Chapter Text

Part One: Mud, Blood, and Hatred

Chapter One: Captive

"I think you're going to like this one," the trapper remarks as he carefully slides the net from his horse's back.

"Hm. I'll be the judge of that."

"Uh, yeah. Of course."

Despite the disinterest of the trader behind him, the young trapper smiles to himself. This has to be worth a lot. He's sure of it. Once untangled from the netting he drags his catch back to sit slumped against a tree, then steps back to allow the trader a full view, nervously running his hand through his short brown hair.

"A tribeswoman."

"Yes."

"Which tribe?"

"One of the North-Eastern ones. I don't quite remember the names…" He scrunches up his bright blue eyes, trying to remember what the traders call the local tribes.

"Coyotes? Smokestack?"

"Smokestack, yeah, that's it. She's from Smokestack."

That piques the man's interest. He crouches down beside the unconscious woman to investigate further, tucking a lock of loose hair that has escaped his ponytail behind his ear. Two patterned bands are tattooed crossing over each other just above the captive's right elbow, the black outlines of fire rising above them to lick at her shoulder. Her left palm is rough and mottled with pink. Some kind of black paste has been smeared under her eyes.

"Flame tattoos, burn scars, and charcoal on her face. Checks out. I don't think I've seen a Smoker caught before."

"Is that a good thing?"

"Well. We don't know how feisty their tribeswomen are. And we don't know how the rest of the tribe will react to this one's removal."

"...Oh…" The trapper shuffles nervously in the other man's piercing gaze. The trader almost laughs when he sees the look on the pale man's face. Must be a newbie, at least in this area.

"Do you know how old she is?"

"Not entirely certain. Twenties, maybe? But your guess is as good as mine."

"Small one, isn't she? Do you know anything about her? Skills?"

"Well, we found her out on her own with a wolf and a spear. The mutt ran off, though."

"A huntress?"

"Presumably."

He picks up the bone necklace resting on her chest, examining the large canine teeth strung on it. His eyes take in the feathers over her shoulders and around her ankles, the small pouch strung around her waist, and the fur that makes up her dress. It could all be worth something, in addition to the girl herself.

"She's not lame? No noticeable issues?"

"From where we were, looked like a perfect specimen."

He pulls back her lip to check on her teeth. Some yellowing, a spot of rot, but nothing worse than what's expected from a tribeswoman. No lice, from what he can see. Her eyes seem fine, and apart from a few scars she appears to be in good condition. Albeit being small her body is lean and fairly toned. She'll sell well. For a minute he pretends to be deep in thought, scratching his blond stubble.

"We'll take her. The spear too, if you still have it."

Negotiation is swift and the trapper is paid. It's not quite as much as he had hoped to get, but then again the trader didn't seem as interested as he had expected. He mounts his horse as said trader stoops to pick up the girl.

She's deposited carelessly on the rickety table near the centre of the camp. The trader selects a pair of pliers from a toolbox, pulls open the tribeswoman's mouth and extracts the rotten tooth he saw earlier. A few moments of pressure with a cloth on the bleeding gum, then he moves on to removing her accessories. The necklace, ankle cuffs, earrings, and hair tie are set aside in a box. Once the fang that serves as a toggle on her little pouch is undone he's slightly disappointed to find only flints and dry grass. Tinder, presumably. No matter; there are idiots back in his home country who will pay good money for knick-knacks like the bag. Dumping its contents out onto the ground, he packs it into the box too. Glancing back at the tribeswoman, his nose wrinkles. The fur can be dealt with later, if it's even worth anything. Filthy, singed, worn, and God it stinks. Somebody's going to have to dunk that girl in the river. But for now, he picks her up and sets off towards the empty crate he’s been keeping beside the cart.

Zazzalil's head hurts. It's never hurt this bad before, and she’s had some intense headaches in her time. The pain is the only thing that seems real; she feels almost like she’s underwater. Despite the grogginess she tries to curl herself up, but almost immediately pauses. The floor feels different as she pulls her limbs over it. Wrong. With a jolt of fear she realizes that she can't feel even the slightest touch of another human; Jemilla never gets up without waking her. Although she tries to open her eyes, the sudden brightness forces her to cover them. It's too bright to be morning, but why would she be waking up in the middle of the day?

"...Jay?" she eventually manages to mumble.

No response.

"Jemilla? Babe?"

She can hear people walking around and talking, but the words seem garbled and far away. There's an ache in her jaw too, and a brief investigation with her tongue reveals a missing tooth. That's… strange.

Slowly removing her hand from her face, she squints in the harsh light. She's not in their hut, she quickly realizes. She doesn't know what she's in, but it's small and enclosed and she immediately hates it. She sits up, bashes her head on the roof of whatever it is and begins kicking and pushing it. Her thoughts are racing. How the fuck did I get here?! Who shut me in this thing?! She’s too dazed to think of possible answers; all she can do is panic. But despite all her efforts, the structure holds firm.

Eventually she stops trying to break out, instead opting to check out her surroundings. The crate is constructed of pieces of wood with gaps in between, so she can easily look out. From what she can make out through the haze in her head, it seems to her like she's in another tribe's village. That can't be good; she's never had the best relations with the neighbors. What do they want with her?

It's only when she moves to push her hair out of her eyes that she realizes it's loose. Someone's taken her hair tie. Not only that, but somebody's taken her necklace, her earrings - everything but her dress. Her flint pouch is gone too. Whatever's going on here is, in her humble opinion, fucked, and she's pissed off.

"Hey!" She calls out. Nobody responds. Ignoring her, apparently. Glaring out at the camp, she begins to knock on the wood. Hopefully if she keeps the noise up long enough someone will get annoyed enough to acknowledge her existence.

"Hey!" She yells. "Hey, bastards!"

The tribeswoman's attempts to be annoying are... working. Unbeknownst to her, conversation between the inhabitants of the camp has turned to debating who's going to have to deal with her. Raising another hand to drum against the planks, she continues to shout words that nobody understands. What they can interpret, however, is that her grunts and yells are absolutely furious.

"For God's sake, will you shut that girl up?!"

"I’m not interested in starting a shouting match with her."

"She's probably just hungry."

"If she doesn't stop I'm going to go over there and bash her over the head."

After much discussion, a dark-haired woman breaks away from the group to approach the crates. The captive doesn't appear to notice at first, too engrossed in the sound she's making. The drumming and shouting has become rhythmic, more reminiscent of a chant than mindless noise. This comes as no surprise to those in the camp familiar with the area's tribes. Smokestack, as the trappers and traders refer to it, is known for many things. Music is only one of them.

"Dooo wat tata ta ta da," the tribeswoman chants, a snarl on her face, "doo wat tata ta ta da!"

The trader, though frustrated with the constant noise, keeps her face blank - not letting the captive know her plan is working. With one swift motion, she unhooks her weapon from her belt and brings it down hard through the slats of the crate onto the tribeswoman's arm. The chant stops immediately, drumming ceasing as she snatches her arms away. The shock is something the trader expected; the girl is used to primitive stone weapons. The sharp sting of the folded leather strap is unlike anything she ever would have felt before.

"Quiet," the trader commands. Holding her strapped arm to her chest, the captive tilts her head to one side. She doesn't understand the order, at least not yet; a dog doesn't understand the first time she's called to heel. But that can change. Though, from the bared teeth of this dog, the trader guesses it may take a while.

That's three things that hurt now, Zazzalil notes as she rubs her arm. It's nothing she can't deal with, though. It only takes a glance down to remind her of that. Patches of skin on the hand of that same arm are discoloured and twisted, and when that injury happened she just shook it off… and did it again. It took an age for her to even realize she was wounded. There were more pressing issues to worry about. She curls the scar into a fist. There are more pressing issues now. She was trying to get someone to acknowledge her and now here someone is, acknowledging her. Time to figure out what's going on.

"Who are you?" She growls. And near instantly the stinging is fresh again. The woman standing in front of her gives that same sharp word.

"Who are you?!"

The same result. Zaz draws a breath to ask again, but then pauses. Think about the consequences, Zazzy, she reminds herself.

"Who the fuck are you?" She demands. But this time her arms are carefully tucked behind her back.

The blow hits her leg instead. The word is repeated.

Zazzalil tries to back away as far as she can before speaking again, but the attack still lands. The crate is too small, there’s no way to protect herself, and all this trying to get out of the way feels too much like cowering. Even when caged, this woman will not be forced into cowering.

Shuffling herself forward and leaning her head against one of the planks, she stares up at the trader with the one eye that can see through the gap between the slats.

"My name is Zazzalil the Firebringer," she says as calmly as she can, raising her burned hand to point to her tattooed upper arm, "wife to Jemilla the Peacemaker. I am a leader to our great people. I demand to be released from this… thing and be given an explanation as to what the actual fuck is going on here!"

For a long moment neither says a word. The feathers adorning the Firebringer's shoulders gently rise and fall with her heavy breathing, her face threatening to twist back into a snarl. The leather strap taps lightly against the trader's leg as she stares down into that dark, wild eye. That outburst was indecipherable to her, but the tone was unmistakable. Making sure the tribeswoman sees, she hooks her weapon back onto her belt. She crouches to the captive's eye level and slowly reaches out a hand. The dark eye shifts down, and after a few moments' consideration the captive decides to accept what she assumes to be a sign of respect and offers her hand too. But she quickly realises her mistake when the trader grabs her wrist and holds it in an iron grip.

Chapter Text

In the cool shade of a tree, a juvenile wolf dozes with her huge head resting on her favourite human's leg. Keeri gently strokes her soft grey ears, humming to herself as she does so. She pauses as another woman joins her. The tribe leader sits down beside her but she seems distracted, staring out at the open plain.

"Are Zazzy and Howl not back yet?" Keeri asks, noting Jemilla's unease.

"No. They're not."

"She… she's been gone overnight before, right?"

"Yes, but she tells me when she's going to do that. Yesterday she said she'd be back in time for evening food."

"But she wasn't!"

"I know, that's why I'm worried. Would you mind waking Growl to send out a signal?"

"No, it's fine."

She leans over to address the wolf. "Hey, Growly girl," she says gently, scratching her fluffy head, "wakey wakey!"

The head lifts from Keeri's leg and lets out a great yawn. Her tail swishes over the dusty ground, sending up small clouds of dirt as the head scratches continue.

"Are you going to give us a big howl, Growly?" She says, "yeah, you are!"

It only takes a few howls from the women to coax Growl into her own howl. When she falls silent there are a few moments where another howl can be heard before that too ends.

"He sounds far away," Keeri points out disappointedly.

"Yeah. Well, at least now Zazzalil knows to come home quickly." Jemilla looks down at the wolf relaxing against Keeri's leg, and runs a hand over her silver back. "Thanks, Growl."

"Let go of me!"

The trader jerks on the chord she’s strung around Zazzalil's wrist, slamming her shoulder against the planks again. She attempts to brace herself on her free arm and pull back, but the woman will not yield.

"Stop!" She cries. "Please. Stop." She hates how scared she sounds. But of course that makes no difference. Her forearm may already be covered in colourful bruises, but that won't stop the trader from raising the strap again.

Zazzalil doesn't want to cry. But every time the weapon cracks against her skin it hurts even more, and the tears are pricking at her eyes in spite of what she wants. Okay, so maybe she's going to cry regardless of if she wants to, but she refuses to make a sound. Even when she can taste the salt in her tears and could swear there are flames dancing on her arm she refuses to so much as sniffle. She just closes her eyes and hopes this will end soon.

The captive gasps in pain as the woman grabs her arm, immediately clapping her hand over her mouth. She doesn't want to give her tormenter the satisfaction of knowing how much this hurts. The trapper slips the loop of string off her wrist and drops the arm. Instantly Zazzalil pulls her injured limb back into the crate, holding it out to inspect the damage. From elbow to wrist is bruised yellow and purple, with a darkened indent into the skin where the cord cut in. Wiping the tears from her face, she shuffles around to put her back to the camp. It seems the situation is far worse than she first thought.

Hooking the strap onto her belt, the trader watches the tribeswoman draw her knees up to her chest, shaking with the tears she's trying to hide. That will teach the girl to make demands.

"Hey, how's the training going?"

The trader turns to see one of her companions strolling towards the crates, hands shoved in his pockets.

"You bought a stubborn one. Well, stubborn or stupid."

Crossing to the other side of the crate, he crouches down to get a closer look at the captive. She looks up briefly from her arms, then covers her tearstained face again and grumbles something in an angry tone.

"Probably just stubborn," he comments. "She's from Smokestack, they're… relatively smart ones."

"Is that why you're so convinced that we'll make a lot off her?"

"Yeah. They're smart, usually have some sort of skill, and can sing and dance. She'll make a good worker and entertainer, once she's trained up a bit."

"Yeah, and cleaned up a bit. You know she stinks, right?"

"Wish I didn't, but yes. Thought it was just the fur at first, but look at her ankle - she had little cuff things when I bought her, you can see the line on her where there's less dirt. Fuckin' filthy little animal."

"Well. I'm up for chucking her in the river if you are."

Even if she can't understand the people's words, Zazzalil is convinced that they're talking about her. She glares into the man's blue-grey eyes from behind her arms, trying to ignore her headache and the pain in her jaw and the red marks on her arms and legs and her bruised arm. Silently hating this man is the only distraction she has.

The woman only looks up again when the man stands. She watches him cross to the other side of the crate, but barely has time to register the two traders unlocking and lifting the lid before one grabs her by the back of the neck and forces her head down. Panic sets in instantly. Squirming in their grip, she claws at the fingers digging into her neck. Someone catches her arms and forces them behind her back.

"Let me go!" She demands as some kind of twine is twisted around her wrists. Her only answer is a sharp tug on her hair and that same harsh word from before.

"Quiet!" It's a command that isn't obeyed. She continues to shout and struggle but she soon finds that her hands are bound tight together, rendering them practically useless. A trader grabs each of her arms and they haul her out of her crate.

The tribeswoman isn't given a chance to find her footing before they begin to walk her forward. She stumbles, but as soon as she's steady she digs her heels into the dirt and attempts to yank her arms out of their grip. If she gets loose now she could run; her hands may be useless but her legs are still free. Thrashing in their hold she tries to kick and stomp at their feet. However, bare feet stamping against thick boots isn't very effective and she's forced to keep moving.

After a lot of protest the three of them reach the riverbank, the captive still trying to fight her way out of the traders' grip. She digs her toes into the mud, staring down into the rushing water. Why have they brought her here?

She doesn't have time to process them letting go of her arms before she's shoved hard off the bank. She hits the stony riverbank face-down and suddenly everything is cold and wet and she can't breathe, she can't fucking breathe, there’s frigid water in her throat and she can't move her arms to help herself so she fumbles with her legs and tries to roll over and it's hard but she manages it. Her head breaks the surface as she struggles to sit up, coughing and shivering, trying to shake her hair off of her face. There's two quiet splashes behind her and then a hard tug on the back of the neck of her dress, forcing her to sit up straighter. Though she'd like to fight whoever it is she's preoccupied with the harsh coughs wracking her body, blinking hard to clear the water from her eyes.

"Make sure you keep her still."

The woman looks down at the wheezing, shaking girl she's holding. "Don't worry about her," she says, "she'll probably be too confused to fight too much."

Nevertheless, she takes the rope lead handed to her and slips it over the captive's head, pulling her hair out from under it. She shifts her arms as if to try and fight this new development before remembering they've been bound. The trader wraps the rope around her hand and arm as the tribeswoman starts to squirm. She makes a futile attempt to stand but is shoved down to her knees, glaring up at the man in front of her.

"I don't think she's too happy with us," he comments as he dumps a tin cup of water out over her head to make sure her hair is thoroughly soaked. Her protests are cut off by a tug on the rope, a command to be quiet and another cup of water over her head. She struggles as he starts to wash her hair.

"What, never seen soap before?" He taunts. She grunts something incomprehensible, tugging on the ropes around her wrists.

"I doubt she's ever been clean," the woman comments.

"Probably not."

Still fighting, the captive yells furiously up at them. The rope around her neck is pulled tight.

"Quiet, girl!"

The tribeswoman sounds even angrier after that. Chuckling, the man comments "I don't think she likes you calling her 'girl'."

"You know she doesn't understand it. But anyway, she doesn't have a name yet, what else am I going to call her?"

"Well then. Maybe we should name her."

He takes a hold of the captive's chin and tilts her head up. She freezes, glaring up at him.

"What should we call you?" He wonders aloud as he wipes the charcoal off her face with his thumb. His fellow trader rolls her eyes.

"Don't be so dramatic. Just call her something common, like, I don't know… Anne."

"Anne," the man repeats, still staring down at the girl, testing out how it feels. "Sure. Anne."

He lets the newly-dubbed 'Anne' go and pours another cup of water over her head, ruffling her hair to rinse out the soap.

"There we go, Anne," the woman says as she finishes knotting the rope. "Good girl. Keep your hands- Keep your hands still, Anne."

