"You really aren't from around here, are you?" Merle questioned, daubing a wet cloth against Vanessa's swollen, bloodied face. "Beating up the master's son, stealing a tomas…you're lucky the Tambers are so forgiving."

Vanessa scoffed, shifting uncomfortably against the wall. The magnetic strip in the wall was now active, and she was stuck by her hands, behind her back.

"Really, Ness, your attitude will have to change! The nerve! I'll tell you, uglying up this face won't help you none!"

Tilda nodded as she cradled the middle-aged, crying Dax. The woman looked so confused. "The Tambers will protect you until you die, Ness! Just do as you're told; you have a long life of food and water and shelter and protection ahead of you, but you want to throw it all away like that?"

"Poor little Luke!" young Yola exclaimed.

"He wasn't taking me to the main house, he took me to a barn! He tried to rape me!" Her voice cracked, and she closed her eyes tight, muttering, "Why do they do it? Always, they-"

"I thought it was a little early to go to the master's house," Merle murmured, as she stopped cleaning Vanessa and went to lay on a cot.

Yola smiled, blushing. "That Luke, he's a cute one," she offered, dreamily.

Vanessa was too busy rocking slightly and muttering to herself to notice.

"So you won't tell us where you're from, tell us, now, Ness, darling, who found you?" Tilda asked warmly, changing the subject.

Jerked back to reality, Vanessa's anger rose again. "Vince," she grumbled, tilting her head back against the metal. "And wouldn't you know it, he tried to rape me, too! And he kidnapped me and took me here…bastard-"

"Vince?" Arletta chimed, eyes wide. "But he got exiled!"

"Not anymore, Arletta, hon," Tilda corrected her. "He made it back, them's the rules."

Vanessa turned to look at her, questioningly.

"Oh, you don't know how any of this works, do you," Merle sighed, exasperated, from her cot. "Luvre Vince did crimes, he stole cattle, three of them, and so the Council sentences him to exile. That's when they take someone out to the desert with nothing, to just die. But if you make it back, alive, you get pardoned."

"What does someone have to do to get marooned like that?" Vanessa asked.

"Maroon?"

"Exiled," Vanessa rephrased.

"Something bad. Like stealing a lot of food or supplies or cattle, or hurting somebody real bad, or-"

"But that's if you're free!" Yola interjected, reading Vanessa's expression with horror. "That don't apply to you, Ness, oh no!"

Tilda nodded. "We don't get trials, we get the clan's say. Tambers, they're real generous people, real forgiving. But if you do something real bad, that's like to be the end of you."

The room went silent. All began finding their cots, save Vanessa, who didn't have that option.

"You're so lucky, Ness," Yola whispered to her just before turning in. "Please be good, now. We like you; you'll like it here, promise!"

O

O

Vanessa and the other slaves underwent the lockdown for five days solid, let out only to work. She always went with Yola to work on looms, but was told that the others did wash and tended to livestock. Remaining very quiet and calm, Vanessa watched Yola's weaving instructions with a studious eye, unable to help due to her cuffs.

Yola had a big mouth, and had told her about so many details of settlement life, thusfar. Everything came with an overly optimistic spin, but Vanessa smiled and nodded along.

On day six, their slave quarters, number nine of eleven, would remain unlocked, and her own cuffs would be changed for the smaller ones, freeing her up unless she should 'slip' again.

Scanning the room on the fifth day at the looms, Vanessa interrupted Yola's gossip. "Do you know the history of this settlement?" she inquired.

Yola's rosy face nodded as her eyes never left her work. "If you mean like, as in, why people set up here? Well, um, as I was told, there used to be a lot of people here, but these great ships, they came to take everyone away, lots of years ago. And all the folk that got on the ships, some people say they were bad folk, guilty of living off the angels, and that's a pretty bad thing to do in the eyes of God. So those people left off to Hell or wherever, leaving our ancestors here. The ones that stayed, some of them were criminals who were afraid to go to the ships, criminals that some of them were all deformed and weird looking and such. And most of the people that stayed, they were of a religion that worshipped the angels, that they called Trees or something like that." She could think of no more to say, and simply smiled dreamily to herself. Noticing finally that Vanessa's face was downcast and serious, Yola stopped her work to lean closer. "You didn't do sins on the angels, did you?" she whispered, eyes wide.

"I don't think so," Vanessa snapped, incredulous. "Life would've been easier if I did, huh?" she joked nervously.

"Oh, yeah, that's true, I heard it's easier to live off the angels, but you burn in Hell if you do, let ALONE if you go NEAR one. So we live like this, God's folk, waiting for the angels to bless us. All you gotta do is be good and do what you're 'sposed to, and they'll bless you, when you die," Yola continued, returning to her work and a louder volume of speaking. The rhythmic sounds of her loom became in beat with the other women's. "Angels are nice and pretty as could be, and I can't wait to see 'em!"

Smirking with a little poorly-hidden disgust, Vanessa nodded slightly. "Me too."