Sasfsets was cooking again.
The round, wooden belly of the skimmership was heavy with a fog of spices and oils. Danacha had never eaten like this before. In truth, her owners had been Brinnelanders, and everything they had was savory and straightforward. In truth redoubled, her owners had not fed her the best of their meals, and so "fine cooking" was an unimagined luxury for the longest periods of her life. In truth final, she was not sure how to feel about it.
It was not just that dadal cooking was spicier than fetrad. Her native people adored spicy foods. She had been told, at least. Her native people would eat mouth-burning peppers stuffed with thick sour cheeses and fermented jams. She had been told. At least. But it was the quality of the food itself. It was that Sasfsets herself made it. It was that she shared it.
Danacha's people had a saying. When something seems to not align, it is your own perspective of it that has failed. Or. Or at least. She'd been told her people had once said that.
It had been easy to ignore. The worm-mark on her body siphoned off her hurt and her pain, and made quiet existence and inertial acceptance so simple. And yet her concern had grown too large for the worm to eat. And so, standing awkwardly at her owner's side as she cooked on obliviously, stirring and humming, Danacha broke an old rule she was not yet even sure her new owner followed.
"Mistress," she started, politely.
"Yaya?" Sasfsets yapped back idlyly, her attention wholly on the thickness of the curry.
"Would you not--prefer my cooking instead? You already do so much."
"Yaya," Sasfsets repeated. "I'm sure your stodgeface owners were happy to sit about in their thickest chairs and toss you about while they got fat and doughy. I, however!" Out came the ladle, dripping, spraying fragrant oil in a dramatic swoop, pointing reassuringly at Danacha, "I, however, have no designs on becoming bread. Honesty could you imagine me as a parent."
She tittered at something Danacha wasn't sure she understood and continued to tend to dinner.
"… yes, mistress," Danacha said awkwardly. Had the conversation been stopped? Had she anticipated her questions and denied them? Or was it true foolishness to ascribe that much forethought to her… owner? "Mistress, I have been thinking of something. It has grown heavy in my soul, like some navigator's pearl, and I--I would be very--"
"See this is what I hate about Brinneland dicks," Sasfsets interrupted. "Even in the Golden Kingdom the stripes talked themselves up but only in Brinnesch can you say that many words and not get out anything worthwhile at all. The brown banner fell, don't be polite, say what you got. Holding it in gives you cramps every kid knows that."
It was impossible, Danacha thought, that her owner had thought anything out nearly as much as her previous owners had. As much as Danacha was, right now. Sasfsets must simply have not given their situation any thought at all. "Mistress, you saved my life."
"Yeah! Yeah did it take you that long to realize it are you on a lag? Oh jeez that was like a hi'alda ago oh no you have so many conversations to catch up through."
Was she making fun of her, Danacha thought? By now she couldn't imagine Sasfsets was hiding some reprimand in these words. Was there anything below the surface of her soul at all? "--you. No. Mistress, I. Uhm."
"If you need to take time, take it, that's the neat thing about time every second you take there's another one imagine if that was like that for a samosa or something. Or bullets? Oh no if you make me choose between infinite fingerfood and infinite bullets I'm gonna regret them both eventually. Which one would be a fatal regret?"
She had to go for it. "Mistress, they were going to hang me because of the worm that lives within me. You argued for my life, and when you failed, you rescued me anyway and fought our way free of my former owner's estate."
"Aha, aha. If you gotta think out-loud to get there too that's cool don't let my prattle discourage yours."
"The things you said in my defense--they still echo in my soul's ears. On the merest breeze of the Ocean you risked your own life for mine. It was heroic."
"Yeah a good adventure."
"But. Since then. You. I am still your slave. I carry your effects, I perform your tasks, I attend to your--needs. Mistress I worry that--perhaps you do not--have not thought through the entirety of the situation, each angle considered in turn. The inconsistency of your rescuing me, only to recollar me--the call for my freedom, followed by, continually finding--uses for me--"
"Is this going to be finished before dinner? It's got… a shortglass left, I think. Well then it has to simmer. But are you going somewhere? Because boy do coastal get upset when you just hang out near the dockrows and not actually move the line along." Sasfsets looked up at Danacha, her curious, silly little face holding no reproach or judgement, as if this were simply a game that she was growing tired of waiting to see the twist of.
"You think of yourself a hero in saving me," Danacha said, surrendering herself to delivering the point, "but you've merely enslaved me again, and made me subject to your whims."
"Aha?"
"… it's contradictory. I thought--perhaps you didn't realize that--"
"So my people are from Escalihax," Sasfsets said, returning to the curry. "Half, at least. You see, Brinneland was formed when the fetradden of Hoalhorm and the gemeren of Gammerlern decided they'd work well together. They were right! Hoalhorm liked to think itself very honorable, very impressive, and Gammerlern was up its own ass with philosophies. Combined you get a nation of people obsessed with heroes and ethics, good and evil. Escalihax, though, see… that was dadali."
She was giving Danacha a history lesson? She already knew this history. She wasn't so woefully uneducated. Did her owner not understand the concept of context itself?
"Early on we found the aventeri, and we thought, hey, you're all patient and enduring but kind of, you know, what's the word. G'lotton. Languid. Yeah. Languid. So dadal motivation and aventer work ethic combined, and even then we needed to run into the letraxi--the birds, you know, I'm sure you've seen--and then, finally then we had some real thinkers in our midst. And even then? Bird thoughts. Social games."
"… yes, mistress. I don't understand, mistress?"
Sasfsets tapped her spoon on the pot. A sharp tink-tink-tink. "You got to build up to your point I get to build up to mine. It's gotta simmer I get it I get it. So my point is. You grew up around Brinnescher ideals. Heroes and ethics and we're talking Brinnesch now but that's just because you don't know Escalihaxim, and goodness would this be hard for you if you did, because you know what we never developed?"