Zazzalil pulls her hands close to her chest as soon as the woman lets them go. Her wrists are bound tightly together again. Of course they are, of course this woman doesn't let her use her own hands. They were only freed long enough for her to change into a white sleeveless shirt and pale brown trousers. She hates them, but it was that or more hard straps over her already bruised arm. Trousers are an utterly bizarre concept to her; why do both legs need their own individual skirts? At least they didn't make her cover her feet.

A sharp tug on the rope tied to her wrists causes her to stumble, but she soon digs her heels in once again. This is the last person she'd trust to lead her anywhere. She tries to grab the rope herself but that only earns her a strap over her knuckles. The woman fights every step of the way, but when the other two traders take her by the hair and help to drag her it's very hard to resist.

Eventually Zazzalil finds herself passing a campfire. Two rods catch her eye, the shapes on one end of each an ashy grey colour, resting in the flames. The other ends are black, propped on a wooden block. The traders walk her to a nearby table and roughly shove her head down, holding her head and shoulders against the tabletop and trying to keep her still despite her struggles. She squirms and fights, scared but trying to look like she's just angry. What are they going to do to her now? What else could they do to her?

"Get off me!" She screams, kicking at their legs. "Let me go, you bastards!"

"Quiet!" The captive is beginning to recognise that command.

"Shut up yourself!" She retorts.

Someone grabs the back of her vest's neck and tugs it down, exposing a little of her upper back. She doesn't have a moment to wonder why before she finds out.

The captive yells with pain as something is pressed to her skin just right of her spine, something that feels like solid flame. She struggles against the hands holding her down, desperate to get away from the searing heat but trapped against the table. All she can really do is squirm and cry as her skin is burned. It feels like an eternity, but after only a few seconds the something is removed. The pain is far from receding though, and she isn't given a moment to recover before there's another one, another solid flame beside the first, and she almost screams. Almost. But she refuses to give her tormentors that satisfaction.

The second the traders release their grip on her she stumbles back from the table, her breathing shaky, gritting her teeth against the pain and turning her attention to fighting the ropes trapping her wrists as a distraction. She doesn't even acknowledge the man holding her rope, too angry at her captors to even look at him. That is, until he presses something cold and damp to her back, and although she flinches at the contact the soothing quality of the gesture is enough to placate her. She looks up and meets the gaze of his grey eyes for a moment, knowing that that brief look was enough to expose her fear to him. The burning pain is still there, but dulled slightly. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to ignore her own tears.

"It's alright, Annie, it's okay. I know you're hurt. You'll be okay."

Obviously the tribeswoman doesn't understand his words, but he hopes his tone is at least soothing. He knew that the captive would have to be branded. He knew it would hurt her. Those are givens. Holding a cold cloth to the burns and trying to comfort her afterwards are not. But why not? It isn't hard, so why be cruel for cruelty's sake? She seems to be avoiding looking at him, hanging her head, her face struggling to maintain her snarl. She's fighting a losing battle against breaking down. He understands; she doesn't want to show weakness to someone who could exploit her, doesn't want to show gratitude to someone she hates. But the tribeswoman is tired and scared and hurt, and it's obvious. She's broken, at least for today.

"Enough of that already, Andrew!"

Started out of his thoughts, he removes the cloth from her back as the captive's trainer swats at his hand. Muttering irritably about him 'pampering the wretched creature', she straightens the tribeswoman's collar, pulling the shirt over the brands and forcing her to lift her chin so she can tighten the chord criss-crossing over the neck of the garment and tie it in a double bow.

"There. Now take her back to her crate."

The captive refuses to move when he tries to get her walking. Not entirely broken, then.

"Come on, Anne. It's okay. Let's go."

That doesn't work. He tugs gently on her lead and she tugs right back. He tugs harder.

"Come on!"

She still refuses, so he takes her by the upper arm and begins to walk her towards the crate. While she does continue to resist, it's weak; on top of her exhaustion she has the disadvantage of being tiny in comparison to her captor. It takes a little more effort to get her to step into her crate and sit down, but he manages. As soon as her restraints are removed she lays down, half curled up to fit in the cramped space, putting her back to him. Taking that as a clear sign that she wants to be left alone, he quietly locks up the crate and walks away.

Zazzalil has lost count of how many things hurt now. She lays with her back to the camp as the sky begins to darken, trying to wrap her head around everything. This tribe has taken her prisoner, that much is obvious. Why they did it is still a mystery. Most of the pain she can make sense of; the blows to her arm were a punishment for noise and defiance. Being roughly tugged around and having her hair pulled was them keeping their prisoner in line. But being washed in the river? She has no clue why they did that, she was clean enough. And those deliberate, precise burns to her back are perplexing. Why did they hurt her like that if they were just going to soothe her pain right afterwards? It makes no sense.

She moves to touch the burns in an attempt to glean more information, and her fingers meet unfamiliar fabric. Anger flashes through her mind. They fucking robbed her, took everything. She wore that fur and feathers for years, ever since she stitched it together herself as a juvenile. The dress being stolen was the last straw that left her with nothing. Not even the comforting smell of smoke that always clung to her furs. She was proud of that, it reminded her of how much she'd accomplished, but they took it. They even scrubbed it out of her hair. She hates how she smells now. She smells wrong.

The prisoner is saved from further stewing in her anger by the approach of a trader. She scrambles to sit upright when she hears the footsteps, hitting her head when she forgets to duck it. After recognising the woman as the one with the painful weapon she shuffles herself backwards over the slats to put as much distance between them as possible. She's not in the mood to take any more abuse.

From inside the crate Zazzalil watches the woman place two round tins on the ground just outside. She gives a command that the captive doesn't understand, followed by another, more familiar word. Anne. People keep saying that, Zazzalil has noticed, but she's been unable to figure out its meaning. It doesn't seem connected to anything in the way 'quiet' does; that command is always given when she speaks. But wondering about the meaning of a word can wait. The two tins present a much more interesting mystery. And, with the woman already walking away, she moves forward to investigate.

Upon seeing the contents of the tins the captive is relieved; food and water. She can’t remember when she last ate, she was considering gnawing the slats of her crate if she didn't get fed soon. Parched as well as hungry, she hurriedly drags the water-tin up against the crate and gets her face as close to it as she can, scooping up the water with her hand. It's not easy, but at least she's getting something to drink.

Once she's got a good few handfuls of water, she moves on to investigating her food rations. There's a handful of nuts, which she immediately gathers up and throws into her mouth.

"Ugh. Shit."

Zazzalil forgot about her missing tooth until now, but accidentally driving a nut into the raw gum where it was is more than enough to remind her of it. Shifting her food to the other side of her mouth, she finds herself staring out at the people still gathered around their campfire. They pulled out her fucking tooth - what the hell was that supposed to achieve? At this point she's surprised they even gave her food at all; they seem determined to make her life miserable.

The chewing pauses. The more she thinks about it, the more sure she is that she can't trust these people to feed her regularly. Perhaps they’ll starve her if they don’t get her way. She retrieves the rest of her food and, using her body to block her actions from any prying eyes, stashes it under one of the slats of the bottom of the crate. It's only a strip of dry meat but at least she has something for emergencies. She curls up over it, still hungry but trying to ignore it. Better to be hungry today than starving later.

Chapter Text

Zazzalil, sitting hunched in her wooden cage, has given up on trying to sleep; though her body is exhausted her mind is racing. In the dim moonlight she stares down at her feet, her thumb gently tracing the line where her anklet once sat. The skin that was previously hidden from the sun is a shade paler, lacking the tan and thick coating of freckles that cover the rest of her. The sun will get to it in time, but for now it serves as a constant reminder that she was robbed.

She turns to look at the fabric huts of the camp, just visible in the moonlight. Her captors retreated into them not long after darkness fell. Though she hasn’t had to truly fear the night for years, she can’t deny that she’s a little nervous being left alone out here. They’ve left her completely defenceless. What do they think gives them the right? she thinks bitterly to herself as a gust of wind sends a chill down her spine. Just because they’ve managed to overpower her they think they have the right to hold her prisoner. Just because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Drawing her knees closer to her chest as she thinks about it, Zazzalil stares past the planks above her at the stars. Maybe there’s a way she could have avoided this? Maybe if she was a little more careful she’d be at home with Jemilla right now. But despite her best efforts, she can’t think of a way her past self could have evaded capture. After all, this all started with a regular old hunting trip...

In the early morning she left the tribe with her wolf, Howl, the two of them following his nose and her tracking skills. She remembers it not taking long - soon she saw the herd of wildebeest across the plain. Howl was left hidden while she snuck ahead, putting herself in the path of the herd, ready with her spear to help take down whatever weak animal Howl would single out.

But this is where the memory becomes a little shaky. She climbed a tree then, didn't she? Yes, she climbed a tree to make sure she'd be safe from the stampede. And from there she'd usually call out to her tamed wolf, but did she do it then? She can't remember. She was in the tree. She was in the tree and then…

And then she fell. The memory is a blur but she's sure she remembers falling. A sharp pain in her shoulder sticks out in her memory. She doesn't remember hitting the ground - was she unconscious before she reached it? Regardless, the impact could explain the horrible headache she woke up with.

A loud crack cuts through her thoughts. Something’s out there in the undergrowth - she can hear its harsh panting. The captive freezes, staring out into the pitch-black bushes at the edge of the camp, her mind immediately jumping to the possibility of a predator. Sure, the tribe fixed their tiger problem years ago, but humans are very much still a prey animal in this ecosystem and the woman is very aware of that. Both fight and flight are pretty much off the table in the crate, so Zazzalil can only hope that the wooden structure will offer her some protection from whatever’s out there. It must do, mustn’t it? Her captors wouldn’t have just left her out here to die?

Suddenly her view through the slats is blocked by a huge animal, a mass of shaggy grey fur with two amber eyes staring in at her. She flinches away from the planks. The thing cocks its head, and from a gaping maw full of sharp teeth comes a quiet whimper.

"Howl?" Zazzalil whispers, a smile spreading across her face for the first time in what feels like days. The wolf, though massive, is still a juvenile, and upon hearing the voice of his favourite human he's launched into a puppyish fit of excitement. "Hey," Zazzalil calls out as he hops from foot to foot, tail thrashing behind him, "hey, keep it quiet, okay? Don't get us in trouble."

She places her hand against the wood of the crate, and the wolf presses his nose between the planks in an attempt to reach her, whimpering. "I know," the captive whispers, reaching between the slats to scratch his forehead, "I wish I wasn't in this fucking thing too." Howl paws at the cage, confused. Why is his human stuck behind this barrier? Standing on his hind legs, he scratches at the crate roof.

For the second time tonight Zazzalil is startled by a loud noise, much closer this time. Shushing Howl, she shuffles over to where the noise came from to investigate. A small box, which the wolf apparently knocked from the top of the crate, is lying on the ground. Curiosity grips the woman. Reaching out of her cage, she pops the lid off the box. Though it's hard to discern its contents at first, she soon grins widely.

“Good boy, Howl, you found all my shit they stole!”

Her instinct is to take everything back then and there, but of course her captors would notice and simply steal it again. Probably punish her for it too. No, she needs to be sneaky about this, only take back what she really needs. She rifles through the box’s contents until she finds her flint pouch. It’s disappointingly empty, but she can always find more fire-starting tools later. Having a place to hide things will definitely be an advantage. She first tries tying it around her waist like normal and covering it with her shirt, but the lump under the fabric is far too noticeable. So instead she lashes it tightly to her right leg just above the knee, her loose trousers easily disguising it. That’s when she remembers the food she hid earlier. She has a far better hiding place now.

Howl watches her pull a scrap of meat from under a wooden slat and once again presses his nose between the planks. Zazzalil looks from the food to the wolf. Sure, he often wants in on whatever she’s eating, but now she has no way to tell when the animal last ate. He could be genuinely starving. Sighing, she tears the food and holds the larger chunk out for him to eat, stowing the rest in her hidden pouch. After taking the meat Howl stretches and lays down alongside the crate, satisfied with his treat.

For a while Zazzalil considers the wolf. The idea to sic him on her captors entered her mind as soon as she recognised him, but she’s now realising that she can’t do that. She doesn’t know what weapons those people might have; Howl trying to fight them could put him in serious danger. Howl has no way of knowing that - he can’t choose to take the risk - and the woman can’t in good conscience make him do it knowing he could be badly hurt. But that doesn’t mean he can’t help her.

Rooting through the box again, she pulls out her necklace of animal teeth and bone fragments. It’s a bit of a challenge to pull it over Howl’s huge head, but that’s reassuring. It means it’s less likely to fall off. As best as she can through the slats, she pulls the wolf’s head close and tries to press her forehead to his. His fur tickles her brow, but they’re not truly touching. Even so, she clings to him for a minute, scared to let him go, scared to be alone again. But eventually she releases him and shuffles back.

“Home,” she says quietly.

The wolf rises and begins to trot off in the direction he came from, but pauses and looks back. Usually when someone tells him ‘home’ it’s because they need him to lead the way back to the village, but Zazzalil isn’t following him. He whimpers quietly.

“Home, Howl!”

He takes a few more steps, then pauses.

“Home, Howl, home! Go! Just go!”

She seems angry now. With one last whimper, he turns and lopes away into the night.

With the wolf on his way back to the tribe, Zazzalil replaces the lid on the box and carefully lifts it back onto the top of her cage. Hopefully nobody will notice it’s moved. And if they do notice, hopefully they won’t decide to check the contents. And if they do check, hopefully they won’t remember exactly what was in it, and they won’t realise that the pouch and necklace are gone. Hopefully.

She yawns, blinking hard. Even if her mind isn't done racing her body is ready to collapse. Perhaps getting some rest would be a good idea. The floor of the crate is a little too small to lie stretched out, but that doesn’t matter. Zazzalil is used to being curled up to sleep. What she isn’t used to, however, is being alone.

Zazzalil has been married for a few years, and in that time barely a night has gone by when she's been without her wife. Sure, there's been the occasional overnight hunting trip, but even then, when it was voluntary, the separation was hard. Now, when she's scared and hurt and caged, it feels as though part of her is missing. She wishes Jemilla was here to comfort her, to make her feel, even if it's only for a moment, that she's safe. But at the same time she's glad that Jemilla isn't stuck here with her. She'd fight her captors to the death with her bare hands before she lets them lay a finger on her wife. The Peacemaker will never be harmed on her watch, she promised that years ago.

Curled up on the uncomfortable slats, she tries to tune it all out. The pain from her burns and bruises is minimal now, ignorable. She's gone to bed hungry before, she can deal with that. The loneliness, however, refuses to wane. It settles in her chest like a physical need, a craving for closeness. She hugs herself tight. Her fingers dig into unfamiliar fabric. Everything feels so wrong, and she's too tired to stop herself from crying.

"That's two nights now," Jemilla states, staring into the watering hole. The early-morning sun sends sparkling light dancing over the surface of the water. "Two nights, when she said she'd be back within the day."

Beside her, Molag shrugs. "You know how that girl is."

"She's not a child, Molag. But it's true, sometimes she doesn't quite think things through…"

"You can say that again," the older woman mutters, shaking her head. "God-fuckin'-damnit, Lauren, why d'you never think about the implications?"

Jemilla turns to her with a questioning look. "Who's Lauren?"

"She-" Molag begins to explain, then pauses. She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head. "I don't even know."

For a while Jemilla doesn't speak. She trusts Zazzalil to take care of herself, but accidents happen. Of course, she could just be investigating new hunting grounds she's found, the thought of telling someone where she is completely slipping her mind. But what if she's injured, unable to get herself home? Jemilla will never forgive herself if her wife suffers because she's sitting doing nothing.

"Molag," she says, climbing to her feet, "I'm going to-"

But she never gets round to saying what it is she's going to do, because at that moment a sound from behind her catches her attention.

"Howl?!"

Heads pop up all over the village, turned first to Keeri, the one who shouted, and then to the grey shape approaching the settlement at speed.

"You sure that's him?" Emberly asks as Jemilla runs past her to get a closer look. "Looks kind of like a large badger."

"Or a fast rock," Smelly-balls suggests, "a really fast rock."

"No, it's him!" Jemilla calls. "It's him!"

Barely a moment later the grey blur barrels past them, kicking up huge clouds of dust as he attempts to stop himself. For a second he stands in the centre of the village, sides heaving with his heavy panting, and then he's on the ground. The wolf sensed that something was very wrong when he was sent home on his own. That sense drove him to run non-stop until he made it there.

Jemilla is the first to his side, closely followed by Keeri and Growl.

"Someone get him some water!" Jemilla calls.

"On it!" Grunt replies, racing to the water's edge.

"I'll get him some food!" Emberly says.

Growl licks her brother's face, whimpering. "Is he hurt?" Keeri asks quietly.

"I don't know."

The two women begin to check the animal over, running their hands through his thick fur to search for anything that feels wrong. It's Jemilla that finds it.

"Here, his neck, it's-"

Her voice peters out as she realises exactly what it is on his neck. 

The tribe watches as one of their leaders silently slides something over the wolf's head and stands up.

