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This story was first and foremost inspired by a friend of mine at the time by name of ChibiXzaide. The original concept of Kiros was hers, as well as the idea of Irkens in slavery. It was her dream that I based this on. Though we've fallen out and I continue to write this independently, I still want others to acknowledge that she is the creative genius behind this. I wouldn't have written any of this if not for her.
Given the opportunity, I took a good, long shower, making sure I was so clean that I didn't doubt I could walk into a sterilized room without going through processing. I had never taken a warm shower before that I could remember, and I found it to be an experience that I would have liked to extend, but for the fact that the liquid running out of the showerhead was getting cold, and in that unpleasantness I was forced to cut my time under the running 'water' short. After I had stepped out into the slightly dryer portion of the plainly decorated bathroom, wet and dripping all over the rug but feeling good, I took a towel from where they were kept on the rungs beside the bath. I vigorously dried off, just taking absolute delight in the clean feeling I had. It was so strange, that feeling, but so invigorating… it seemed as if any worries looming over me were diminished and just no longer important anymore, as long as I was clean, dry, and warm…
It'd help if you were clothed, too…
Of course, at thinking that, I glanced over to my old clothes and my bag, which I had set to the side, making a face to myself as I thought of that grimy, tattered material even touching my clean skin. It just wasn't something I wanted to be happening, so I allowed my eyes to shift to where I had thrown down the clothes that Maya had given me. The crumpled material in the corner looked very clean compared to what I had just been wearing… so unlike the clothing of my former master that it seemed nearly unreal… And even better, I found as I lifted them up to study them more closely, these clothes, though a bit bigger than I would have liked them, looked like they would fit me well enough. I grinned to myself slightly; my old clothes I had had to grow into, as I had only gotten one pair for the year and they had been a lot bigger than I was…
Without any more hesitation than I had already shown, I took the T-shirt and jeans and slipped them on, making very certain that they were as comfortable as they were going to get. The unfamiliar material felt odd against my skin, much thicker than the nearly nonexistent strands of the ratty things I had been wearing, and in a way I found it uncomfortable, as if I was wearing more than one layer of clothing. But with a long, quiet sigh I took my mind off it, moving to study the rest of the room.
It was an odd room, the bathroom. Colored a pale yellow for the walls that could be painted, and set up with a sink and some cupboards, besides the obvious toilet. In fact, it seemed almost creepily bare of any decoration whatsoever. I wondered briefly why there was no customization in the place… not way to make it seem a bit more familiar to the one that owned it, but of course conceded to my own common sense that kicked in not a moment later; for all I knew, the room blared it's ownership. I couldn't be one to judge, and didn't particularly want to be.
Suddenly, in a bout of spontaneous, almost playful vanity that had appeared out of nowhere and, I had to admit, surprised even me, I walked over to the mirror that was set up lengthwise on the door, utilizing the towel that I had set to the side while getting dressed to wipe away the moisture from the reflecting surface. As that was finished, I paused a moment, just staring into it, my eyes being reflected back at me with all their hypnotizing life that I had been caught by… how long ago was it? A few days, a week? It was hard to judge the time since I had escaped… But pulled back from such close investigation, feeling very self-conscious but daring, I moved to strike a pose before it. It felt very silly, with my legs splayed and an idiotic grin on my face as I crossed my arms, but it served it's purpose well enough, and I found that I had to fight to keep myself from laughing quietly at how ridiculous I looked. The baggy clothing hung off me rather noticeably, the pants a good five inches too long, very nearly hiding my feet, now unshod in any type of covering whatsoever, from view. I watched myself with an nearly detached curiously as, in my reflection, my antennae rose up, and merely because of the fact that I could see it, I flicked one, and then wriggled both, a movement that was imitated in the depths of the mirror. I allowed myself the smallest, palest smile. I'd never had much experience with mirrors besides what I'd needed to drive, and with a mirror this size… Well, no one could blame me if I wanted to have a bit of fun.
Though… I thought, standing back and putting a hand in a consciously dramatic way to my chin in yet another pose, ridiculous as the other but almost addicting in the way I could see myself move, I am far too skinny to be healthy. I should eat something….
