When she finally awoke, everything upon everything ached. She was an athlete, no stranger to falls and bruises and even breaks…this was somehow worse. Inside and out; so many small wounds they grouped together into one all encompassing cloud of throbbing pain.
Asphaella opened her eyes after a few minutes of holding them closed, feeling miserable. When she opened them, she didn’t feel much better.
She was in a cell, like a vintage circus animal, somewhere in the dimly lit aisles of what seemed to be a warehouse.
Ghostly echoes shifted around in the half light, footsteps and voices approaching and receeding. As she looked closer, she realized that the place was from another era, something out of a history book. But different somehow. Not quite medieval, not quite industrial, a scene from a time that had never quite been…or so she thought.
Eventually, a whirring grinding clanking sound came into her hearing, and then got louder and louder, closer and closer. Finally she saw it. A clumsy looking sort of mannequin on bicycle wheels, pushing a rolling cart laden with what seemed to be food trays. The automoton stopped at her cell, grinding to a halt, and with jerking motions punctuated by some puffs of steam managed to pull a tray off the cart and insert it through a slot in the bars. Without a word or noise or closure of any sort, it trundled off down the aisle, fading eventually into silence.
She pulled the lid off of the tray. It looked tolerable, against expectations. Fresh looking vegetables, and some kind of appetizing meat drenched in aromatic sauce. Having little choice, she began to eat.
A few days passed in this manner, at least so far as she was able to guess. There were no windows, and her cellphone had fallen from her pocket as she was dragged and carried throught he forest. At times, groups of figures would approach, communicating amongst themselves in languages she couldn’t hope to decipher. They would gaze at her, point, converse, then leave. Some were quite short, some quite tall; some seemed to be mostly animal, some might have been automotons like the one that served her meals. None addressed her, all seemed to treat her like some kind of product to be haggled over.
Slowly her dread grew. Sure she was being kept in reasonable health by the reasonable food, but there could be no mistaking it- she was a slave of some sort. She was being bought and sold into who knew whose hands. What fate awaited her? She almost hoped no one would be interested, and she could stay here at least as a prisoner.