"That's Zazzy's," Keeri states, pointing to the necklace that Jemilla is holding. And then she looks back down at the wolf. "Howl, did you steal Zazzalil's necklace?"

"He is a trickster spirit!" Ducker yells. "He has fooled us, and he will-"

"For the last time Ducker, Howl is not a trickster spirit!" Jemilla snaps, breaking out of her trance. "Howl didn't steal it, Zaz put it on him. She sent him back here to get help! I knew it; something’s wrong." She hesitates for a moment, then pulls the string of bone and teeth over her own head.

"Something is very, very wrong."

Chapter Text

The captive is still asleep when Andrew approaches the crate after breakfast. She was most likely up late, he reasons; the pain and the fear probably meant it took awhile for her to get to sleep. After dropping her rations into the metal tin beside the cage he reaches between the slats to shake her shoulder.

“Hey. Heya, Annie, it’s time to wake up.”

He watches as the tribeswoman stirs and, as soon as she seems awake enough to acknowledge him, he points to the food tin.

“Eat.”

She groggily shuffles over to it and peers into the tin. The fruit he gave her is gone in under a minute, but the crackers cause her to hesitate. Sceptical, she picks one up to examine it, turning it over in her hands and sniffing at it.

“It’s a cracker,” Andrew tells her, “it’s good.”

The captive stares out of the corner of her eye at him for a moment, then slowly nibbles at a corner. A second later the cracker is gone, closely followed by the second.

“You like those, huh?”

She studies him from behind the slats, tense. Probably expecting him to do something unpleasant to her, after everything that happened yesterday. Andrew isn’t sure why he's still crouched beside the crate; he could have walked away as soon as the initial command left his lips. But something about the captive girl fascinates him. Reasoning that he has nothing better to do, he decides to act on that fascination.

“My name-” He pauses, remembering that she won’t understand him. Raising a hand, he points to himself. “I’m Andrew,” he says slowly. “Andrew.”

For a moment he gets no response, but he can see that she’s thinking, processing what he’s trying to communicate. Just when he’s about to try again she lifts her arm to point at him. “Andrew?” It seems as though she’s unsure of how to say it, the name sounding rough, almost guttural coming from her.

“Yes! Yes, you got it. Andrew. That’s me.”

Still staring out at him, she presses her hand to her chest. “Zazzalil.”

For a moment the man doesn't know how to respond. He knew, of course, that the girl had a name before his colleagues decided to call her Anne. He just didn’t expect he’d ever hear it; it’s one of those things he’s decided to not think about. It seems that she hasn't realised her name was changed. That, or she's consciously rejecting it. Andrew considers correcting her, but it would most likely lead to an argument, and what’s the point in upsetting the captive just when she seems willing to talk to him? Besides, the woman who's taken on the task of training the tribeswoman will most likely ensure she knows her name later.

"Z… Zazlalu?" he attempts.

The girl looks unimpressed. "Zazzalil," she repeats.

"Zazzylu," Andrew corrects himself.

She sighs. “Zaz. Za. Lil.”

“Zaz… Zazza… Zazzalu! Got it.”

“Zazzalil!”

“Goddamnit! Alright, girl, I’m never going to get this. Can I just call you Zaz?” He points to her. “Zaz.”

“Zazzalil.”

“Zaz.”

Narrowing her eyes, the captive points at him again. “And.”

“Touché.”

He looks from Zaz to the packet of crackers he’s still holding. If he’s managed to teach the girl his name, what else can she learn?

“I think we can all agree that we have a serious situation on our hands here,” Jemilla says. There’s a general murmur of agreement among the tribe sat gathered in the centre of the village. “I cannot say how long the journey will be, or how dangerous, but Zazzalil needs help. And in order to help her, I’m going to need volunteers to go with me and find her."

“Whoa,” says Smelly, “déjà vu.”

Nobody laughs, though most agree with the sentiment. In fact, almost every member of the tribe has been resisting the urge to say ‘here we go again’ for some time now.

“Wait a minute,” Grunt says, tentatively raising a hand, “I’m confused. I get that she could be injured and she needs help, and two nights is a while to be missing, but how far could she have gone in that time? How far away could she be?”

Jemilla gently runs her fingers over one of the fangs on the string around her neck. “I’m not sure,” she says, “but she wouldn’t have parted with this unless the situation was dire.”

“Didn’t… Didn’t her father give her that?” Tiblyn asks tentatively.

Keeri nods. “Yeah, whenever he went off to explore new land he’d bring back something else to go on that string. She got so excited about it every time.”

“She didn’t have a great relationship with our mum,” Smelly adds, “but she fucking loved her dad. She guarded that necklace with her life, at least when we were kids. So if she sent it back to us...”

Grunt nods, understanding the tribe’s concern a little better now. “If that’s so,” he says, climbing to his feet, “then I will make the journey with you. This tribe is my family now, and that includes Zazzalil.”

“Thank you, Grant, that means a lot. But do you think you can manage it?”

The man looks down at his ‘feet’. In reality, his legs end just above the ankle, the aftermath of his encounter with the now-dead beast, Snarl. But simple prosthetics of animal hide and wood have been made for him, constantly being updated and improved, and to anyone unaware of his disability he would appear to be simply wearing a pair of fur boots. Planting his stick he uses to help his balance confidently into the dust beside him, the former outsider stands a little taller.

“I believe I can, Peacemaker.”

“Then I’m coming too!” Emberly says, standing up beside him.

“And me!”

“I’m coming!”

The calls quickly blend together and drown each other out. Jemilla can’t hold back a smile as she looks at her tribe. Smelly-Balls was right, the feeling of déjà vu is strong.

“Well then. Looks like we’re all going.”

“So you’re telling me, in the span of several hours, you have taught Anne to say one sentence?"

The man walking alongside Andrew sounds a lot less impressed than he was hoping. “She, uh, she sometimes takes a little while to pick things up. But she knows what it means, she’s not just parroting. Look, watch this.”

They’ve reached the crate by this time. “Hi, Annie,” he calls, and when she turns around, points to his companion. “This is Jeremiah. Je-re-miah.”

She tilts her head a little to the side, thinking. And then, staring up at Andrew, she points to the other man. “Name’s Jer.”

“Yes!” Andrew fumbles a piece of cracker from his pocket and drops it into the crate, where it's gone in seconds. The captive would like to save it for later, but she can’t risk revealing the fact that she’s attempting to stockpile food.

“Jer?” Jeremiah repeats with his arms folded.

“Yeah, she shortens names, I’m… not sure why. Maybe a cultural thing?” Andrew lies.

“Andrew, I don’t know who taught you grammar, but last time I checked ‘name’s Jer’ is not a sentence.”

“No, no, I did teach her an actual sentence. Watch.”

He crouches down to the tribeswoman’s eye level and holds up another piece of cracker. “Come on, Anne, show him what I taught you,” he says quietly. After a long moment of silence, she obliges.

“Can I have a cracker?” the captive asks through gritted teeth, humouring the man. Being able to stumble through the foreign sentence is something she’d usually refuse to put in the effort to learn, but usually it isn’t a food source when she’s hungry.

“Yes, good girl!” Andrew praises, dropping another piece of cracker into the cage. She doesn’t understand the words but the patronizing tone is clear and grating. Nonetheless, she asks again and receives another crumb for her efforts.

“Alright, I admit it, that was a sentence. You’ve taught the girl to beg, congratulations.” Jeremiah’s voice is dripping with sarcasm.

“It was the easiest thing I could think of to start with, I’m going to teach her other things!”

“Mm. I’d suggest you start with ‘no’.” He turns and strolls away from the crate. Andrew is confused for a moment, until the girl speaks up again, asking the same question. Almost reflexively now, he reaches into his pocket for a bit of cracker. The pocket is empty. The girl is glaring up at him, silently demanding her reward.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he mutters to himself.

The man is still talking but Zazzalil doesn’t turn around, continuing to idly scratch at the dirt with her nails. He’s managed to teach her what ‘no’ means, and it means absolutely no payoff for her for interacting with him. Sure, he may be nicer to her than the other two, but that isn’t exactly difficult. It’s definitely not enough to deserve her putting in the effort to try and understand him while he makes no effort to understand her.

After a while, she hears him sigh and get up. Finally. But unfortunately he doesn’t walk away. Unfortunately he begins to unlock the crate. Zazzalil curls her hands into fists, ready to fight. It’s not that she wants to stay stuck in her cage forever, fuck no. It’s just that she doesn’t want to be dragged out to be abused again; she’s still sore from the burns.

She throws punches, kicks out, claws at his arms, but stepping into the crate he manages to wrestle her arms behind her back. Again she feels rope being tightened around her wrists. Despite her yelling for him to back off and her desperate fighting to escape he wraps the excess rope around her waist, pinning her hands to the small of her back, and after a short struggle manages to tie another around her neck to act as a lead.

Once out of the crate Zazzalil refuses to move. Her only guess for why she's been taken out is to be punished for refusing to speak, and she's determined not to just give in and let it happen. So, when the man tries to lead her towards the rest of the camp, she digs her heels in and jerks her head back. He says something, but she understands nothing more than the fact that he called her Zaz. "Name's Zazzalil," she snaps, putting her very limited grasp on his language to use. This man is not her friend - far from it - and him nicknaming her like they're close infuriates her. He tries to pull her forward again and she stumbles, finding herself completely unbalanced with her arms trapped behind her back and her head being tugged around. It's scary. She doesn't want to admit it but she's scared, her legs are barely stable enough to keep her upright and her hands are bound and they're going to hurt her and she's not going to be able to do anything. Her chest is tight, it’s getting hard to breathe. This doesn’t go unnoticed.

For a moment the man considers her, something like pity in his eyes. And then, to her surprise, he turns around and attempts to lead her away from camp. He says something else she doesn't understand but the words don't matter, what matters is the tone. It's calm and gentle, just like the first time he talked to her, when she was terrified and burned and exhausted. When, for a moment, he calmed the searing pain. She takes a tentative step, then another. And just like that, they’re walking slowly side by side between the trees. She can barely believe she’s doing it, and every second expects some sort of harm, but no such thing comes. Perhaps if she was aware of the concept of walking a dog she’d be offended, but as it is she’s almost… grateful? After everything that's happened, being allowed to just come out of the crate and stretch her legs a little is nice, even if there’s a lingering thought in the back of her head that he’s handling her like an animal.

After a few silent minutes he begins to point things out - “tree,” “flower,” “bush,” - and while Zazzalil refuses to repeat them back for no reward she silently turns the words over in her mind. The knowledge of his language could be useful, after all. After a while she begins responding with her own language, just for something to do. He doesn't repeat back either, but he doesn't tell her to stop. So they wander through the trees for a while, exchanging translations. Not the best conversation that she’s ever had, but it’s something.

That evening the woman sits hunched in her crate, tapping a quiet rhythm against the planks as she stares up at the sky. She put up a bit of a fight when the man locked her back in there, but at least her hands are free now. He had seemed apologetic about it, though whether he was genuinely sorry or if he was just trying to placate her she’s not sure. He’s tolerable, she’s decided, at least relatively so, but not trustworthy. If she could truly trust him then he wouldn’t be involved in all this. If she could trust him, she wouldn’t know him.

Startled out of her thoughts by the sound of a twig breaking under a nearby boot, Zazzalil backs away from the woman approaching her. Now, that is someone who certainly can’t be trusted, even if she has come with food. Something drops into her food tin and she warily shuffles forward, not wanting to get near her but too hungry to stay back. Even with the extra crackers, even if she hadn’t set that meat aside she isn’t being fed enough, and she’s sure it’s intentional. So, starved and prone to not thinking things through as she is, she pushes her hand between the slats to grab something to eat.

The strap to her wrist brings back the pain that was just starting to fade. She snatches her hand away, staring up at the woman. After taking a moment to think, she tries reaching more slowly. That doesn’t work. Neither does using her other hand. Her brow furrows and she stares up at the woman, trying to figure out what she’s doing wrong. But apparently the pause is what the woman is looking for, as she tucks the strap into her belt and gives a short command, “eat,” before turning to walk away. She realises then what that word means; she was being given permission to take the food. She can’t help the scowl that comes over her face then. Looks like she’s going to have to learn to put up with her wrist stinging, because that woman is sorely mistaken if she thinks Zazzalil is going to wait for her permission for anything.

Chapter Text

The traders don’t stay camped in one spot forever; there are trappers to meet and places to go. The day after And - Zazzalil refuses to use his full name until he uses hers - began attempting to teach her his language he introduces her to the group’s huge, long-necked animal. She’s not entirely sure whether it’s a horse named Chestnut or a chestnut named Horse, but she doesn’t have the vocabulary to ask for clarification. Whatever its name is, she soon learns that its job is to pull things. She spends days in her crate, which is one of the things being pulled, and while she doesn’t particularly enjoy it she does like that none of the traders bother her during the journey. They still bother her in the mornings and evenings, though. Her forearms are never free from bruises. Sometimes during the ride And gives her language lessons but they’ve reached a compromise in regards to those; he gives her little rewards for repeating things until he’s pretty sure she knows it, and from then on trusts her to use it as and when she needs. Which she does.

Andrew regrets teaching Zaz to speak at least once a day. The tribeswoman talking also means her talking back. And arguing. She argues with him a lot, although her points are limited to single words or short sentences. He’s mostly able to figure out what she means since he knows the exact context in which she learnt every word, but to his colleagues their debates are… odd. Like the evening when he was a bit busier than usual and so hadn’t got around to taking Zaz out for exercise, and they had spent a good half hour yelling “out!” and “later!” across the camp.

Their walks have become a daily occurence. The captive is still kept on a lead during these though gradually Andrew relaxes the restraints, eventually tying a long rope to her wrists with her hands in front of her. She wanders back and forth across the path, the man turning a blind eye to her picking up nuts and berries to snack on. He knows she’s always hungry. Eventually she gets familiar enough with this routine to offer her hands and stay still and quiet while he binds her wrists to take her out of the crate, which makes his life a whole lot easier. She still glares as he ties the knots.

The tribe have been walking for days, following the two wolves as they track their missing member’s scent. They're yet to encounter even a sign of her. It's a good thing that Jemilla was as worried as she was; if she weren't, perhaps they wouldn't have brought enough supplies to last this long. In an attempt to keep their spirits up they sing as they go, calling and responding and harmonising, matching the beat of their songs to their footsteps.

It's sometime after noon when they find it; a path through a wooded area, carved by animals and hunters and who knows who else, that runs past a small clearing. Howl bounds through the undergrowth into the opening, tail held high, barking excitedly. Growl isn't far behind. By the time the tribe joins the wolves they're focused on one spot in the dirt, wagging their bushy tails with their noses glued to the ground. They back away at the offer of a strip of meat as a reward from Keeri. Tiblyn stoops to pick up the objects they were sniffing. For a moment there's confusion; the thing the wolves were so worked up over was just a few stones and dry bits of grass that were half-buried in the dust. But it doesn't take long to realise that the stones aren't just stones. They're two pieces of a broken spearhead.

They've all seen them before. Zazzalil was carrying them in a small bag around her waist so she could use them to start fires.

Why would the Firebringer leave behind her sparks?

After what feels like ages in captivity Zazzalil understands most of what is commonly said to her, either through being taught or her own interpretation. Unfortunately, her interpretation is often wrong. For example, take the word ‘Anne’. She’s not sure about its meaning, but her best guess is that it’s some way of getting someone’s attention; a ‘hey!’ or a ‘listen!’. She doesn’t particularly care about its exact translation. She tends to ignore most of what’s said to her anyway. Commands are never obeyed, even if that gets her hurt. She refuses to give in.

It’s sometime after noon, and camp has just been made. Zazzalil is in a foul mood, something that is near constant now. She’d pace if she could. As it is, she settles for sticking her hand out of the crate and ripping up clumps of grass.

“Anne!”

The woman’s shout gets no response.

“Annie!”

“Fuck off, El!”

The captive has been told that the woman’s name is Elizabeth, though she refuses to call her anything more than El. Sometimes just Eh, if she wants to be particularly annoying. Even with El right in front of her she refuses to look up.

Being ignored always seems to make El mad. Mad enough to grab Zazzalil’s wrist and pull hard, scraping her arm on the slats of her crate. Before she can react, her tangled hair is grabbed and her head is slammed against the planks. She’s dazed for a moment, but quickly regains her composure.

“Get the fuck off me!” she yells as she struggles, trying to pry the fingers out of her hair.

“Quiet!”

“You quiet!”

The woman snarls something that Zazzalil doesn’t fully understand, but it’s something angry involving the name Andrew. But then she pauses for a moment, thinking, and the captive takes this opportunity to wrench herself out of her grip and scramble as far back as she can. Panting, she glares over at El.

“What the hell do you want this time?” She snarls.

El hesitates for a moment, then points to Zazzalil. “Your name is Anne.”

To say Zazzalil is confused would be a major understatement. She’s utterly perplexed. For a moment she just stares. “...No,” she says slowly, as if speaking to an idiot, “name’s Zazzalil.”

