Indebted

34

As the truck rolled down the road, Esti quickly discovered that she did not like the strange tags with different languages and symbols written on them against her skin. There were more similar tags on the pants, and even the underwear. Esti hoped that wherever she ended up this evening would have a pair of scissors to start getting rid of the annoying, unneeded fabric tags. Her stomach rumbling, loudly once again. She was cranky and hungry, which made her mood a dangerous thing.

When she had last known hunger she had at least been alone, with only her mother to suffer her mood. The middle of winter when it had been cold, and Esti learned the hard way that her mother could not be trusted to ration supplies. Meera's own mood would inevitably worse than Esti's could ever be. Esti knew, this was one of her worst personality traits. But it was so much like her mother, that she didn't want to lose it. An invisible string connecting her to her mother no matter what happened between them, no matter the distance. 

Theo glanced into the mirror by the ceiling in between himself and Joe, "Not much father now." An attempt to reassure her. He was smiling. He had a nice smile. They were both handsome enough Esti guessed, but their attractiveness wasn't doing anything to catch her attention. They were more like art, a pleasure to look at, enjoy the beauty. Not much more. Her heart and mind were stuck on Atticus. 

Dark, complicated, and tangled so deep in her heart she wouldn't ever be free of him. She didn't want to join a thrall. She just wanted to know why Atticus had left her, why he still felt so happy as she got farther and farther from him. She felt like she was stuck in time until she understood how she felt about Atticus.

As promised, the truck slowed, a dull ding repeating, the blinker forewarning the turn from the main road onto a bumpy uneven parking lot. Esti didn't move when the truck came to a stop. Joe opened her door, looking down at her, his face shifting to a slight frown. He held up a finger, returning to the the front passenger door, opening it, and dropping open the glove compartment, slamming the inner storage area, then the door quickly returning to Esti and handing her a pair of dark sunglasses. Aviator style. "You should put these on." He suggested in a way that made it clear it wasn't really a suggestion.

Esti did as she was told, the dark lenses hampering her vision in a way she did not like. "Why?" She had never been anywhere but land under Magnus's direct control, had never been seen by anyone outside of court, it wasn't as though there was anyone to recognize her. Court had people coming in while she had been back at court, almost none had left.

"Your eyes." Joe and Theo said at the same time. Not making anything clearer to Esti, she had looked at her reflection in the glass of the truck window, her eyes were the same they always were.

They both said it with such conviction, and more eerily doing so at the same time, that Esti flashed panic that they were right and something was happening to her. Esti angled her face towards the large side mirror on the truck. She looked the same as she always had. Calming instantly, Esti did as she was guided and put the sunglasses on."They have always looked like this?" Esti said. No one had ever said anything about the color of her eyes.

Another of those loaded looks passed between the two dragon men. Esti's heart twisted, Atticus still only seemed to be glad that she was far away. Esti turned from looking at the clearly, madly in love couple, "Let's go, the sooner we eat, the sooner we can go wherever I am going?" Esti started off confident, confidence that withered as they paid attention and listened to her, until she had inflected her tone upwards like she was asking a question. Being near the mated dragons only highlighted the pain and confusion in her own heart.

She heard one of the two men make a sound she could only describe as a chortle, thanks to perhaps reading one too many century aged novels. She had certainly never actually heard anyone use the word out loud in her lifetime. "You sure this diner is safe?" Joe questioned Theo as they approached the door. Esti could see Joe looking at the back of her head in the glass of the door they were approaching.