wooden floorboards of the establishment as they caught on fire, she and her friends all still chained to the wall. The soldiers had trekked in, grunting as they took their time unlatching all twenty-one of them. Mor couldn't help but rub her upper right forearm, where the burn mark had long healed.

There used to be twenty-one teenagers in the establishment, but in an attempt to hide any traces of stolen slaves the owner lit the place on fire, leaving them all to burn. Only seventeen came out alive.

When they identified her, they threw her in first and chained her to the most secure wall of the truck. If they returned without a generally unharmed Amoret, then it would've been their heads.

She looked back at the therapist. "No, they weren't his."

"So why were they there?"

Mor couldn't say the next word. Collateral. "Please don't make me talk about it."