The woman crosses to where the captive is crouched and, though she tries to get out of the way, the leather strap lands on her arm yet again. It’s quickly becoming one of her deepest desires to burn that strap to ashes.

“Your name is Anne.”

“No. Zazzalil.”

Another hit. Rubbing her arm, Zaz cocks her head, trying to wrap her head around what El is trying to achieve. She’s sitting here telling her that her name is Zazzalil. Why the fuck does she think it’s Anne? Where the hell did Anne come from? Is she being somehow misheard? Did the woman just take a guess and run with it? Or… did she make up a name for her?

Though the idea disgusts her, it’s the only thing that makes sense; El doesn’t just not know her name, she’s actively trying to change it. If Zazzalil was in a foul mood before, well, now she’s furious. She thrusts her hand through a gap between two planks and does something she’s wanted to do for days - she wrenches the damned strap from the woman’s hand.

For a second the now empty-handed woman is frozen in place by surprise. Zazzalil grips the weapon in both hands, a snarl on her face. But then the crate is being unlocked and she barely has a moment to struggle before there’s a rope around her neck again and she finds herself face-down in the dirt with a knee dug in between her shoulders. The strap is tugged from her hands. As she tries and fails to push herself off the ground three sharp blows land across the back of her head, before her attacker appears to abandon her weapon and lifts her head by the hair to slam it down onto the hard ground. She stops squirming then, dull pain thudding through her skull. A quiet whimper is all she can manage.

“Anne,” the woman snarls, “is your fucking name.”

Gritting her teeth, Zazzalil manages to get out a “no” before her head is slammed into the ground again. Her vision swims for a moment as her arm is twisted behind her back. She blinks slowly, trying to clear her hazy mind.

“Anne-”

“No!”

Her head hits the ground again. Her forehead stings intensely. It feels wet. She’s bleeding. She’s fucking bleeding. Something snaps in her, and the only thought able to surface through the pain is that she cannot let this woman abuse her any further. So when her attacker takes her by the chin to turn her head she does the only thing she can to defend herself.

She bites. Hard.

It takes significant effort on El’s part to wrench her hand free. As soon as she succeeds the captive snarls; if the woman won’t listen to her attempts to communicate through the language she’s learnt, maybe she’ll pay attention to her baring her teeth in an obvious threat. There’s a hint of a metallic taste in her mouth. Seems like they’ve both drawn blood. El raises her hand as if about to slap the woman pinned under her, but pauses. Apparently she’s hesitant to put her hand anywhere near those teeth again. Good.

She’s ready to start fighting back.

“If you treat her like an animal she’s going to act like an animal.”

Elizabeth glares at Jeremiah as she finishes bandaging the bites that now litter her hands and forearms. “Oh, sorry,” comes the sarcastic reply, “did I imagine you asking me for help? How many savages have you tamed?”

“None. But I’m good with people. I’m a people person.”

The woman rolls her eyes and takes the bowl of stew that Andrew is holding out for her. “She’s not the same as people back home. Does she look like she could read novels? Understand economics? Appreciate real music and art?”

Jeremiah looks over at the crate situated at the edge of camp. The tribeswoman inside is sat with her back to them, one arm hugging her knees while the other is pressed to her bloody forehead. “She looks… like she’s hungry.”

Having already finished his own stew, he gathers together a small handful of nuts, a strip of dried meat and a tin cup of water before heading over to the crate. The captive barely moves as he deposits these rations into the tins.

“Hey. Annie. Eat.”

She just glares out of the corner of her eye. He shrugs. “Your loss,” he comments as he takes one of the nuts for himself. That’s when she springs to life, snarling at him as she snatches up the food and brings it into the crate. The man chuckles. “Feisty little character, aren’t you?”

For a while he just sits beside the crate, considering the captive. She’s bruised black and blue from her battle with Elizabeth, blood from the gash on her forehead now smeared across her brow and adding to the grime in her hair. But despite all this, she’s glaring out at him, snarling, apparently fully prepared to fight him.

“We’re not going to get anywhere if we have to beat you to a pulp everytime we want to teach you something new, are we?” He says. She stares out at him, unable to comprehend his words. “Even after all that you’re still snapping and snarling and saying your name isn’t Anne.”

The tribeswoman appears to give up on paying attention to him then, turning her focus to scratching at the dirt. He continues to talk regardless, thinking out loud.

“What you need,” he states, “is to lose a fight. Really lose a fight. You need to be beaten down so hard you can’t get back up.”

He glances towards the cart, where he left the spear that he bought from the trapper that captured the girl. A grin spreads across his face as the idea solidifies in his mind. “Shouldn’t be too hard if that’s your best weapon.”

Falling asleep in the crate hasn’t gotten any easier, and the distinct feeling that Zazzalil’s humanity is slipping away from her certainly doesn’t help. She had to snarl and growl and spit at El, she had to bite. It was the only communication the woman would take heed of and the only way to defend herself. But for days now she’s felt like she’s being treated like an animal, and she can’t help but think she’s given into that. She tries to reassure herself that she’s still a person, an actual human person, but she finds herself wondering if she’ll ever be treated like one again. If she’ll ever see her tribe again. If she’ll ever feel safe or loved.

“This is the dawn,” she sings quietly to herself as she stares up at the stars through the slats of the cage and the blur of her tears, “the dawn of our time.

We are mankind, with the gift of a greater mind.”

She tries to make herself believe it.

Chapter Text

“What’s this?” And asks, holding up a fruit.

Zazzalil hesitates. “Food?”

Rolling his eyes, And specifies. “What food?”

That’s trickier. Why do there have to be so many fucking fruits? Her brow furrows. 

“...Apple?”

“Yes! What colour?”

That’s an easy one. “Purple.”

“No.”

“Bullshit.”

The man chuckles. Zazzalil suspects he’s figured out what she means when she says that, even though she never learnt to swear in his language.

“Try again?”

“No.” The captive shakes her head. She was certain about that one. “It is purple.”

“It’s not.”

“Is.”

“It’s red.”

Zazzalil pauses for a moment. “...Shit, yeah. It’s red.”

He chuckles quietly to himself as he hands the apple through the slats to Zaz. As usual, she begins tearing into it like it’ll disappear at any moment. The man tosses a few nuts and a scrap of meat into her food tin as he stands up. She pauses her frantic chewing momentarily, though she still grips the fruit hard enough that her dirty nails puncture the skin.

“Out now?” the captive asks hopefully. He shakes his head apologetically.

“Out later. Lots of work today.”

“Fuck work.”

He laughs then, and Zazzalil’s grip loosens a little. She allows herself a hesitant smile. And, she’s found, is the only one she can trust to take a joke.

“Out later, yeah?” the man promises. “Bye, Zaz.”

“Bye, And.”

Jeremiah didn’t closely examine the spear when he first bought it; it was just another useless knick-knack for some idiot at home to buy and display in an attempt to appear interesting. But now he’s decided to give it a closer look. The head is formed from a carefully shaped shard of flint lashed to the end of a long, straight branch with rough twine. A few purple and white feathers hang from the joint. Halfway down the shaft strips of brown pelt - it looks like the same kind her dress was made of - are woven into a handle. It was clearly made with care, a labour of love, but it’s definitely not just ornamental. The neatly wrapped twine is flecked with blood.

“Um, Jeremiah?”

He turns to see Andrew standing beside him, nervously fidgeting with his hands. “Let me guess. You’ve come to tell me, once again, how terrible my idea is.”

“I just think- giving her bits of food, it’s worked for language. It can work for other things, can’t it? This could seriously hurt her. We don’t need to hurt her, the most we need is to keep her a little hungry.”

Jeremiah shakes his head as he sets the spear down. “You don’t get it, do you? We don’t want the girl to be working for reward. She doesn’t need rewarding. We want her to be working because we fucking told her to. We need her to be scared.”

“But-”

“Look at it this way, Andy. We do this right, we break her now, and we’ll never need to do it again. Elizabeth won’t need to flay her arms to the bone every other day. Get it all over with, you know? It’s for the little beast’s own good. If you give as much of a shit about her as you say you do you’ll help me break her in.”

“I-”

“She lets you take her out of the crate, doesn’t she? When you take her out to stretch her legs, she lets you tie her wrists.”

“Yes. She… she trusts me.”

“Great, that’ll be helpful. You will help, won’t you?”

Andrew squirms under his colleague’s gaze. “I… Yeah. I’ll help. For Annie’s own good.”

Zazzalil is getting impatient. The sky is beginning to darken, the campfire has been lit, and yet And hasn’t made good on his promise to take her out of the crate yet. He’s barely looked her way since breakfast.

“And!” she yells, sick of waiting. “And, out!”

That seems to get his attention, the tall man slowly approaching the crate. “Okay,” he says quietly as he crouches down on the other side of the slats, “out now, Zaz. Out now.”

“Fucking finally,” she mutters as she pushes her hands between two of the planks. The captive winces as the ropes are tied, tugging against him a little to show her annoyance. It’s tighter than normal; he usually makes an effort not to hurt her. There’s a strange determination in his face. She eyes him skeptically as she pulls her bound hands back into the crate, not sure what to make of it. He hasn't left a long lead like usual. Instead he reaches through the slats and taps her foot, indicating for her to hold it out. She obliges, watching curiously as he wraps something around her ankle, something like rope but shiny and hard that makes a rattling noise.

"Okay," he says again. "Okay, out now."

Trying to lead her by the ankle is, in Zazzalil's opinion, the worst idea And has had to date. Fortunately he doesn't keep it up for long, bringing her closer to camp and tethering her to a spike that she saw Jer hammering into the ground that afternoon. She furrows her brow and looks up at the man as he unties her wrists, hoping he’ll pick up on her confusion and explain why he’s brought her here, but he doesn’t seem to want to look at her. The moment her hands are freed she gives up on trying to get an answer, dropping to the ground and attempting to wrench the stake out of the dirt. Unfortunately she achieves nothing more than scraping up her palms.

"Anne."

That’s unmistakably Jer’s voice. Zazzalil snarls, not looking up from her vain attempts to free herself.

"Annie!"

Still she refuses to respond. Her attention is only grabbed when her spear clatters to the ground in front of her. She snatches it up, quickly checking it over for damage, before finally looking up.

The three traders and the chained woman stare silently at each other for a moment, Jer idly tossing and catching something thin and silver and about the length of his forearm. The thinly-veiled threat in his grin puts Zazzalil on edge. He indicates for her to stand. She stands, shifting one leg behind her and bending her knees, gripping the spear in both hands. She'd love to launch it at the man, but given the situation she's hesitant to let go of her weapon.

She expects his lunge at her and jumps aside, thrusting the spear towards him. He dodges too. And the game begins.

It quickly becomes obvious to Jeremiah that the tribeswoman spars for fun. Light on her feet and grinning all the while, she dances out of the way of his swings and lunges and retaliates with practiced precision. Not only is she skilled, but he soon realises that the long spear allows her far more range than his bayonet gives him. Sure, he manages to land a few shallow cuts on her arms, but it’s no more than what she lands on him. He won’t let this discourage him, though. If the girl wants to dance, he’ll fucking dance. She can’t keep it up forever.

At first Zazzalil is almost enjoying herself. Sure, the stakes are far higher than when she’d challenge Smelly-Balls or Tiblyn or anyone else in the tribe to a battle, but the adrenaline rush is the same. The thrill of it still makes her giddy. So she smiles as she fights, amused by the frustration she’s causing her opponent. It’s immensely gratifying to see that smug look replaced with a snarl.

But then there’s the cold sting of the blade carving gashes into her arm, and it makes her eyes water. There’s the short chain bound to her ankle tangling around her feet, making her stumble and threatening to drag her to the ground. There’s her hair falling into her face and obstructing her vision. And there’s the knowledge that, although she’s only fighting one man now, at any moment El could join and she’d be outnumbered two to one. Blood runs hot down her arms. She can’t deny that she’s scared. What will they do if she lets her guard down? What will happen to her if she loses? Her smile fades as the thrill wears off, replaced by panic. She’s still keeping him back, but for how long?

The man with the blade is on the offensive, forcing Zazzalil to stumble back again and again, barely staving off his attacks. The determination is clear on his face as he lunges again. She jumps back, but this time her foot doesn’t jump with her - the chain is pulled taught and she has to use her spear to catch herself and stay upright, her bloody arms burning as they’re forced to take her weight. But with her only method of defence occupied there’s nothing to stop the blade glancing her head, slicing open the barely-closed wound on her bruised brow. He backs out of the chain’s range as she presses her hand to the gash and grunts out a string of swears, glaring at him with gritted teeth. It burns.

As the girl attempts to catch her breath, her opponent turns to one of his companions.

“Care to join me?”

Elizabeth nods, adjusting her grip on her machete. “For the record, I still think you're stupid thinking you can break her in an evening. But, fuck it, the bitch has it coming. I’d love to,” she says with a grin.

“Good. But be careful with that thing. The beast’s no good to us dead.”

The tribeswoman stays put when Jeremiah indicates for her to step forward, breathing heavily, one hand still pressed to her head, her other arm weakly hanging on to her spear. “Come on,” he calls. “Come on, Annie. Or have you given up already? Had enough, Anne?”

He’s not sure if it’s his tone or the use of her name that does it, but the captive snarls and strides forward, taking up a fighting stance once again.

Trying to fight two people is hard, but Zazzalil’s attempted that before - just to see if she could. Trying to fight two people when there’s blood running into your eye and you’re chained to the ground is a whole deal harder. El seems to be able to slice up her arms and legs with no effort whatsoever and the pain is nearing unbearable. She can’t block two weapons at once. Multiple times she’s lost track of one of them and backed into them, earning a few new cuts for her trouble. But through it all she’s determined to stay on her feet for as long as possible. Maybe she can’t avoid being beaten, but she won’t go down without a fight.

“Andrew!”

The anxious man tears his eyes away from the tribeswoman attempting to fend off Elizabeth’s attacks, and turns to face Jeremiah. He grips a thick chunk of tree branch - he chose the more primitive weapon over a blade to avoid drawing blood, but now that joining the fight is so imminent he’s not sure he has it in him to swing it.

“Come on, Andy. Not just going to let us take all the hits, are you?”

"No, I just- Well- she's already hurt, it's two against one already, I-"

"Don't give me that crap. You've coddled the girl for long enough, now fucking show her who's boss!"

He shoves the other man towards the fight. Andrew sucks in a breath through gritted teeth and raises his weapon. For her own good.

Zaz looks his way just in time to be sent stumbling sideways by a blow to the head.

Blood running into one eye, the other hurting too much to keep open, Zazzalil tries to clear her mind enough to comprehend what just happened. And hit her. And.

She's vaguely aware of the fact that the other two have retreated to goad him on from the sidelines. Her grip on her spear is weak, but she still raises it. The next swing is blocked - barely - but the third hits her square in the jaw and fills her mouth with the taste of blood. As he skips back a tooth and a half fall out of her mouth; she doesn’t have the energy to spare for spitting. He stops then, watching her. Panting, legs shaking under her, blood glistening in the firelight, leaning on her spear, but still stubbornly on her feet. She stares straight back, an intense anger burning in her bones.

He tricked her, chained her down so he could stand by and watch as she was cut to pieces. He hit her when she was already barely on her feet. It's beyond just anger rising in the captive, it's the overwhelming weight of betrayal. She believed him when he acted like he was just going to take her out for exercise. She let him lead her closer to camp. She didn’t resist, didn’t fight him. She's done what she knew she should never have done - she trusted him.

"I'm going to fucking kill you, And," she mumbles. She doesn't have the strength for anything more. Unmoving, he watches with wide eyes as she persuades her shaking arms to raise the spear over her shoulder. They're both vaguely aware of the other two yelling at him, but he just continues to stare. Like he's realised what he's done. Summoning the last of her strength, she stumbles forward a few steps and launches the weapon.

"Andrew, you fucking idiot!" Jeremiah yells. It's lucky for the man that Elizabeth grabs his arm and drags him aside a split second before the spear streaks past them and thuds into the ground. For a moment nobody moves. The tribeswoman is panting harshly over the crackling of the fire.

"She tried to kill me," Andrew whispers. "Zaz, you tried to kill me!"

She gives a half-hearted snarl but doesn't move. Nobody does. They've all realised the same thing; she’s thrown her weapon out of range of her chain. The captive stares after it, her expression unreadable, whatever spark of excitement that was fueling her at the start of this ordeal now long-since dead and buried.

Jeremiah shoves his hands into his pockets as he strolls over to the shaking girl. "Uh oh, Annie," he mocks. "Whatcha gonna do now, girl?"

A hard downward shove to the shoulder is enough to make her legs crumple under her. She kneels where she fell beside the campfire, watching him take his time walking back to the spear and plucking it out of the dirt. “Looks like you lost, didn’t you?”

When he gets back to the fire the captive is still staring at him, shivering, pressing a hand to the gash on her forehead. He grins, even though his arms are littered with gashes from the stone weapon. Because as bloody as he is, she’s far worse off. Looking Anne in the eyes, a grin plastered across his face, he brings up his knee and snaps the spear in half.