Her sharp eyed, sharp-toothed smile was now aimed at Danacha like a weapon, and she felt her heart sink into the waiting black coils of not. "A word. For hero. For villain. For good. For evil. We don't even have those words! We have loanwords, equivalents… my Escalihaxim name is Nilivir. And. I? Me, Nilivir? I did not grow up even with a word for hero. Sasfsets, you say, isn't that a fellam-y name? Ah well you see DPREI was a joint Escalihax-A'abrin colony, and when those A'abrin slaves revolted oh we still kept the old culture. And what do we have in fellam, you ask? Heroes? Good? Evil? Yes!"
Sasfsets swung the ladle up in bold demonstration. "Yes! We had those words! And yet we had rigid class structures and countless generations justifying slavery so when you cut up all those ingredients and distill them to make me--Sasfsets, Nilivir, me, your charming and delightful owner! We reach the only taste our mouths can find which is that no. Danacha. I did not think myself a hero for saving you. I saw you. I wanted you. I claimed you. Now you're mine. I'm sorry you went so long misunderstanding the situation."
Breath was coming with difficulty to Danacha, short nose-gasps of the rich-smelling air. Her owner was not, in fact, simple. Misunderstanding. Misguided and in need of correction. She was possibly crueler than the last. Ah, ah no. Her appetite was gone.
"Why," Sasfsets said, sniffing at the pot and gently dropping a pinch of some bitter green spice in. "Did you think you were going to tell me being a slave wasn't fair, wasn't just, and I'd realize you were right and let you go?"
Danacha's throat was too thick with shame for an answer to find passage through.
"That's a pretty big yes hiding in that silence. It's okay, you grew up a slave, you weren't privileged like me oh I get it dear I get it. I'll help you sort out some thoughts, yes? Yes. You grew up Brinnelander. There, everyone's trying to get the good happy ending. All their stories end with 'And he reigned long and justly, until the peaceful last of his wakes.' That's what every asshole wants you to think but in two alba he got stabbed or poisoned or his wife ran off with a cuter nath or whatever. Dumbass Brinneland ideology, don't get suckered into it. Everyone's looking at the forever-horizon but the horizon don't move. Be happy where you are 'cause you'll only ever be where you are. You got this seed in you you want your happy ending but what then? Get off my ship and suddenly you need to eat, slave to hunger. People uplip you for being Voidy, slave to culture. Former slave don't have many skills slave to capitalism and the market and you think you can be free! Danacha!"
Sasfsets spun away from the pot in suddenly frightening dramatics, arms--all four, the auroral ones pulsing with earnesty--spread wide. "You are free! Everyone is infinitely free. Did you not ever realize? Everyone is infinitely a slave. My budget, local cultures, orders from above, family relations, politics, I am a slave! I am free! You are free! Do you need help knowing it? Do you?"
Danacha was at an utter loss. "Y--Yes!?"
"Slave! The forever-horizon is infinite in every direction! Sneak off the ship when I'm not watching you! Make friends with one of my enemies and have them rescue you--or kill me! Kill me yourself! The Void is wrapped deep in your muscles! Kill me and take the ship and become free! My arms are Auroral, you wield my antithesis, one snake-bite, a single strike! How simple! A happy Brinneland ending waiting, one murder away! Is it even murder if I own you? Isn't it heroic to kill me? Aren't I the villain for enslaving you, for putting you to firm, hot, shameful use?"
Was she--was she inviting it? It wasn't that Danacha couldn't--on a purely physical level, she could kill Sasfsets. She had seen her pilot the ship. She could do it? Unlock this awful collar, never wear anything around her neck again? Never be ordered to--satisfy--
"You're considering it!" Sasfsets was smiling, the insane thing, smiling. "There we go. Dig it up. Dig up the infinite freedom every living person has at all times! Use it!"
She truthfully was considering it, Danacha realized. The resentment she had, to Sasfsets, to her previous owners, to all owners, to all people, boiled within her, a heated emotion the worm usually ate from her, but this was boiling, unedible, and so the worm rose out of her body, black serpents uncoiling from her muscles, rearing up, and how simple it would be to lash out and take this lesson to true heart--
"Yes!" Sasfsets chittered delightedly. She reached her auroral arm across the stove, beyond it, returned with something that passed into her fleshy hand and--that--was a gun. "You want to kill me right now and you can do it! Or maybe I put a corpse-gold bullet through your skull and you disappear from yourself forever! Infinite choices! Oh, see, this is the Escalihax philosophy! This is what I live for! The moment! This infinitely long tense moment! Will I fire first? Will you tear my soul apart with your little worms? Tell me we're not both utterly free right in this very living second. Danacha! What are you going to do!"
She was insane--Sasfsets was insane--wasn't she? Was she? Was she wrong in any way? And yet her gun was so very real. Danacha wasn't ready to kill. Danacha wasn't ready to die. "Please--please don't kill me--I'm sorry--"
Without a single care Sasfsets passed the gun back to her auroral hand and returned the gun to the far table. "Well, there you go. Tibi nit tivi you have about an equal chance of killing me as I would you, so don't think it's slavery, or me, or anything else that's keeping you here. It's you. It's your choice, now. Think that bad a choice? Because I am finishing some fucking amazing curry and since you didn't kill me you get to have some. And in the forever-horizon you're a slave, but oh wow in this spot right here? We're gonna be eating some amazing fucking curry. Don't tell me it's so awful to be a good girl, and set the table for me, so we can go nuts on this dinner right now?"
"N--no, no, mistress, it isn't. I will--set the table, mistress."
"Neat."
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