Were all MAD here

The Trip

—Wren—

It had been five frigid hours, pink light beamed down on us from the sky as the sun-like orb glowed on the horizon. We had been crammed in this stupid cart forever, and my skin was pink with cold, my throat was dry with thirst, and my eyelids heavy with the burning desire to sleep. I had thought about it, but I was next to Charli, and she probably wouldn't have appreciated a drooling, collapsed Wren on her shoulder. And I couldn't swap places, because Feng might enjoy my unconsciousness a bit too much.

Besides, we were close. I could feel it in my blood. The unknown person still remained to hog the other side of the cart. They where chiseling the rust away with their nails to make little doodles, and had been doing this for hours, grinding sound scratching away at my eardrums. I was too tired to stop them.

The cart, sensing my inability to survive much longer, halted to a thudding stop. Jerking me onto Charli's lap. I sat up and brushed myself off. My spine ached from being moved for the first time in hours, it was hard to stand up knowing that I would need to move more, not to mention my legs were probably excruciatingly asleep, but, The Man hadn't stopped the cart since we got in and I assumed he wasn't giving us a bathroom break.

The Man forced us into a line, still on his fluffy monster, and pulled a sling of six shackles from his satchel. Only these weren't rusty, they were a shiny silver colour....They looked almost like Diane's collar back at home, only these seemed much more expensive and higher quality. He rode over to me, and fastened the cuff around my throat, it was tight and uncomfortable, and shone the sun-like beams straight into my eyes. He lined up the cloaked figure next to me, and they spat at his feet. He tightened their cuff a bit extra, pinching their pink throat raw.

The hood fell off of them, revealing a wavy waterfall of bright red hair, and dazzling emerald eyes, narrowed and catlike with thick black lashes shrouding them. The person had Feminine features and a heart shaped face, narrow nose almost not even there, a seemingly ancient scar breached across their eye, but did not have any impact on their beauty.

The man dropped the shackles, jerking down on my neck causing my legs to buckle. Charli and Feng stood there in silence, the man just lazily tied a rope around them, not even tight enough so they couldn't escape, but tied enough so it looked like he had put minimum effort. Feng muttered something along the lines of 'Where are my fancy neck bracelets? I am just as hard to contain!' Only to have Charli elbow him in the ribs. The man took hold of one of the other four cuffs and made it wider, then lovingly clipped it over his furry companion's skinny black wrist. He looked over at Feng and Charli, as if deciding if they would be worth it. He untied the rope and retied them over our chains, now it looked like they could comfortably move. Why hadn't he used the shackles for them as well?

He led us forward, to a big ivory gate, and pulled a key from around his neck, hooking it into a lock and opening it. Aside from this circled gate, there was nothing to see for miles around here, just cracked dirt and the occasional patch of grass.

"Here's how things are going to go." The man yelled in a raspy and broken voice. He took a swig from his flask of what I assumed was not water. "There are three very important men in there, interested in buying you two." He said gesturing back to me and the red haired teenager. "Disrespect them, and I'll be forced to bargain you off to the Queen. Who'll instantly slit your throat." I looked over at Feng to see his opinion, he had been here longer, right? Surely he would know what to do. Yes, he had probably been in this situation thousands of times. Feng stared back at me blankly. "As for you two." He gestured over at Charli and Feng. "I might just keep you guys for myself."

A silence fell over and the tension could have been sliced with a knife. None of us agreed to these terms, but what choice did we have? Maybe this wasn't such a bad thing though. Maybe this could be good! To catch the rabbit, I had to vanquish the greatest evil to get out of this place, right? The Queen did seem like a murderous tyrant. Easy to kill and still have a clean moral compass. And, this place needed a hero didn't it? A smile crept across my lips. Yeah, I was going to be the most imperfect, disrespectful, unkind girl I could be.