You Are Made of Iron

Chapter IV pt. 5

​Zeilla woke up again sometime right before the sun was coming up; she figured that Skersha had healed her after all otherwise she wouldn't have slept for that long. Her master was still sleeping in his bed across the room and she now was in her usual pile of furs that her master brought back from the tanners again.
​Well then, she thought I should go make Silas his breakfast before he wakes up. The girl stood up but only managed to take two faltering steps before her legs gave out on her, and she fell to the ground, it seemed to her that she had been doing a lot of that lately. Zeilla picked herself up this time using Silases nightstand to lean on. After standing in one place for a while with no incident she tried to walk again. This time she got as much as the doorway without collapsing, however she did lean on the doorway when she reached it. Zeilla stayed there for a minute or two before hearing her master groan as if he was waking and she mustered the strength to get up again and walk into the kitchen. She started making breakfast, Zeilla put a frying pan on the stovetop, a tool that Silas had only recently acquired and Zeilla only used when it was necessary as she was unused to it. But Silas had come to liking scrambled eggs and the only way to make that was to use the stovetop. She went outside and walked up to the chicken coop and then she looked for eggs. They had five chickens, four hens and a rooster. They sometimes had chicks, but her master had her prepare a feast with baby chicken as the main dish every time that happened. Although Zeilla checked for eggs every other day, it seemed that her master had forgotten to do that several times in her absence and so there were several loose eggs that should have been picked up days before. Once inside, the exhausted girl pulled a chair up into the kitchen and sat down to rest for a moment, and before she knew it she was fast asleep again.
​By this time Silas had woken up and, swinging his legs over the bed, he got up and went to check on Zeilla who was obviously not in her corner. The man peeked into the kitchen –as much as a man of his girth could peek– and was surprised to see that the girl that he kept as a slave was asleep. This surprised him because it had not happened in a while. He walked towards her with a silent footedness that he had learned while hunting. The master of this little whelp had a twitch at the corner of his mouth, some could even go to the distance to say that he was smiling with fondness, before he could reach her, Zeillas eyes suddenly jerked open and the girl sucked in a breath of air, in the few milliseconds that it took the slumbering girl to focus her eyes; Silas Gruff had lost his smile and his expression changed into something more menacing, more of a glare than anything else.
​She jumped onto her feet, and then whined like a dog caught stealing a treat it wasn't allowed to have.
​"And how are you to explain yourself girl?" he growled.
​"M-master I'm sorry it was a-an accident, I was t-tired..." she trailed off with excuses as to why exactly she was sleeping, "I- I'll go make your breakfast now." She immediately scurried to the other side of the kitchen to get the frying pan out of the cabinet and then back over next to Silas to put it on the stove, several times through this process and the following one –actually making the scrambled eggs– Zeilla nervously avoided her master's gaze and eventually he left the room.
​After they had breakfast –or more specifically Silas had breakfast and gave Zeilla the table scraps of the food she had just cooked for him– Silas sat back and started talking to her, the girl sitting cross legged on the floor almost blew a relived sigh. Silas only talked to her when he was in an exceptionally good mood.
​"So, girl" he said cheerfully "to my count, isn't tomorrow your birthday?"
​The girl started, "Y-yes, it is. But how d-did you know that Did the King tell you?"
​"Zeilla you know that he didn't. He didn't even tell me your name, you did, and not all of it. No I figured it out myself; you're always acting a bit funny around your birthday. I just don't know why I wrote the date wrong, you most likely told me wrong."
​No, you most likely wrote it wrong just so you could say that. The girl thought, but of course she didn't voice that thought. And if she had, even while her master was in such a good mood she would most likely earn herself a sound beating. Skersha snickered thought.
​The rest of the day went as usual, Zeilla slowly shifted into her normal routine, serving Silas when he was there and cleaning, gathering, and making other things of his when he was not. She had already begun to forget the limited days of freedom that she had enjoyed so much.