Zazzalil is numb. Mentally, that is. Physically, dozens of shallow gashes are burning on her skin and the bruises are throbbing and the raw nerves of her broken teeth are loudly protesting being in contact with air. She barely has the energy to sniffle as quiet tears make their way down her face.

Her eyes silently follow the broken spear as the man tosses it in the fire and walks away. Somewhere in the back of her mind she’s vaguely aware of the sound of conversation behind her but she can’t bring herself to care.

Watching the dance of a campfire has always been a comfort to the woman. She could get lost in the flames for hours on end. Now it's all she finds herself capable of doing. Her brain refuses to think.

She doesn’t think when she hears footsteps behind her, but raw terror floods her mind. Instinct tells her to reach for a weapon, since the chain won’t allow her to flee. Her weapon is on fire, only a short length of the shaft free from flame. She doesn’t think. She just knows that this has worked before.

For a few minutes Andrew thinks that Jeremiah’s plan has worked. He expects the girl to be defeated, to let him take her back to her crate. He definitely doesn’t expect her to scramble to her feet, her bloody legs somehow managing to hold her up, and swing a flaming piece of branch at his head with a weak but furious yell. It misses - barely - but he's shaken nonetheless, running backwards as she jabs at him. The tribeswoman doesn't pursue.

Elizabeth is surprised to see Jeremiah smiling at Andrew almost getting his eyebrows singed off. "Told you it would take more than one fight to break her in," she says, arms folded. "You'll kill the bitch before you tame her."

"No, no, look at her."

She looks. The tribeswoman is trembling, eyes wide, tears still rolling down her face. "I'll admit, you've got her pretty shaken."

"Shaken? She's not just shaken. That fire thing's probably how she defends against predators. We've got her acting like she's a prey animal. It won’t take much more." He stoops to draw the blade strapped to his boot once again. “Andrew, get us some water.”

As the fight resumes once more, Zazzalil doesn’t have the energy to wonder how she’s still standing. There’s only space for one thought in her brain: swing the torch, don’t get stabbed. If she stops swinging she’s going to get hurt, and she can’t take any more pain. For the first time in years the harrowing fear of death has settled over her - there’s no time to ponder whether Jer would actually go all the way and kill her. She’s just got to make sure he doesn’t get the chance.

This is made significantly harder when And sprints back into the camp and tosses a bucket of water over her, extinguishing the flame and startling her long enough for Jer to sweep her legs out from under her.

Her head has barely hit the ground when a heavy boot thuds into her gut. With the breath knocked clean out of her chest, she fights to drag the air back into her lungs as another blow hits her between her shoulder blades. El must be behind her. When she attempts to push herself off the ground, her breath still coming in shallow gasps, something heavy slams her head back into the mud and holds her there. She doesn’t understand what’s yelled down at her, but she snarls in response - it’s almost instinctive now. She’s kicked again.

As his colleagues continue to rain blows down on the girl, Andrew finds himself locking eyes with her. One eye is swollen half-shut from his blow, blood covering the other side of her face. There’s complete and utter hatred in that face. This was pointless, he realises. Even if Jeremiah’s plan works, the tentative trust in him that he managed to build in the tribeswoman is broken. Forever. He can feel tears building in his eyes. He really fucked this one up.

When Jeremiah takes his boot off of Zaz’s head she seems not to notice. But she definitely notices when that same boot slams into the gash in her brow. Her yelp is piercing - enough to make the two attackers step back, perhaps wondering for the first time whether they’ve gone too far. As Jeremiah moves to check the damage she manages to scramble backwards, whimpering like a frightened animal. She stares up at the man, shaking, whimpering, pleading. Wordlessly begging for him to stop.

She shies away when he crouches down beside her, stiffens when he reaches out to stroke her filthy cheek. “Good girl, Annie,” he whispers. “Good girl. You can go back in your cage now.”

It takes a while for Zazzalil to move once she’s put back in the crate. But eventually she manages to gather the strength to kneel by the water tin and attempt to clean the blood off her face. Everything burns. And her pride has taken another hit; she lost. She lost, and she had to beg for mercy.

But the more she thinks about it, the easier it is to explain away her defeat. They chained her ankle so she couldn’t maneuver properly. They outnumbered her. They kicked her while she was down. She’s quickly realising that the bastards were too scared to face her in a fair fight - that’s the only explanation she can think of. Despite the pain she finds herself snickering quietly to herself. They really thought that they won? They call that winning? No, that was just a display of cowardice. It hurts to laugh, but the thought that Jer couldn’t go up against an opponent considerably smaller than him without giving himself significant advantages forces the sound out of her bruised chest. 

She probably looks insane, bruised and bloody and laughing quietly to herself in a cage. She doesn’t care. They can think she’s insane, just as long as they don’t think they broke her.

Chapter Text

As the sun begins to set, Jemilla uses her wife’s broken spearhead to light a campfire before carefully tucking the pieces back into her pack. They've made an effort to make the blaze as smoky as possible - just in case Zazzalil can see it, wherever she is. Perhaps she'll take comfort in it. Jemilla can't help but think that the Firebringer will need it, being separated from her people for as long as she has. At first the tribe had expected to find Zazzalil after a few days at most. Maybe trapped, maybe injured, maybe wounded. Hopefully nothing too severe to be healed. But it’s been weeks now. Weeks with no sign of her.

"What's bugging ya, J-Mills?"

Jemilla emerges from her own head and tears her eyes away from the flames to face Molag, who has just sat herself down beside her adopted daughter. Said daughter shrugs.

"There's a lot of things. We've been slowing down, for one."

"Well, we can't help needing to eat,” the elder reasons. Despite them bringing more supplies than most first thought necessary, their packs have been growing worryingly light lately.

“I know, I know… Doesn’t help that it’s unfamiliar land.” The tribe leader looks down at Howl, whose huge head is laid in her lap. "But I have no idea what's going on with the wolves."

For at least a fortnight now, Growl and Howl have been having occasional periods of distraction, one or both of them diving off the beaten path into the woods, always following the scent in a wide circle before returning to where they started. Often the tribe finds evidence of campfires near these spots, but nothing more to suggest what happened there.

“They’re still tracking her scent, I’m sure they are, but I don’t understand why she would be going in circles like this.”

“Getting food just like we are, probably. Girl’s gotta eat.” Molag tries to keep her tone hopeful.

“But if… if she is moving of her own free will, then why would she be travelling away from us?”

“Lost?”

“She could have gotten Howl to lead her home. She sent him back alone, something must have been stopping her from following. And if she stayed where she sent him from we would have caught up to her by now. Molag, I… I think someone took her.”

It’s a heavy acknowledgement of a possibility that Jemilla has been trying her hardest not to think about. But as much as she hates the thought, other explanations are few and getting fewer. She knows that the rest of the tribe have been thinking the same thing, but until now nobody has dared mention it.

Molag stares into the fire for a long while. “Yeah,” she agrees eventually, barely louder than a whisper. The Peacemaker can’t remember when she last saw her looking so solemn. “It’s certainly starting to look that way.”

Jemilla’s watering eyes aren’t just because of the smoke anymore. One hand tangled in Howl’s fur, the other gripping the bone necklace still strung around her neck, she bows her head and lets the tears fall. Molag pulls the woman in for a hug, gently rubbing her arm.

“It’s alright, I got you. Cry it out.”

“They… They’ve probably hurt her. She’s probably hurt and scared and alone and there’s nothing I can fucking do about it.”

“Zazzy’s a tough girl, she can stick it out until we find her,” Molag reassures the woman, though she’s finding it hard to sound reassuring. “‘Cause we are going to find her, J-Mills. I promise.”

“And then what? Am I… Am I going to have to fucking barter for my wife’s freedom? Fight for it? Fuck, Molag, this could be seen as a declaration of war.”

“Well, you are the Peacemaker. Conflict resolution’s your thing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I’ve never dealt with anything this serious! I just… I just want her back…”

“And we’re going to get her back. She may have been a pain in my ass for twenty-odd years, but I ain’t giving up on her now.”

The younger woman manages an attempt at a smile through her tears. “Pain in my ass, too,” she says in a small voice. “Ever since we were kids. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Sensing an opportunity to distract her daughter, Molag gazes into the fire as she thinks back to when she was the young leader of a tribe trying to raise a litter of little ones that seemed determined to get into trouble whenever they could.

“I’m not sure if you’d remember this,” she begins, raising her voice slightly so that the rest of the tribe gathered around the campfire can hear, “but when Zazzalil was tiny she was never called Zazzalil. It was always Zaz or Zazzy.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Tiblyn half-laughs, her small smile illuminated in the flickering firelight. “She’d get this look on her face whenever an adult called her Zazzalil. Her eyes would go massive.”

Beside her, Keeri’s brow furrows. “I think I remember that…”

Schwoopsie grins at the memory of the scrappy little kid that would hang out with her younger sister. “She was like a deer in… Well... I don’t even know what.”

“Oh, I do remember!” Keeri suddenly announces, sitting up a little straighter. “One time, she was trying to climb the cliff face, but halfway up Vudston saw her and yelled ‘Zazzalil what the fuck are you doing?!’ She almost fell.”

“She would have made it if he hadn’t,” Smelly-balls comments as he tosses a few more sticks into the flames. “I believed in her.”

“You know, I think that was the first time Ducker almost got one of us killed,” Emberly muses. The accusation renders Ducker speechless for a moment.

“Excuse me, I had nothing to do with that! I simply asserted that the clifftop was the duck’s domain, it’s not my fault that she said ‘bet’ and started climbing!”

Emberly leans back against Grunt who, whilst being unable to reminisce with the rest of the tribe, is amused by the story. “Definitely his fault,” she whispers, causing her partner to chuckle quietly under his breath. The former priest huffs.

Molag cuts back in before an argument can break out. "Alright, then, you lot do remember that. But do you know why it changed?"

Blank faces all around. Shaking her head, the elder smiles to herself. "We used to just call her Zazzalil when she was in trouble. But that little girl got herself into so much fucking trouble that we were using her full name more often than not. And so it stuck."

Jemilla manages a real smile this time, though it's small. It comes as no surprise to her that Zazzalil was mischievous enough to change how an entire tribe referred to her. As her friends quietly laugh at the tale, she allows herself to loosen her grasp on her fears, leaving them for a little while to wander away down memory lane. She remembers that deer-in-something look. It wasn’t uncommon for Jemilla herself to snap at Zazzy with her full name, and she’d stare at the slightly older girl with eyes too big for her tiny head in a silent plea not to tell any adults about whatever stupid shit she was up to this time.

“Do you remember-” she pauses to sniff, sitting up and wiping her eyes. “Do you remember when she tried to climb onto that horse?”

The stories continue late into the night, the tribe laughing as they rediscover half-forgotten days spent as children let loose in a world that seemed so huge and yet so small at the same time. For hours they bombard Grunt with several different and often conflicting accounts of their adventures, and break decades-old pacts not to tell Molag about their mischief. They remember family whose time has come and gone. Through it all Jemilla can’t help but hang onto the image of that scrawny, wide-eyed little one. The way she always insisted that her plan would work this time. The way she practically quivered with excitement when she thought up some new scheme. That look on her face when she was about to announce another one of her ideas - the look she never grew out of. It’s strange to think that she spent so much of her own childhood finding that kid infuriating.

Eventually the conversation begins to peter out, thoughts beginning to focus on finding a good spot to sleep. As the last story comes to a close, Molag speaks up again. She seems deep in thought.

“You know, kids like Zazzalil - scrawny little things born as Autumn died - they’re not supposed to see Spring.”

All eyes turn to her, wondering where she’s going with this.

"Zaz, in simple terms, shouldn't have pulled through that Winter. And when she did I knew that little girl was going to be a tough one. I thought, ‘this kid’s going to be a stubborn little pain in my ass, isn’t she?’”

A few chuckles rise from around the last embers of the campfire.

“And, you know, I’m so glad I was right.”

Jemilla spends that night curled up in Molag’s arms like she hasn’t since she was a child. Even as she drifts off to sleep her mind is filled with the thought of that scrappy, scrawny little girl. She wonders if, wherever she is, Zazzy is thinking of her too.

Chapter Text

Though Zazzalil is stubborn, she can admit when she's in need of medical attention. So she tries to stay still, not fighting the headlock that And holds her in as El uses a damp cloth to wipe the grime away from the messy gash in her brow. The cold water stings in the half-closed wound, the fact that the skin around it is bruised and tender doesn't help, but she bites her lip and tries not to squirm. That is, until El pulls out a needle and tries to stab her in the head.

The captive flinches away, tugging at And’s arm with her bound hands until he pushes her arms down and holds them against her waist. She tells them to stop. She's ignored. So she snarls, baring her teeth in an obvious threat, but El ignores her. It’s easy enough for the woman to just keep her arms out of the way of the captive’s teeth as she pinches the wound shut. Zazzalil’s fidgeting is out of confusion as well as the pain; why does El think she can fix her wounds like a tear in a dress? If you give them enough time, wounds heal themselves. She's just fucking up her head more. And the feeling of the thread being dragged through her skin is nauseating.

Several stitches later and to her patient’s great relief, El snips the thread and puts the needle away. But she moves on to pulling back Zazzalil's lip, in the spot where she's painfully aware of the bits of broken teeth still lodged in her gums. Muttering something to And, the trader gets to her feet and heads back towards the cart.

As soon as the man releases Zazzalil from his hold, she begins tugging at the chain wrapped tightly around her ankles, biting back the pain in her gashed arms as she moves them.

“Zaz-”

She snarls, just like she has in response to every attempt he’s made to start a conversation this morning. When she looks up he’s wearing a pathetically upset look on his face. The woman is unimpressed. Without a hint of pity, she curtly points out her black eye and bruised jaw, pulling her lip back herself to display the shards of enamel.

“Zaz, I’m sorry, I-”

“Quiet, And!”

For a moment he looks as if he’s about to respond, but reconsiders and gives a small nod.

She continues to glare at him as he takes the cloth from the bowl of water, wrings it out and attempts to swat her hands away from her legs so he can clean the gashes there. She persists. He grabs her by the ropes around her wrists then, tugging her hands off the chain.

“Stop it, Anne.”

The snarl returns to her face. “Anne?” Fuck, she hates that name.

“Yes, Anne. Now stop it.”

He shoves her hands away and tugs up her now rather tattered trouser leg so he can get at the gashes. She freezes. The anger and pain from last night’s fight entirely pushed the thought of the little pouch tied to her leg from her mind. But the shredded ends of her trousers are doing nothing to disguise it now.

She doesn’t catch what the man says, but he sounds confused. He holds her bound wrists away with one hand as she tries to stop him from untying the string wrapped around her leg. Kept on the ground by the chain around her ankles, she can only watch as he stands, peeks into the pouch, and tucks it into his pocket.

“Can I have it?” she asks angrily. It’s not exactly what she wanted to say, but it’s the closest thing in her vocabulary. She needs that pouch back.

“Later.”

The woman snorts. “‘Course,” she mutters to herself, knowing he won’t understand her, “because we can’t have me eating when it’s not convenient for you, can we?”

When Elizabeth returns, Andrew is cleaning up the girl’s bloody legs while she lays flat on her back. Something about her expression gives the woman the distinct feeling that her arms would be crossed if they could.

“Hey. Andrew.”

“What?” he snaps.

The woman rolls her eyes. “You’re not still sulking, are you? She was going to end up hating you sooner or later. And she’s a little shit anyway, I don’t know why you care.” She kneels down beside the captive. “Come hold her still, she needs teeth out.”

The man doesn't respond, silently moving to tug the girl into a sitting position and wrench her jaw open as she squirms. Not particularly enthusiastic about watching teeth being pulled, he looks over Elizabeth’s shoulder. Jeremiah is standing at the fold-out table littered with a few new items he's bought, scribbling furiously in his journal.

“For someone so insistent about Annie being worth a lot,” the man comments, “Jeremiah really doesn’t seem to give a shit about her, does he?”

“She'd die of infection within a day if we left her alone with him," Elizabeth agrees. "We better get a fucking good cut when he sells damn girl."

Said damn girl yelps as the woman wrenches out a broken bit of tooth, thrashing as they both attempt to keep her still. Andrew presses his thumb to the bleeding gum, his other arm wrapped tightly around her waist.

"It's alright," he attempts to comfort her, "it's okay, Annie."

In response, she bites down on the thumb in her mouth. He wrenches it out.

"Anne!"

Elizabeth snorts. "Don't sound so surprised, she tried to put a spear through you yesterday."

Again, the man doesn't respond, instead attempting to regain contol of the tribeswoman squirming in his grip. She yelps when he tightens his grip on her waist and he quickly relents, remembering how many times she was kicked.

"For fuck's sake, keep her still!" Elizabeth snaps as she attempts to hold down the girl's ankles.

"She's bruised pretty badly, it'll hurt her."

"Then fucking hurt her!"

