The Beauty of the Night

Beautiful Gaze

Two months had passed with Morgan in the blood dens, and her body showed the evidence of time. What had been soft was now hard; her legs were thick with muscle, her glutes more firm than she could've ever achieved at a gym. Her abdomen was tight and drawn in, her chest strong so that it lifted her breasts higher than before. She'd grown strong, and quickly, because she had to. She had to become a fighter lest one of the others smell her weakness and prey on her like she had witnessed many times over.

The dens were a savage place. Here, the kazor dominated, the women were the most savage of all. But there were other species too, who fought bravely  for their place in the dens.

Every day was the same. At dawn, the women would leave the caverns, armed with only a hunting knife. They would be released into the thick wood. You could only eat what you could kill in the hour. Morgan had gone hungry for several meals, watching longingly as the women around her would bring back their hunt, from rabbits to deer to a large animal named vrole. But Morgan had learned. And after weeks of learning, she went hungry no longer.

After breakfast, there was a brutal training; from fighting, to wielding weapons, to hunting. There was no shortage of opportunity to spill blood and gain bruises. But Morgan learned. She had to.

The evenings were a different sort of beast entirely. When they didn't have to hunt, they were fed rich and hearty meals. On these days, the Kral prowled among them, taking them in with those midnight black eyes. The women primed and puffed under his gaze, trying to offer their best view to him. Though his visits were random, they always seemed ready for him to arrive: freshly showered with clean hair plaited into intricate styles around their head, smelling feminine and inviting.

But it always felt to Morgan like he was watching her. She had learned the feel of his cold gaze almost by instinct now. From the moment he entered the cavern to the moment he left, it always seemed that his eyes remained pinned heavily on her, watching each movement she made with a careful gaze that conveyed nothing but pure empiric observation. And it wasn't in her head. Others noticed too. And it made them hateful towards ber. Cruel.

She didn't understand his attention and she didn't want it. And slowly, over the two months, her discomfort morphed into annoyance, and that into anger, and anger birthed hate.

But the den taught her to school her emotions, to keep a blank regard and an even voice no matter what provoked her. Any less was weakness. And the War Planet Zix did not tolerate weakness. So when the Kral looked, when he stared, Morgan steadfastly turned her back, and kept her emotions veiled.

After dinner, different instructors descended into the den, these less hard than the morning fighters. They were Xoix, a genderless species that had spindly bodies that they kept wrapped up with layers of linen until all that could be seen of them were their eyes. They taught of politics, of science, of history. They taught maths, about the economy, about their culture and their relationship to Zix. The others hated these lessons, and often made their discontent known with snarky comments and childish interruptions. But Morgan loved them. She looked forward to them, and would eagerly consume every bit of information shared by the Xoix. When the Days of Testing came around at the end of each fortnite, she would score highest in the subjects taught by the Xoix. Higher than anyone else.

And why shouldn't she love them? It was through these courses that she came to understand how her body was healed so thoroughly after her crash, how it was reconstructed from what had previously been a bloody mess. She learned about neural networks and how they could be manipulated to share information, which is why she was able to speak the three most common languages of Zix without a forethought when she emerged from her healing sleep. The courses bought meaning to her dark days in the dens, so she cherished them.

At night, Morgan was left alone. Erasi, at the first realization that Morgan was weak, steadfastly ignored her. So she was totally alone. Other women had made friends or lovers and slept in groups to share their warmth or to keep watch over the others in case an enemy decided to strike under the cover of night. But Morgan, without friends or companions, slept alone. After a time, she came to prefer her solitude. In those moments she would think, and remember. She always thought of her parents first, forcing her mind to recall the memory of their faces and trace every line of them so she would never forget. Even though with each night that passed, it became more and more difficult to recall the details, she remembered her parents faces. Their voices. The way they smelled. Then she planned. She didn't know exactly what came after the blood dens, but she knew that at the end of this period she would have an opportunity to join the society on Zix. She would jump at the chance. And she would use her new citizenship to race to the capital and demand that the Xoix send her back home, back to Earth. And if they refused, with her well trained strength and heart of steel, she would snap their necks until they did.

The thought of going home always pleased her enough for sleep to claim her slowly, creeping up from her toes until it finally made her eyelids heavy. But every night, without warning and against her will, the last thing Morgan saw before sleep claimed her was those eyes. Those midnight black eyes.