InkSkin

A Gift

Two Thousand years later

With a pain filled grunt, Alsuha fell to her knees, sharp jagged rocks biting into her flesh. She bowed her head beneath the shadows of the far off mountains, willing herself to stand before one of the slave-drivers noticed she'd fallen, again.

Please, give me strength. She didn't know who she asked anymore, but she asked all the same. She looked down at her thighs and noticed that another of her Inks was fading. The realization hit her like a fist to the gut and all her strength left her. She slumped down, her forehead touching the desert's unforgiving sands, and cried silently and tearlessly. She didn't know what would become of her if she lost her Ink.

Please, help me... please... The thought flitted in and out of her mind and she put all of her pain and anguish into it. Her Ink swirled across her skin violently. She knew she should be asking her Kyuumu for aid. She had called again and again yet he had not come. She had called again and again as she had been beaten over and over and forced into slavery for the past two thousand years. Still, he had not come and she had vowed somewhere along the way that she would never call again and with that vow, her Ink had begun to fade.

At first, she had panicked but as her Kyuumu remained absent she let her anger fuel her. But now, she was beyond anger; two thousand years is a very long time to be angry, and she longed for the comfort of her most sacred friend.

Please...

The thought was cut off as pain blossomed across her back. She had failed to hear the sound of the horse's hooves and the whistle of the whip as it flew towards her, but she felt it now. She dug her forehead into the soft cruel sands to keep from crying out. She had learned early on in the beginning of this hellish drive West that if she made a sound when one of the driver's started wielding his whip the more pleasure they seemed to derive from flaying the flesh off her back.

"Get up, you useless savage!" And she felt the sting of the whip and fire blossomed across her back once more.

Please...

Alsuha's mind came back to her slowly, its numbing safety slowly disappearing. Her body ached, and for a moment, she feared something was wrong with her arms and legs; she couldn't feel them, but the moment she shifted needles of pain shot through her numb limbs. She winced as the room's false light assaulted her eyes. She glared at the light bulb beaming down her. Why do Blands bother with electricity? The foreign word felt odd to her even in her thoughts. In the Pitts, only the Garrison and the Slavers' quarters had been equipped for electrical use and the Ink'd had never had any need of such a rudimentary form of lighting.

Alsuha moaned softly as she rolled to her side, and winced in pain when she felt the lacerations on her back split open. She tried to get to her knees, but her vision spun and she found herself laying flat on her stomach once more. Her arms and legs ached; her back burned.

"You should try not to move, Bonded; your wounds have traces of Ink based poisoning, which have impeded the rate of your healing."

Alsuha whipped her head in the direction the voice had come from and winced in pain as the gashes around her neck and shoulders opened up.

She stared at the woman who serenely sat in a chair beside her. She had a kind face, but Alsuha had learned the hard way that a kind face didn't always mean a kind heart. She did like the long white braid that fell across one plump shoulder and pooled in the woman's lap. For some reason, that single braid comforted her as nothing else had in a very long time.

"Are you going to stare at me like that all day? That position does not look at all comfortable." And she cocked her head to one side, a small smile arching the corners of her mouth.