He grits his teeth and holds her closer but she only thrashes harder, throwing her head back and slamming into his nose. He yells in pain as Elizabeth grits her teeth.

“You know what? Fuck this. Jeremiah, move your shit! We’re using the table and you better fucking help!”

Being manhandled when you’re a mess of cuts and bruises is… painful, to say the least. Struggling hurts, and Zazzalil’s sure a few of her cuts are bleeding again, but it’s that or being lashed to the table. The thought of being that vulnerable is terrifying. So she thrashes and yells and snaps at their hands and tries to ignore the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. At least, she does until Jer finishes binding her wrist and slaps her hard across the face.

She freezes, mostly due to shock. But when her wide eyes snap up to his face, her breath catches in her throat for an entirely new reason. A chill runs down her spine. She has no idea what that new reason is - the strike is nothing special. He’s hurt her while she can’t get up before.

When he lays his hand against her stinging cheek again it’s gentle, but she flinches all the same. In that moment she's never felt something so repulsive and so dangerous, though she couldn't begin to explain why. She can’t force him off - she's bound in place and can only press her face into the tabletop in a futile attempt to get away, eyes shut tight, hands curled into fists where they’re tied down at her sides. Though she makes an attempt at a snarl as he strokes her cheek, the sound won’t come. Her chest feels hollow.

"Good girl." They're words she vaguely recognises. Words that make her skin crawl.

She’s able to breathe a little easier when he removes his hand, cracking her eyes open as he starts to clean the gashes in her right arm.

Having one set of stitches sewn into her skin was nauseating, but three at once is putting her on the verge of vomiting, especially after having the rest of her broken teeth pulled. She can’t look away as Jer works on her arm, though. He seems surprisingly determined to restore her flame tattoo, carefully stitching together the raw edges of the design where the blades slashed it apart. There’ll likely still be scars marring the artwork eventually, yet she finds herself almost grateful to the man for at least trying to fix it. But she pushes it down. The day she’s grateful to the man who managed to plant such mind-numbing fear in her head is the day that boars learn to fly.

By the time Zazzalil is released from the ropes holding her down she looks like a child's first attempt at stitching together a tunic. Jer is the one to lock her back in her crate, handing her a needle and thread that he indicates is for repairing the slashes in her trousers. She’s able to pull away when he goes to touch her face again, shoving his hand back with a panic that she pretends is anger. This shouldn’t be scary. She shouldn’t be scared of a hand on her face. Fuck, she’s the Firebringer, she’s not supposed to be scared of anything. She’s an agent of chaos and flames. And sure, that’s not always intentional, but it’s energy she can channel. She forces a snarl onto her face and hunches her shoulders, trying to emulate a predator. There’s no point trying to speak. She doesn’t have the words in his language to express her disgust, and there’s no way he’d put in the effort to attempt making sense of her native tongue. A shame, since there’s a lot she’d like to say. Namely, how fucking dare he.

How dare he touch her like her father used to when she was barely taller than his knees. Like her wife does to wake her gently when she oversleeps. What does he think gives him the right? Just because she’s his…

Her snarl falters as the man walks away. She barely notices him leave, too wrapped up in her own head. His… what? His prisoner? His hostage? His slave?

She freezes. Bile rises in her throat again.

This whole time, she’s been so wrapped up in her anger that her capture happened at all that she hasn’t stopped to consider why it happened. But once the thought occurs to her it’s painfully obvious. That’s why they tried to change her name. That’s why they keep trying to teach her commands. That's why they're trying to break her. They took her as their slave.

Her hand tightens around the spool she's still holding, her body beginning to shake. She has to get out of here, that much is obvious. There’s no room for any other thought in her mind. She needs to get out. Now. Even though it's failed many, many times now she begins kicking at one of the slats, slamming her shoulder into another, rattling the lid. It's not working. Of course it's not fucking working, but it needs to work. She has to get out. It's getting hard to breathe. She claws at the nails holding her cage together until her fingers bleed. She tries to gnaw her way through the wood, spitting out splinters. She throws back her head and yells, hoping that Howl delivered her message to the tribe, hoping that he brought them close enough to hear her.

It’s not long before she screams herself hoarse, but she doesn’t stop. Her breathing is still quick and desperate. Shaking hands grab at her arms, the thread long since dropped. Her fingers find the gaps in her stitches, and when her grip tightens the nails dig in.

The shock of the sharp pain makes her jump. She sucks in a slow breath as she releases her arms, staring down at her shaking hands and bloodied fingers. The bruises still ache. Her jaw hurts where the teeth were pulled. One eye is still swollen half-shut. Her throat is too raw to keep yelling, and the energy has left her anyway. There’s nothing she can do. Nothing she can fucking do.

Her fingers dig into her arms again. Maybe the pain will shock her out of her head.

Andrew isn’t quite sure what to expect when he goes to feed the captive. The three traders agreed to ignore her yelling that morning, not giving her the attention that she seemed to be begging for. But he’s never heard her scream like that. Even when she’s been in pain, she’s never made so much noise.

He finds the girl curled up facing a corner of her crate, hiding her face in her arms. Apparently she didn’t care too much about her trousers, the legs still in tatters from the knees to the hems and the spool of thread abandoned behind her.

“Hey. Annie.”

She doesn’t respond, not that he expected her to. But he’s decided that using her new name is probably best; there’s no point in using a name that isn’t really hers anymore. He kneels down, attempting to catch her eye. From what little he can make out of her face, she looks like she’s been crying.

“Anne, there’s food in your tin. Eat.”

Silence. She’s been silent for most of the day, barely reacting to her crate being moved on and off the cart. Jeremiah’s been insisting that the girl is broken. Andrew is beginning to think he’s right. That made the fight worth it, didn’t it? Glancing past the crate to check he’s not being watched, he pulls a small pouch from his pocket and sets it down beside her. He doesn’t expect this to fix anything between them. The fact that she tried to impale him has already made it clear that reconciliation isn’t happening. But he has no use for a bag of scraps.

She raises her head and stares at it for a moment, then slowly takes it, wipes at the tearstains around her unbruised eye and rolls over to put her back to him. He takes the hint and leaves her be. Maybe she’ll eat once she’s alone, he reasons. But when he returns in the morning her food is still untouched.

Chapter Text

“Annie. C’mon.”

She completely ignores the man, fidgeting with the ratty bandage wrapped around her arm. The dressings were an attempt Elizabeth made a few days ago to stop her from clawing at her wounds, but they did very little to help. Now they resemble little more than dirty, bloody rags.

"Just let me see you eat one thing," Andrew pleads. Food has been disappearing from her tin, but he's not sure whether she's been eating or just stashing it away. She's barely said a word for days, occasionally clawing at the crate or herself or howling at the sky. On walks she’s been ignoring him, staring out into the woods. Andrew is getting worried. He takes the cracker from her tin - it’s been there since breakfast, and now it’s well past noon - and holds it out in front of her.

“C’mon, you like crackers, don’t you?”

No response. He nudges her with it.

"Annie?"

The girl hunches her shoulders and grips her arms, her fingers slipping through the gaps in her bandages and stitches.

"Hey, hey!" He drops the cracker and attempts to pry one hand away from her wounds. "Stop that."

"You stop that."

She shoves his hand off her and shuffles away, her fingers quickly returning to her arm.

"Fuck, you're bleeding again- Annie!"

The girl's head snaps around to glare at him. "Name's not Annie. No-" she pauses, grunting in annoyance when the words don’t come, and rests her chin on her knees. "eh aya jafij vik vak," she continues, not looking at him again. "aya jafij vak. aya jafij."

She grips her arms tighter. Slowly, trying not to startle her, he reaches out to try a more gentle approach to prying her hands away. All he gets in response is a slightly bloodied hand gesture that he assumes is insulting in her culture.

“Fucking- alright. Alright, that’s it.”

With that, he gets to his feet and strides over to the cart, answering Elizabeth’s “what’s got into you?” with a simple “fucking Anne.”

It takes quite a struggle before And is able to bring his plan into fruition, but he manages it. And so Zazzalil finds herself still sitting in her cage, still glaring out at him, but with her hands pulled through the slats on either side of her and bound in place. He takes the chance to re-tie her bandages, but she can tell he’s doing it more out of spite than any concern for the wounds. By this point he’s far too mad to care about her health. She considers tearing them off with her teeth just to piss him off further, but that would only prompt him to stick around longer. So she settles for yelling swears at him as he walks away.

It only takes about a minute before the temptation to bite at the stitches settles in. She knows she shouldn’t, she knows she’s just fucking herself up more. It’s clear to see; her legs have been healing well while her arms are still a bloody mess. But what else is she supposed to do? It’s the only way she’s found to distract herself. She can’t ponder the inevitability of her own fate if she forces herself to focus on pain.

The captive grits her teeth. No, she’s not going to rip into her own arm. She’s going to take this as an opportunity to jump off the path to self-destruction. She just needs another distraction, something else to focus on rather than the hopelessness of her situation, the uncertainty of her future, how much work she’ll be forced to do… fuck. Not off to a good start. She shakes her head in an attempt to rid herself of the thoughts, but it does very little to help. Her bloodied arm is right there, she knows it will work, but no. If she’s going to get herself out of this situation - which she desperately hopes she is - open wounds won’t help. She can find a better way. She used to get distracted from foraging constantly, she should be able to manage this. She just needs to tackle wallowing in her own misery with the same attitude as she would having a job.

With renewed determination, Zazzalil casts her eyes around the camp. A good source of distraction is new ideas - picking up oddly shaped sticks and wondering what they could be used for, pondering whether certain items are flammable, attempting to weave grasses into strange creations. But those activities aren't particularly suited to being hunched in a crate with her hands bound between the slats. Neither is talking to Keeri. Or singing and dancing. Well, dancing, at least. She doesn't need her freedom to sing.

Since the discovery of fire and the dawn of the stone age, a few new songs have been written. The plan is to use music to pass their stories on to future generations, whenever they arrive from wherever they'll come from. Now, left alone and miserable and hungry on the edge of camp, she uses it to throw herself back into the past.

If the captive wasn’t so wrapped up in her own head - for better or for worse - she might notice that her captors aren’t as annoyed by her singing as she would have expected. At least, one of them isn’t, and hushes the others’ complaints. Jeremiah sits closer to the crate than he usually would, but still far enough away that she hasn’t noticed him watching her. He’s surprised she’s still at it. She’s been singing quietly to herself for hours, her throat must be raw, and her restraints don’t exactly make it easy for her to drink. But somehow she’s managing to keep going. Despite it all, the girl has a good voice.

The man stands as she finishes another song. She seems to notice him for the first time then, tensing in her restraints and falling silent.

"Don't panic, Annie, I'm not mad," he calls out as he strolls over to her. She still glares at him when he crouches down beside the crate. "It's alright, girl."

He strokes the back of her bound hand, and her wary expression quickly turns to disgust. He chuckles. "You'll learn to like it."

Zazzalil is not afraid of Jer. She's not. The man hasn't broken her, he's just a coward who can't face her in a fair fight. So when he puts a few nuts in her hand and tells her to eat, clearly waiting to see her struggle in her restraints, she glares up at him and drops them to the ground. The slap across her knuckles makes her flinch harder than she’d like, though it only hurts for a moment.

“Okay, Annie,” he says, pronouncing his words slowly and deliberately, clearly not having much faith in And’s teaching skills. He picks up the nuts and drops them in the tin with her mostly untouched breakfast and the rest of her dinner. “Now eat.”

If Zazzalil’s hands weren’t restrained she’d be incredibly tempted to slap the smug look of his face. The tin is way out of her reach. At least, he thinks it is.

She’s going to reach it. Out of spite.

So, as Jer watches, she shifts her hand up slightly - as far as she can manage - curls it into a fist, and swings it down. The ropes wrapped around the crate slats shift slightly. It takes a fair few swings to get her hand to the ground, but she can’t quite reach her food yet. Twisting her body to face the crate’s side as well as she can, she pushes one foot through the slats and nudges it closer to her hand. Once again, she has to do this a few times, but eventually she manages to snag a cracker from the tin and bend down to grab it with her teeth. It’s not easy, it’s far from dignified, but she sits up as much as she can in the cramped space and manages to get it in her mouth, staring up at the man with a shit-eating grin.

“Fuck you, Jer.”

She expects the man to be angry, but the grin hasn’t left his face. She can't shove his hand away when he reaches out to touch her cheek so instead she jerks her head away, snarling. He just laughs again. Fucking laughs at her. She did what he fucking asked - specifically to piss him off - and he’s fucking laughing. So of course she bites his hand.

He can’t strike her through the crate slats, but grabbing her by the hair and slamming her head against the wood makes her freeze up all the same. She doesn’t understand what he snarls at her - she barely even hears it - but she can understand being spat on. And then he leaves her alone to catch her breath, trying to figure out why her chest feels so tight.

In the days spent with her hands bound to the crate slats Zazzalil manages to leave her wounds alone. For the most part. She slips once or twice, but catches herself more often than not. Her arms slowly begin to heal, and she finds other ways to distract herself; drumming against the wood with her feet or watching the birds flit about the tree branches or laying on her back with her legs folded up to fit and staring up at the sky, picking out familiar shapes in the clouds. Of course, she can’t block out her thoughts entirely. She’s still scared of her future, and occasionally thrashes and kicks and bites at her restraints. She still misses her tribe, and occasionally curls up shaking and sobbing and wondering if she’ll ever see them again. Sometimes she’s able to pull herself out of these moods. Sometimes El treads on the hand still bound at ground level.

But after a few days it becomes a whole lot easier to distract herself. It’s early afternoon when they reach what Zazzalil can only describe as the edge of the world, where the land seems to sink away and give in to the biggest expanse of water that she’s ever laid eyes on. And the water is breathing. For a long time she’s entirely transfixed by it, barely noticing the fact that the ground beneath her is loose and soft and there’s people and horses milling about and there’s huts littered across the shore. She can’t take her eyes off the sea.

Chapter Text

The crashing of waves against the shore is still at the forefront of Zazzalil's mind as she sits in the sand by the edge of the forest, sewing up the slashes in her trousers. Within an hour of the traders setting up camp on the beach Jer untied her wrists and dragged her out of the crate, instead chaining her by the ankle to a tree. The crate was given to a woman who she can still see further down the beach. She's using it to cage birds. After having to suffer through that same fate Zazzalil pities the animals, but she can't say she isn't glad to be rid of the damn thing.

The sewing takes a while; the damage to the fabric is messy, and it's caked in mud and blood to the point where it's difficult to force the needle through in places. But eventually she snaps the thread with her teeth and leaves it in the sand for Jer to retrieve later. He must think the bobbin he gave her the day after the fight got lost at some point, since he gave her another when she was let out of the crate. In actuality it's in the pouch tied to her leg. He doesn’t need to know that.

The afternoon wears on. Zazzalil spends most of it combing what little of the forest she can reach on her short tether for nuts to stash in her pouch and large rocks to drop on the chain in a futile attempt to break it. She barely sees her captors - they're off talking to the other people milling about the beach - apart from one particularly unpleasant experience when And holds her still so El can pull the stitches out of her skin. The sensation almost makes her sick.

Evening comes. Zazzalil sits raking her fingers through the sand, drawing meaningless, wandering patterns, forcing herself to stay in the present. She’s alone again. But when she looks over the beach she doesn’t see people still milling about. They’ve gathered into one crowd - or most of them have. A cheerful melody just about reaches her at the edge of the woods, played on an instrument she’s never heard before. Despite the apparent danger of these people, she can’t help but be curious.

She would have been fine if they’d left her alone, if that curiosity had never been satiated. She would have much preferred it. But of course, that has no bearing on what’s done to her.

When Jer comes and unlocks her chain from the tree she tries to keep away from him, but it’s hard when he can easily yank her foot out from under her and pin her to the ground. He wraps the chain around her waist and wrists and hauls her to her feet, twisting his fingers into her hair so he can drag her down the beach, back into the crowd he came from. With the daylight beginning to fade the scene is bathed in the light of a large campfire, the orange tones licking at the faces of the people sat on boxes and logs and more stood behind, many eating, others talking and laughing amongst themselves. But the bonfire isn’t centre stage here. No, that honour goes to the man sat cross-legged on a wooden crate; the source of the music. Zazzalil finds her eyes fixed on him as Jer finds his seat beside his travelling companions and forces her to her knees in the sand.

Like her, the man is dressed simply. Bare feet and bare arms. A battered-looking instrument is sat on his lap, but though the melody he plucks from the strings is bouncy and bright there’s no joy in the performance. He stares blank-faced down at his hands. Zazzalil gets a sinking feeling in her stomach as she realises that there's a chain strung from his ankle to a stake driven deep into the sand by the campfire.

The song ends, and Zazzalil is dragged back to her feet. Jer leads her into the circle and begins to untangle her hands from the chain, giving some command to the musician. He silently stands, picks up his crate and trudges over to the campfire to sit there instead. Soon Zazzalil finds herself tethered to the same stake, left alone in the centre of the circle, at a complete loss for why. The crowd is getting louder. It seems to be directed at her now. She looks over at the man chained up with her, meeting his dead-eyed gaze. He sees the unasked question in her face.