A bit surreptitiously, my eyes snuck fleetingly over to my ragged, tatty brown bag, my oldest possession and the one thing out of all the things that I had ever or would ever own that I knew I would always refuse to ever part with. Out of the corner of my eyes, I noticed the slightly movement in the mirror of my brow getting just a very light wrinkle in it, furrowing at the same time as my eyes narrowed, a thoughtful look if I had ever seen one. I had food there, in my bag. But it was likely almost too spoiled to eat by now, not even the cold of my wanderings having been enough to preserve it for too long, especially since the contents of my bag had spent most of the journey against me, warmed by the feeble warmth of my body. It was probably safe to say that any food in there was inedible or very close to it… so the only thing that was left to me to do…
…Is go out and ask her for it…
I immediately quailed at that thought, not wanting to leave the brief sanctuary of the bathroom to go and face a situation that I still had very little idea of how to deal with. Go out and face the human…? I already felt the itching tingle of cold fear settle like a lead weight in my gut, interestingly making any thoughts of hunger that I'd had fly away as if they had never been there. I didn't want to do it… Perhaps if I locked myself up in the bathroom, I would be safe from the looming confrontation, perhaps she would leave me be…
But none of that would change the fact that I needed food. I may have had enough liquid here, that was certain with the shower being able to spout Irken safe 'water'… but without any sort of food I would die just as easily as if I had continued on in the forest and let my supplies run out. A heavy sigh escaped my lips, and dejectedly I turned my gaze to the floor, feeling the familiar feather-like pressure against my scalp as my antennae fell down to brush against it, signaling as clearly as day that the idea discomforted me. There was a brief flare in the back of my mind of annoyance at them… even my own body was all too willing to reveal my emotions against my will, even when I would have much rather remained stoic and… and… I found myself unable to concentrate any longer, my annoyance too great to even want to. The air was getting stuffy, in any case, and that was as good an excuse to go out as anything.
My fingers found the doorknob, twisting and pulling the door back towards me with tedious caution, long years of instinct forcing me to attempt to remain inconspicuous. When nothing surprising presented itself to me, I sighed lowly, and suddenly found myself turning my thoughts inwards as I felt my annoyance abruptly shift it's direction so that it was no longer at my antennae, but at me. What was I, a Prince or a coward? If I was a Prince, as the title I had kept through the years said, then why wasn't I acting like one? With an angered movement, I shook my head almost violently at myself, squaring my shoulders and looking as determined as possible. Why did one female human, that probably couldn't match me in a fight if she tried, scare me?
I was letting myself be ruled by what I learned as a slave far too much, I realized. I should have let such feelings go when I escaped from that wretched place, but it seemed that even through countless days of trudging through the snow and reflecting on my victory it wasn't such a simple thing to do. But I wasn't going to let my own ingrained fear stop me anymore… I was no slave. I was not a slave! I was Prince Kiros, and I was free.
As I walked out of the bathroom, flipping the light off as confidently as I could manage, I was suddenly greeted by a sight surprising enough to make me stop in my tracks just a bare few steps out of the door, all my thoughts of going out and showing that I was no longer a timid slave forgotten. On the floor, laying not another pace before me, was one of the mattresses I had seen resting against the wall in the storage room right outside the bedroom, looking surprisingly clean and nearly new, with no lingering dust to speak of. Blankets were draped neatly across it, several layers of them, all seeming just as clean as anything else in the room. The sight of that, set up so carefully, managed to catch me off guard, and I found myself unconsciously searching the room for an answer, throwing my eyes this way and that, before my gaze finally landed and jolted to a halt on the somewhat shadowed form of the human girl, who had been reclining in her chair by the computer, her long legs propped up in what seemed to me to be an uncomfortable position on part of the desk. Her head was turned to look at me, probably having been that way since I had come out of the bathroom, I realized, and her abnormally large eyes reflected the glow of the computer screen. As she saw me look to her, her mouth slowly twisted into a small smile, the expression on her face what I guessed, against all my difficulty understanding it, to be sly, and I furrowed my brow, feeling the tiny muscles in my head lift my antennae up into the air.
"Um…?" the questioning sound escaped my thought before I had even thought of it, and I looked to the makeshift bed, and then back to her, unable to really finish my thought for the sole reason that I had no idea what my question would be. The human girl, however, answered in the same moment as she looked back to whatever she had been doing doing, a small smile flitting across her face so quickly that I nearly didn't catch it before her face was angled out of sight. If I perhaps hadn't been so curious for the moment, I probably would have shown some measure of offense at that, but as it was I felt far too off kilter to be bothered too much by her apparent amusement.
"Yeah, that's for you. I pulled one of the spare mattresses from the storage room and gave you some of my extra blankets. I know it isn't much… but I hope it'll do alright." She didn't say anything else, her eyes locked on the screen of the computer. Again, I glanced back at the newly set up bed, my thoughts more than a little skeptical on the idea that it could be mine as she said, but, figuring that there really wasn't much more to ask about it that hadn't already been answered, I turned my attention to watching the computer screen. In all my life I hadn't heard or seen much of computers, as back at the warehouses I hadn't been allowed anywhere near them, only seeing them from a distance and learning what I could from snatches of conversation overheard from the human workers. Being able to see one up close, and not only that, but a type of computer that looked new, was something very unusual, and I couldn't help but want to take full advantage of the opportunity.
It was a long moment before I had realized that, in my wonderment at the device, I had stepped up to stand behind the girl, and even then I was only alerted to the fact that she was so close by the sudden sound of her shifting her position in her high backed office chair. Instinctively, I flinched, a brief thought of jumping away surfacing in my thoughts, but my eyes were caught, and I couldn't back away yet without knowing what was there on the screen. Subconsciously, I could distantly feel her eyes on me as I read the words across the top of the softly glowing screen.
The Irken Rights Associates.