Slave Till

I don't remember how long I've been here. Not in a way that matters. I stopped counting after the first hundred days. Or maybe it was after the second year. It's all the same now.

The sun still rises. The water still flows. My hands still hurt.

That's all I need to know.

My name is Joselyn Alveretta. Or maybe it was. I haven't spoken it aloud in six years. I don't know if it still belongs to me. No one here knows who I was. And I prefer it that way.

Now, I'm just another body among thirty. Just another set of shoulders pushing the lever that feeds water into this cursed land. The irrigation tracks stretch through the fields like cracked veins, and we pump them day and night. A wooden crank that turns with enough force to grind bones. It takes five of us to push it once. The others groan. Some cry. I don't make a sound.

I just push.

The sun beats on our backs like a second master. Our actual master watches from the porch of his rotting house with a pipe in his mouth and a whip in his lap. He doesn't speak much either. He just points when someone is too slow, or when someone drops from heatstroke, or when someone thinks they can die and be free.

No one ever gets free.

They just get dragged to the shed.

Or the hole.

There's no real morning. No true night. Just the shift between cold air and burning air. I sleep in the barn. My bed is a blanket so thin it feels like regret. My pillow is a folded shirt I stole from a dying man years ago. He didn't need it anymore.

I keep a sharp stone under the hay where I lie. Not for escape. I don't dream about escape. I keep it to carve tallies into the wall when I wake. I think it's a way of reminding myself that time still moves. Even if I don't.

Today is the same as yesterday.

Like every day.

I pull on my shirt, or what's left of it. Rags really. Tied at the waist with a bit of rope. My hands are calloused beyond repair. Blisters don't form anymore. Just cracks. My nails are black with dirt. My hair is longer than it should be, tangled and wild, clinging to my neck and shoulders like ivy. Sometimes I think of cutting it, but then I think: why?

My eyes are darker now too. People don't look into them for long. I've seen the other slaves glance my way, then turn away just as fast. As if something in me might reach out and swallow them if they stare too long. I don't blame them.

I avoid the mirror in the barn. Or maybe I've already memorized what I'd see.

There's a girl here. One of the few faces I've known since the day I was taken. She was in the same cage as me back then. I remember the way she shook. The way her knees knocked together, and how she hid her face in her elbows like it might make her disappear.

She still talks to me.

Not every day. Not like a friend. More like a shadow trying to make sure its owner still exists.

She sits beside me during the noon break. Her name is Eilistra. I only know that because someone else said it once. I never asked.

She's small, like someone who was never allowed to grow. Her hair is a dull, sandy brown, shoulder-length and always pulled back in a tie made from scrap. Her eyes are gray, not silver, not stormy, just gray. Like wet stone. Her voice is thin and quiet, barely more than a breath.

She only talks when no one else is nearby.

"I had a dream last night," she murmured once. Her fingers picked at the grass beside me. "You were there. You smiled."

I didn't respond. I kept my eyes on the sky, counting clouds. One. Two. None of them looked like home.

"You don't remember me, do you?" she asked another time, a week ago maybe. Or two days. It doesn't matter.

I remembered her.

She offered me half of her bread during the first winter here, when food was cut in half and everyone starved. I didn't take it. But I remembered the shape of her fingers, and how she tucked it beside my elbow when I wouldn't move.

Sometimes, she just sits. I think she's comforted by the silence. Maybe that's why she likes me.

We don't need to lie to each other.

We don't need to say "it's going to be alright" or "maybe this year the master will sell us to someone kinder."

We both know that won't happen.

Every day, I pull the lever. Then the next one. Then another.

I carry buckets if I'm told. I sweep ash from the outer barn. I scrape fungus from the troughs when the master's wife has guests.

When people fall and don't get up, I don't stop.

They beat a man to death last month for spilling a pail of water. I didn't blink. I used to flinch. Now I don't even register it until later, when I'm scraping blood from the planks.

There's a boy who cries at night. A young one. Too young to be here. Eilistra hums softly until he sleeps. I lie with my eyes open, watching the rafters, thinking of nothing. I try not to dream. When I do, it's of fire.

Sometimes I see Lucia and father in them. Telling me to wake up and go back. Go back to Paradise to rebuild it. Better and stronger. But… I just can't.

Sometimes I don't dream at all. It's just a black void of agony and despair to me.

I haven't said a word since Paradise fell. I think if I tried now, it would come out wrong. Like gravel. Or not at all. There's no need to talk when you have nothing left to say.

When the rain comes, we work in the rain.

When it freezes, we bleed from the joints.

When the sun returns, the cycle starts again.

I think Eilistra knows something about me. Not everything, but enough. Maybe she sees how I never complain. How I never twitch when someone screams. Maybe she saw the crown I once kept buried in my pocket, until it rusted and fell apart.

Now I only have a single button from the robe I wore the day the world ended. I don't touch it. I just keep it with me.

One day, the fields will flood. Or the house will burn. Or the master will die choking on his own fat.

Until then, I'll push the lever.

I'll carry the buckets.

I'll sleep in the barn with my eyes open, while Eilistra talks softly beside me.

And maybe one day, I'll remember how to live again.

But not yet.

Not today.

Today is just another day.