“They want you to dance for them, kid.”

It’s the first thing she’s heard spoken in her native tongue since she was a free woman, and it instantly makes goosebumps rise on her arms. But she knows it’s true; some of the crowd have picked up on her uncertainty and switched to yelling at her with words she understands. She turns back to her fellow captive. “I’m not doing that.”

He ignores her, solemnly tweaking the tuning of his banjo.

“I’m not going to fucking do that!”

Satisfied with his instrument’s sound, he looks up. “Not really my decision.”

Her hands curl into fists. His dismissal may be cold, but he’s right. This isn’t his fault. She scans the crowd for the true guilty party.

The captive finds Jer standing now, staring at her with narrowed eyes. She stares back, near shaking with rage. She's not their fucking entertainment, she's not going to let him use her like that, and she tells him as such. Jer doesn't respond, just holding out his hand for something that El hands him. A coil of leather. She gives a command to the musician as Jer drops most of it to the ground. The song starts up again. The leather strap hits the sand an inch right of her foot.

Zazzalil steps away, startled, but he whips the ground to her left too. She tries to back away from him. He whips her feet. She yelps, scrambling back faster, but the man sat behind her gets up and shoves her back into the circle, forcing her to keep dodging the whip. It hits her feet and flicks against her ankles and stings like a whole swarm of angry bees, even with her trying to avoid it. More of the crowd are getting to their feet, pushing her hard if she stumbles too close to the edge of the ring. They clap along to the music. They sing. But some of them are still just yelling, and though she doesn’t understand most of them the ones she does understand make her skin crawl.

“Move your feet, pipsqueak!”

“Fucking dance you useless bitch!”

“C’mon, girl! Gi’s a proper show!”

The whip thrashes the ground in time to the beat. Tears prick at Zazzalil's eyes, and not just because of the hellfire in her feet. She cries because, whether she lets them or not, they're using her for their sick amusement. Either she gives in and dances or they force her to dance around the whip. She hates that she’s doing it, she wishes she could just stand stock-still and take the beating, refuse to play their sadistic game, but it already hurts so damn much.

“Aw, poor lamb’s cryin’!”

“Go on, man, skin her feet! Give her hell!”

“Had enough yet, you little savage?”

Zazzalil is finding it harder and harder to keep up with Jer. She stumbles on the uneven ground and almost trips over her chain, barely managing to breathe through the tightness in her chest. Her feet sport a latticework of angry lash marks. The whip flicks blood across the sand from the gashes it’s cut into her skin. She could swear that the music is speeding up. The hecklers mock her face turning red - she doesn’t know if it’s from the humiliation or the tears. She can barely think over the sound of the crowd and the pain and her own shaking breath and quiet sobs, and the thoughts that get through are ones she wishes wouldn’t. Because, as she fails another dodge and blood runs down her ankle, she starts to wonder whether it would be easier if she just gave them what they want. She hates that she’s even considering it. She’s supposed to be strong, she should be able to put up with some pain and heckling, but it’s near unbearable now. Again she’s backed into the edge of the circle, almost tripping into the spectators. A rough hand catches her by the arm, and she turns her head to see a man looking down at the somewhat damaged tattoo beneath his fingers. Cold eyes meet hers. “What the fuck is that?”

She’s shoved back into the ring, and near immediately a blow across her toes forces her back into moving. The man’s sneer echoes in her head as she struggles to keep up. Obviously the artwork indicative of her name means nothing to them. To them, the Firebringer is just another slave. Not exceptionally brave or smart or resourceful, just exploitable. She doesn’t feel exceptionally brave. The first human to give fire to her tribe is only a human, after all. A human who’s scared and hurt and overwhelmed. A human who can only take so much.

“Alright!” she eventually manages to cry, near choking on her tears. “I’ll do it, I’ll dance!”

Most of them don’t understand her desperate words, but those that do quickly spread the message. The whip and music pause, but she barely notices - the roar of the crowd drowns everything out. Zazzalil just stares down at her battered, bloody feet, at the chain binding her ankle, and tries to scrub the tears from her face. But soon a new song starts, and a yell and a whip crack from Jer remind her of what she promised she’d do. Her eyes meet the musician’s again, and again find no pity. The message on his face is clear - just give them what they want.

So she gives it to them. Though she doesn’t know the song there's a steady beat to it and she can improvise. The crowd still clap and sing along, still overwhelmingly loud. There’s a little less yelling now. But though the melody she dances to is bouncy and bright there’s no joy in the performance. Tears still roll down her face. She can’t close her eyes lest she trip or stumble into the crowd again, but she tries to block it all out nonetheless. She tries to pretend she’s back home and she’s dancing because she wants to, just for the joy of the movement. But at home a whip wouldn’t hit the ground by her feet whenever she hesitates or loses her footing. At home she wouldn’t be alone in the circle, stared at and mocked, laughed at as she cries. At home she would know the song.

After what feels like an eternity, the music stops. Zazzalil stands panting, her body aching and her head a mess. Smudged with tears, her face shines in the firelight as she turns to the musician again. He’s checking the tuning of his instrument.

“Please,” she whimpers, “can we be done?”

He doesn’t reply, but she already knows the answer. They don’t get to choose when they’re done. He has to play another song. And another. And another. And she has to dance. Even though she’s exhausted and overwhelmed and bleeding. When she collapses they drag her back to her feet. When she hesitates, unable to focus on improvising with so many harsh eyes on her, they lash her ankles. When she finally breaks down and begs the man whipping her to let her rest they yell threats and insults and throw pebbles and driftwood until she’s scared back into amusing them.

The evening drags on, the fire burns low, and the crowd thins out. The musician plays a slow, gentle melody. Zazzalil has been reduced to shuffling around miserably in the sand. When the song comes to an end she stands staring down at the ground, waiting for the ordeal to start all over again, vaguely aware of Jeremiah saying something to the man sat on the crate.

“He says you can stop,” the man translates. Immediately the woman sits down, burying her head in her knees, and sobs.

Her feet and ankles still hurt. Her body aches, slick with sweat and shaking. She’s exhausted - shattered enough to just curl up and cry herself to sleep right there on the sand. And she almost does, but she’s interrupted by the musician shaking her shoulder.

“Hey. Kid. I know you’re tired, but you gotta wash the sand out of those cuts before you sleep.”

She hesitantly opens her eyes, looking up at the man knelt beside her. There’s still no discernable emotion on his face, but apparently he wants to help. She drags herself over to the crate he had been sat on, where he hands her a tin of water like the one she drinks out of and a few frayed scraps of fabric, already peppered with faint bloodstains. She can’t help but notice the indents and redness on the man’s calloused fingertips when he hands over the makeshift bandages.

At first it appears he intends to leave her to deal with her own injuries, letting her rinse away the blood and sand alone, but when she struggles to wrap up her feet properly he steps in and dresses them with practiced ease.

“That’ll keep the cuts clean and stop sand rubbing on the tender bits,” he explains flatly, as if he’s explained it many times. Zazzalil cocks her head to the side.

“You’ve seen this… what they did to me. You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?”

“This is how they break in all their dancing girls.”

A chill runs down her spine, and she looks away from him. Is that all she is now? Just a form of entertainment? The thought of having to go through that again - of having all those unwelcome eyes on her even one more time makes her feel ill.

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

The man pats her on the shoulder, but offers no further comfort. “Your master’s coming,” he informs her. She tenses under his hand.

“Don’t call him that. He doesn’t own me.”

“He does.”

Zazzalil’s hands curl into fists. “Yeah, well I- I’m going to get away. I don’t know when or how, but… but I’m going to escape.” Saying it out loud cements it in her mind. She’s not just going to be a dancing girl. Not if she can help it.

As the man said, Jer soon comes to unlock her from the stake.

“I’ll come back for you,” she tells the musician as her chain is wrapped around her wrists. “When I escape, I’ll come back for you.”

He ignores the comment.

“Goodbye. Good journey.”

He doesn’t return her well wishes.

Once again, Zazzalil almost falls asleep in the sand as soon as she’s done hobbling back to camp. But she forces herself to sit up and stay awake when Jer places a bowl of stew beside her. The sudden quality spike in her food doesn’t go unnoticed, and it’s not hard to figure out the reason for it. She considers refusing to eat it out of protest to her exploitation, but she hasn’t had a proper meal in months. So instead she picks up the bowl and gulps it down before her captors can change their mind about giving it to her.

Overall, the broth is… underwhelming. Lukewarm and thin and underseasoned. Even when Emberly was first beginning to experiment with the stuff her creations were better than this. But maybe it isn’t fair to compare these people to the tribeswoman. Emberly is a genius in her craft, experimenting with the relationship between fire and food to the point where their word for embers comes from her name. Zazzalil would give anything for some of Emberly’s cooking right now. Just thinking about it makes the tears well up.

The captive rubs at her eyes again. She’s sick of crying. So, so sick of crying. But she’s thinking about her tribe. She’s thinking about sitting around a campfire with people she grew up with - and one she didn’t - and sharing jokes and laughing together and enjoying good food, and that’s enough to bring on the tears. She hates it. She shouldn’t be crying about eating with her family. It should be a regular evening, not a faraway dream. Her grip tightens in the now-empty bowl from the shitty stew. Her heart shouldn’t hurt in her chest whenever she has even a passing thought about her wife. She just wants to go home, is that so much to ask?

Zazzalil’s thoughts alone were enough to upset her, but looking up and catching a glimpse of Jer’s smug face sends her straight into rage. He takes her from her family, he assaults her, and now he forces her to dance in front of strangers to entertain them? She doubts she could hate a man more if she tried. She doesn’t stop to consider the consequences of what she’s about to do - when has she ever done that? Instead she struggles to her sore feet, raising the wooden bowl over her shoulder. Years of practice with a spear means it hits the man’s head with considerable accuracy.

After the initial shock wears off Jer is in her face in moments, raising a hand to strike, but Zazzalil gets there first. Still too deep in the adrenaline rush to think about how he may retaliate, she reaches up and backhands him with all the strength she has left. It’s only when he catches her wrist and squeezes that she realises what she’s done.

Exhausted and aching, she’s easily tossed to the ground like a ragdoll after a hard punch to the gut. The kick to her head makes her curl up on herself, a pathetic attempt at protection. But it isn't needed. Once he’s spat on her she hears him walking away.

“Anne!”

In spite of herself, the captive looks up. The man stares her down as he makes a point of picking up her food tin and tossing it out of her reach. “No food for you, Annie.”

She’d like to yell back, make threats and hurl insults, but all that she can manage are tears. As her tormentor leaves her to her misery, she curls herself up tighter and tries not to focus on the pain.

Chapter Text

“You are going to fucking murder her if you keep this up, you know that?”

Jeremiah shakes his head at Elizabeth’s comment, but she persists. “That kind of training can kill girls when you don’t bloody know what you’re doing. You think she’s going to survive it without eating? She’s skin and bone already, look at her.”

He looks. The tribeswoman is sat leaning against the tree she’s chained to, silently watching the horse graze. The vest they gave her definitely doesn’t fit as well as it used to, and she looks a great deal weaker than the fit and hardy girl he bought.

“She threw a bowl at my head,” he reminds her, “and she hit me. Actually fucking slapped me around the face. She needs reminding that I’m the one keeping her alive right now.”

Elizabeth is unimpressed by this defence. “You’re not going to be for much longer if you don’t feed her,” she counters.

“Annie is going to be fine. I asked for your help training her, not dietary advice.”

The woman sighs. This is a pointless argument - any argument with Jeremiah is pointless - but she can’t resist one last jab. “The only reason she was able to dance at all is Andrew walking her. You didn’t even consider atrophy, did you?”

“Anne will be fine.”

“Alright, your loss.”

The man rolls his eyes as he walks away. Elizabeth huffs. Her companion claims that he’ll be giving the girl a night off of entertaining, maybe two, and that she’ll be fine to dance after that. Without food. She’s almost tempted to just let him do it - it would be great to see that smug look wiped off his face when the creature breaks a leg - but she doubts he’ll repay her for her training efforts if he can’t sell the girl. “Fucking idiot,” she mutters as she watches him barter with another man down the beach. Far enough away to not really see what she’s doing, Elizabeth realises. With this in mind, she wanders over to the cooking pot from last night. There’s still leftovers, even after giving some to the captive, but she doubts anyone would miss them. If Jeremiah doesn’t have the competence to keep one small tribeswoman alive then she's going to have to take matters into her own hands.

Zazzalil has stripped the entire range of her chain of anything even remotely edible, managing to scrape together a meagure breakfast of nuts and berries without having to dip into her stash. The situation was helped somewhat when And sneaked her a few scraps before the other two woke. She took them grudgingly, reminding herself of what happened last time she trusted the man. But what choice does she have? It’s scraps or starve.

At first, when El calls her Zazzalil only responds to protest the name she uses. But when the woman steps into the woods and calls again, a bowl in her hand, the captive can’t help her curiosity. Clutching at the tree bark to help haul herself to her feet - every muscle still aches like hell - she slowly follows her into the trees.

She’s taken a little off guard when the bowl is hurriedly thrust into her hands and she looks down to see it’s another helping of stew, albeit a smaller one than what she was given after her dancing. Of course, she’s tempted to down it - she almost does - but suspicion stops her. Is El testing her again, giving her food without permission to eat it just to beat her when she tries? She’s gained a good few bruises that way. That alone wouldn’t be enough to stop her, but the fact that she’s not supposed to be eating at all adds to her wariness. El looks over her shoulder briefly before shoving the bowl towards Zazzalil.

“Eat, Annie. Eat now.”

Her insistence only makes the woman more hesitant to eat it - scared, even. Has she put something… extra in it? But her suspicions are put to rest when El takes the bowl back and drinks from it herself. The message is clear: ‘I’m not trying to poison you.’ With that reassurance, the captive grabs the bowl and downs it in one.

El snatches it back as soon as she’s done, and just like that the brief moment of charity is over. Zazzalil watches her return to the beach, utterly baffled.

Evening finds Zazzalil crouched in the undergrowth, clutching a sharpened stone. A spear would have been preferable, but someone would have noticed the weapon by now if she had tried to make one. Nobody has come near her for a while, but she refuses to drop her guard. The mounting panic in her head and tightness in her chest won’t let her drop it. It was around this time yesterday when Jer dragged her down into the crowd, and she refuses to let him do it again. She still feels filthy knowing she entertained those bastards, regardless of how little she wanted to.

But the sun goes down without any heed being paid to her. She’s left chained up and hungry but mercifully alone. Despite this, it’s a while after sunset when Zazzalil is finally sure it’s safe to set down the stone and dig some food out of her pouch. She doesn’t know how long her rations will have to last her. So, to conserve her supply, she doesn’t take any more than a scrap of meat before curling up in the dirt to make an attempt at sleeping off her hunger.

She's barely dozed off when And shakes her awake to give her the evening's leftovers. Half-conscious and half-starved, she snatches them up and wolfs them down like a famished animal.

When Zazzalil wakes up she doesn't notice what's changed at first. Not emerging from the treeline, she focuses on her chain. Her limbs still ache but nonetheless she drags together the two largest stones she can find, laying the chain over one and raising the other over her head to smash down onto it. Again and again she brings it down even as her arms begin to shake and she breaks rocks without so much as denting the metal. Because what else can she do? She said she’s going to escape and she meant it. She just needed a day to recover before she could try.

By the time someone notices what she’s doing she’s weighing up the pros and cons of shattering her ankle. It would hurt, sure, and it would make it harder to run away, but if she slipped it out of the chain and then managed to bind it back into its original shape it would probably heal eventually, right?

But just as she’s about to follow through with this plan, her wrist is seized and she's forced to scramble to her feet and drop the stone as she's dragged down onto the beach. She barely has the time to register Jer's presence before he hits her, yelling what she assumes is a reprimand for messing with the chain. She stares down at her bandaged feet, trying to ignore the abuse hurled at her and her stinging cheek and the fact that she's trembling. She's not scared of him. She refuses to be scared of him. He's just reminding her a little too much of the people who yelled from the crowd as she jumped out of the way of the whip, mocking her and making demands. She hopes she's remembering wrong and she wasn't actually called 'cute' by one of them. Just thinking about it makes her feel sick.

“Annie! Listen!”

She’s heard that one a hundred times before. The man seizes her by the jaw and forces her to look up as he continues his rant. She squirms and tugs at his fingers. What’s the point in forcing her to listen if she doesn’t understand any of this? But he only lets go momentarily to slap her harder before he once again digs his fingers into her stinging cheek, pulling her head up to force her onto her toes.

“Stop it!” she demands, trying to pry his hand off her face.

“Annie-”

“Name’s not Annie! It’s Zazzalil! Zazzalil!”

The punch to the gut he gives her knocks the air out of her lungs. Struggling to breathe, her hands freeze on his. She’s trembling again, and she’s not sure why. She’s not afraid of him. This isn’t the first time he’s winded her, she can deal with this. She shouldn’t be afraid of him. She doesn’t want to be afraid of him.

