Perspectives

Chapter 14

Piper gasped as the booming sound of thunder echoed around her. She whirled around in a circle where she stood, shocked to find herself surrounded on all sides by thick metal bars. How the hell did I get here? Piper thought frantically. Her memories felt foggy, in fact everything felt foggy. The world around her seemed out of focus and distorted, and her body felt weightless. 

She winced as the thunder grew louder, shaking the metal room she was standing in. Each earth shaking boom was almost one after another. Since when was thunder so frequent? Piper realized the answer to her question too late--it wasn't thunder. 

Piper pressed her body up against the furthest wall as the massive shape slowly approached, each footstep creating a resonating thud. And then suddenly there they stood, their face staring in at her, filling nearly her entire field of vision. That's when it finally sunk in where she was; this was a cage, and she was somebody's lab rat.

And then suddenly, everything dissolved. Piper's eyes flew open, met only with more inky blackness. However, the stiff sensation in her back confirmed that this was not another dream. And yet, she had no clue where she was or how she had gotten there. 

Piper pushed herself up into a sitting position, rubbing tiredly at her face as she struggled to recall her last memories. I was watching a movie... Piper thought, I was laying in a bed next to him, next to Kalen. 

"Dammit." Piper cursed, slamming her fist down on the ground next to her angrily. "I can't believe I let myself fall asleep with a giant sitting right next to me!" She remembered feeling suddenly exhausted with the weight of her guilt. That along with the fact that her sleep in Kalen's bedside table the night before had been less than sound must have caused her to unintentionally pass out. 

As Piper's eyes adjusted to the heavy darkness around her, she began to make out the familiar shapes of the items that filled the drawer of Kalen's nightstand. "Great, I'm sooo glad I'm back here." She drawled sarcastically, shoving wrathfully at a nearby coin with the toe of her sneaker.

If she was here now, she must have been moved from the bed. This meant Kalen would have had to have picked her up WHILE she was asleep. Piper shuddered at this realization. Being held in giant hands was bad enough when she was awake, but being handled when she was unconscious and incapable of even attempting to prevent the action, that was far worse. 

Piper had never liked letting people see her sleeping. Not only did it just feel creepy having people looking at her without her knowing, but being asleep meant being vulnerable, something she absolutely hated to be. And being vulnerable around a giant was definitely 10 times worse. Not that she wasn't always vulnerable around him, but at least awake she knew what was happening to her.

Frankly, she was surprised she hadn't woken up during Kalen's manhandling. She knew from first hand experience that he was very far from gentle, recalling the memory of his vise-like fingers wrapped around her body. Piper rubbed her sore shoulders at the memory. She was certain that, were she to remove her shirt and examine the skin beneath, she'd find several bruises forming. 

Piper let out a long sigh as she flopped back down onto her back. It was evident by the lack of any booming footsteps or other ridiculously loud noises, that Kalen wasn't currently in the room. That was probably why he'd shut her away in the drawer again, wouldn't want her getting into trouble while he was away. Piper rolled her eyes at the thought.  

~

Kalen released a heavy sigh as he pushed open his bedroom door and stepped inside. The lunch with his father had been about as enjoyable as he had expected. His father had only attempted to make any kind of small talk for a very brief period of time before he launched into a long-winded spiel about how to best present information to the Sovereign Council. As much as Kalen had wanted to less than politely inform his father that he was well aware of how to behave around the Sovereign Council, he had remained almost entirely silent while his father rambled on. Starting an argument with his father was the last thing Kalen needed to be dealing with.