His rant over, he tosses the captive to the ground. Still shaking, she scrambles away from him, certain that he's going to start kicking her, her heart pounding in her ears. But he simply spits on her and walks away. She watches him stroll off down the beach, struggling to steady her breathing as she wipes the saliva off her arm and onto her trousers. And then she notices what’s different.

There's something in the water. Though it’s currently far away she can tell it’s massive, and it’s getting closer. Some kind of structure of wood and fabric floating out near the horizon, as far as she can tell. There’s a difference in the buzz around the beach too, the people are excited. Something important is going on, she can tell.

Jer refuses to feed Zazzalil for a full three days, but with two sets of secret rations she gets by just fine. Starving her might have been the best thing he’s ever done for her diet. But that doesn’t stop her from wolfing down her breakfast when he finally decides to give it to her. Maybe she wouldn’t be so enthusiastic if she knew why he chose today to end the fast.

She still makes an attempt to hide in the woods that evening, gripping a shard of flint. But the sounds of the crowd further down the beach carry, more than enough to drown out the careful footsteps behind her, and her first hint that Jer is anywhere near her are the hands grabbing her under the arms. She thrashes wildly, trying to stab the stone into his leg, but only ever hits his thick boot as she’s dragged out onto the sand to be trussed up in her chain again, the man tightly binding her wrists to her waist before he hauls her off the ground. Digging her feet into the sand, she tries to worm out of his grip, but he twists his fingers securely into her dirty hair and keeps walking. It’s taking everything in her not to be sick. She knows where he’s taking her and she knows why.

Once again Zazzalil is forced to her knees by Jer’s feet as he takes a seat on a log, keeping a tight grip on her hair. That same dead-eyed musician is sat on a crate again, but not centre-stage like when she first saw him. He’s already been moved off to the side. Instead, in the middle of the circle is a woman in a simple ragged white dress, dancing in the firelight. She isn’t chained to a stake like Zazzalil was, but there’s no doubt in Zaz’s mind that she isn’t doing this out of choice. The way the crowd are jeering, the brief moments she’s allowed between songs to gulp down a few deep breaths, the tear stains cutting through the grime on her cheeks… this can’t be a willing participant. Zazzalil stares down at her tightly chained hands, not wanting to add to the unwanted eyes on the woman until Jer notices and drags her head up, forcing her to watch, growling something she can’t even try to translate with the amount of noise from the crowd obscuring it. So she tearfully watches the woman perform, sick to her stomach. She knows how it feels to be in her place, the humiliation of being mocked, the misery of being reduced to entertainment, the ache in every overexerted muscle. The desperate wish that this is all some twisted nightmare.

She couldn’t say how long she’s forced to watch this sick display for, but eventually one man calls out to the two performers before they can begin another song. The musician breathes out a heavy sigh and moves his left hand to his face, nursing his sore fingers in his mouth. The dancer, slick with sweat and gasping in quick, shallow breaths, takes a moment to compose herself before forcing an empty smile onto her face. As the crowd watches on, she bows low, her shaking legs give out, and she topples over into the sand.

A few particularly cruel onlookers laugh. She doesn’t respond. A few begin to call her by name. She lays unmoving. Zazzalil can only watch, wide-eyed, as the realisation dawns on her that the gasping breaths that were wracking the dancer’s body have stopped. When she finally manages to tear her eyes away from the woman her gaze meets the musician’s, both of them silently asking the same question - is she breathing?

Showing more emotion than Zazzalil would have ever thought him capable of, the man sets his banjo aside and warily approaches the woman. The sound of the onlookers talking almost drowns out what he says when he crouches beside her, but Zazzalil just about makes out his words.

“Wik? Can you hear me?” He puts a hand on her shoulder. “Taywikie?”

Zazzalil tries to shuffle closer to figure out what’s going on but Jer roughly yanks her back before letting go of her hair and pulling her closer with a firm hand on her shoulder, and she finds herself watching the musician with her head pressed against the side of his leg. She’s too caught up in the scene to protest the closeness to her captor.

Before long the same man who told the two performers to stop stomps over to them. “Fuck off, Jacob,” he growls to the musician, who hastily backs away. He crouches in his place.

“Katie!” Roughly shaking the woman, he yells down at her. “Katie!”

When even this gets no response he pauses, staring down at her for a moment before hastily scooping her into his arms and shouldering his way through the crowd, carrying her away into the night. It’s only when they’re gone that Zazzalil realises she’s trembling. Nothing but that single question is circling her head. Is she breathing? Her eyes meet the musician’s again. She can’t find the words to ask him.

When Jer tries to drag her to her feet her legs won’t hold her up. She squirms in his grip, her chest tight.

“Please don’t make me,” she whimpers, hating that she’s begging but unable to shake her terror or the image of the woman face-down in the sand. “Please, please don’t make me.” Tears prick at her eyes. Did she just watch someone die?

“C’mon, Annie!”

Gripping her tight by the back of her shirt, he hauls her into the circle and leaves her there, rooted to the spot. The crowd is already heckling her shaking but she can’t do anything to stop it. She can’t move, she can barely breathe, suddenly horribly aware of her own mortality. Jer made her dance for an eternity the first night, who’s to say he wouldn’t work her to death? It’s hard to repress sobs when she thinks about it; has her whole life been leading up to some bastard using her as entertainment until her body simply gives up? She shuts her eyes tight. No, she’s not going to die here. She’s going to get away. She has to. But there’s nothing she can do. She’s chained to a stake and surrounded, and her attention is finally diverted when a whip hits her bandaged foot.

“Don’t work her for so long this time,” Elizabeth mutters as the captive yelps and stumbles back, only just audible over the music and the crowd.

“I know, I’m not blind.” He cracks the whip again, forcing her to skip to the left. “I saw that collapse too.”

Crack. The girl turns her tearstained face to him, gritting her teeth. “batakak!” she swears as she dodges another stroke of the whip. “batak eh kijuk igrin!”

“Quiet!” Crack. “Shut up and dance!”

She cries out when he hits her ankle just above the bandage, but other than that pained noise it shuts her up. A man shoves her back into the middle of the circle when she tries to back away.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

The next time she stumbles into the crowd a woman takes the liberty of slapping her hard across the face before sending her whimpering back to work. The idea catches on, a man she gets too close to backhanding her and yelling at her to watch where she’s going. She soon begins to keep to the centre of the circle as much as she can, scrambling away from the onlookers with the same fear that she shows the whip.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

The girl is starting to sob, shaking violently as the whip hits her more and more. Once again, her eyes meet Jeremiah’s. He barely hears her whimper “quai.” He doesn’t know the meaning of the word, but he can tell she’s begging.

“quai. jafij vah aya, quai."

He ignores her; she can avoid getting whipped when she gives up and dances without the extra motivation.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

She’s still stubborn - unfortunately for Jeremiah, that quality doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere soon. But it doesn’t take quite as long as the first night for her to cry out her surrender. It quickly gets around that she addressed them as ‘sick fucks’ when she gave in, however, and her captor gives her a lash across the legs for that.

He sits down as the musician starts up another song and Annie takes the chance to quickly wipe the tears from her eyes before she begins her real performance. He cracks the whip beside her after a few moments to hurry her up. As she draws in a deep, shaking breath and takes her first step he mentaly counts this as song one. He’s already decided on a set amount to make her work, just to be safe, and she’s got a while to go yet. As he watches her dance he smugly notes that he was right about a slave taken from Smokestack being a good entertainer - once she stops making a fuss and dances she can put on a decent show. Doesn’t hurt that she’s not bad-looking under the mud and blood clinging to every inch of her.

Songs end and start and end again. The girl stumbles or hesitates occasionally but he sets her straight with a crack of the whip. Between songs she still begs in her foreign tongue, even managing to whimper out a "stop" in English. He makes sure the whip hits her particularly hard when she opens her mouth. Eventually she learns to keep quiet, instead taking the chance to catch her breath before she has to start dancing again. He keeps counting the songs in his head, and as the cutoff gets closer he can tell she’s starting to tire.

One song left. The crowd has begun to peel away; it’s roughly the same time she finished the first night, since she only started after the first girl collapsed. But even with the shorter shift she looks near dead on her feet.

“Jacob!”

The musician’s head snaps up, grip tightening on his instrument. “Yessir?”

“One more.”

The man nods. Jeremiah motions to the girl, who looks perplexed. “Tell her that.”

He nods again, then turns to the dancer. “okba sekit!”

She takes a deep breath, staring down at her feet, and nods. The music starts up again. The whip cracks beside her.

“And that’s your lot.”

Panting harshly, Zazzalil sluggishly turns to meet the musician’s eyes. Her entire body aches, but somehow she manages to speak. “Well thank fuck for that.”

Jer is saying something but she doesn’t have the energy to listen, too busy wiping the tears and sweat off her face. She can’t ignore the musician’s translation, though.

“Your master’s telling you to bow, kid.”

“Well I’m not going to.”

She yelps when her legs are whipped, but the man doesn’t react. “Just do it,” he mutters.

Despite her trembling, she raises a middle finger to her captor. Having her dance is taking the piss enough, she’s not going to show him that submission. But she’s too tired to resist when he stomps over, grabs her by the back of her neck and forces her into a bow. She’s certain she’d topple over like her predecessor if he didn’t have a vice-like grip on her, but he tugs her back upright after a moment. She barely has the energy to pull her head away when he puts his hand on her cheek, weakly swiping at his arm. She can’t comprehend why he even wants to touch her with the amount of sweat and tears and dirt on her face. But soon enough he once again leaves her, walking away to talk to another man.

“Hey. Kid.”

She turns to see the musician already holding a tin of water. “I have a name, you know,” she mutters as she forces her aching legs and burning feet to carry her over to him. 

“Well you never told me it. Unless you mean Annie?”

“I definitely fucking don’t.” She flops onto the crate and begins to unwind the newly-tattered, dirty bandages from her feet.

“So?”

“Zazzalil the Firebringer. And you?”

“Kaoruk. Just Kaoruk.” He hands her the tin, and she stares down at it. For a while she stays like that, thinking.

“Kaoruk?”

“Mm?”

“Was she dead?”

There’s silence for a moment, neither moving. But eventually he answers. “I… I don’t know. Maybe. People… people do die.”

Zazzalil keeps staring downwards, tears pricking at her eyes. “I can’t fucking die entertaining these bastards,” she mutters. “Fuck, I can’t live entertaining them! I can’t keep doing this, I feel disgusting, and not just because of the sweat.”

“Just think of it as exercise.”

Zaz finally looks up from the tin, instead looking at the man now sitting in the sand beside her. “You want to escape, right?” he continues.

“Yeah. I’m leaving at the first chance I get.”

“Well you haven’t got a fucking prayer if you’re not fit enough to run for your damn life. Being a dancing girl sucks, I know it sucks, but if you keep doing it maybe you’ll have a slim chance at getting away.”

She slowly sets the tin down and begins to rinse out her cuts, mulling this over. “You really think that’ll work?”

“There’s a chance. The tiniest fucking chance imaginable, okay? More of a chance than I’d have sitting here with a banjo all night, but don’t go thinking it’s guaranteed. It’s the same advice I gave Taywikie.”

The woman pauses, a sinking feeling in her gut. “She wanted to get away too?”

“Desperately. But she was never going to be fit enough to outrun her master’s dogs.”

Chapter Text

The exhaustion of the night’s show means that Zazzalil wakes up incredibly groggy when And shakes her shoulder the next morning. She soon notices the chain now wrapped around her neck, but she has no time to think about it before the man drags her into a sitting position and shoves something into her hands. She blinks slowly down at it.

"Wha…?"

"It's toast, now eat."

She doesn't fully take in the noise coming from the beach, too busy trying to avoid falling asleep again before she can finish her toast. But she manages it, and once And has made sure she drinks some water she's too tired to protest him tying her hands behind her back. The man hauls her to her feet and starts to lead her down onto the sand, yawning and blinking hard, trying to wake herself up so she can figure out what’s happening. People are shouting and carrying boxes and bags around, and that wood and fabric structure she saw floating in the water is much, much closer now. It’s huge.

They’re near the water’s edge when And chains her to the rope handle of a heavy crate and starts to walk away. She calls after him, wanting an explanation, but he’s quickly lost to the crowd. She’s alone.

More than a little nervous now, tugging against the rope around her wrists, Zazzalil scans the ever-moving throng of people with her eyes. There must be some way of figuring out what’s happening to her. Eventually she catches sight of a face she recognises.

“Kaoruk!” she calls out to him. “Kaoruk! What’s going on?”

The musician looks around for the source of the shout, then spots her. She has to wait for him to hand off the box he’s carrying to another man, but soon he’s by her side.

“What’s going on?” she asks again. The man refuses to look at her, staring out at the water. That can’t be a good sign.

“...Kaoruk?” she prompts.

“They’re going to take you overseas, kid,” he says, as blank-faced as the day she met him. Zazzalil cocks her head to the side.

“The fuck does that mean?”

“It means they’re going to put you on a ship - that thing,” he explains, pointing with a thumb to the floating structure, “and take you away across this water to whatever godforsaken place they came from. Far, far away.”

For a moment Zazzalil finds herself unable to respond. “They… they can’t do that,” she mumbles numbly, staring up at him.

“Unfortunately they can.”

She starts tugging harder on the rope. “No, I have a life here! My family, I- I have a wife, Kaoruk! They can’t just take me away from her!”

He finally looks at her. “Zazzalil, they already have.”

Tears prick at the woman’s eyes, her chest tight. How is she going to get back home if she’s on the other side of a seemingly endless stretch of water? Even if she does manage to escape, what the fuck is she going to do?

“I’m sorry, I really am, but there’s nothing either of us can do.” He grimly pats her on the shoulder. “You’ve just gotta try to survive. Or not, if you’d prefer.”

“I-”

“Jacob!”

The man’s head snaps around, once again searching out the source of the shout. “I have to go. Goodbye, Zazzalil.”

She can’t respond - all of her focus is going to keeping down that toast. Suddenly the chain around her neck feels incredibly heavy. She plants one foot on the side of the crate and tugs hard against the tether, desperate to break herself free. This could be her last chance to get home before it becomes impossible. She has to get away, now. Tears run down her face as the chain digs into the back of her neck and the rope handle on the crate holds firm. It’s not working, but it has to work. If this doesn’t work…

A hand grabs her by the arm and a chill runs down her spine. She looks up to see a stranger holding her tight.

“Are you Annie?” Though he speaks her language, his accent is like that of the traders. She tries to wrench her arm out of his grip.

“No.”

“They call you Annie?”

She hesitates to answer that question. Will they leave her on the shore if they think they’ve got the wrong captive? But before she can respond, another man points to the tattoo on her arm and makes some remark she doesn’t understand, but which seems to satisfy the first stranger. He grabs her other arm, standing behind her as the other unlocks the chain and pulls it off her. But when they go to lead her away she doesn’t move, rooted to the spot. The tears flow faster, nearing sobs. They’re actually going to take her away. This is real. This is happening. They’re going to take her away.

“Come on, girl, time to go.”

She shakes her head wildly. “No. No, I’m not going!”

The man behind her pushes her forward, nails digging into her arms, forcing her to take a few shaky steps.

“Move!”

“No!”

She tries to stomp on his foot, but with him wearing a boot and her only a few bandages the effect is minimal. So she kicks backwards at his shins, trying to shake him off all the while. She can hear the other man shouting as she struggles and yells at them to let her go. And then, all of a sudden, she can’t see. Someone’s thrown a thick bag over her head. They pull the drawstrings tight around her neck as she tries to shake it off, putting uncomfortable pressure on her throat as she takes short, panicked breaths in the relative darkness of the sack. She can feel them tie the rope in place.

Before she can recover from the disorientation of the bag, someone grabs her by the knees and yanks her feet off the ground. In her panic she kicks out and feels her foot connect with something soft, maybe a stomach, and her legs are dropped. She manages to scramble back to her feet thanks to the man still holding her arms, but soon a rope is looped around her ankles and she loses balance as it’s pulled tight and tied in place. This time there’s no kicking when her legs are lifted off the sand.

She doesn’t know how many people are holding her. She can’t tell which way up she is or what direction they’re going in but she can hear their footsteps. Squirming in her restraints does nothing. So, with no other options, she begins to scream. She thrashes against her captors and the ropes and screams and screams, hoping that someone that cares will hear her. But nobody does. No matter how loud or long she screams nobody cares, and she dissolves into sobs as she realises it, gasping in stale air and getting thick, rough fabric in her mouth. She lays limp in their hold and sobs as their footsteps get louder on the hard boards, shaking. Nobody cares about her screaming, she’s just another disobedient slave to them. They’re going to take her away and there’s nothing she can do about it. She’s never felt so small.

Eventually they drop her to the floor and she hears the rattle of a chain and feels something cold and hard being fastened around her neck. For a while she lays where she fell, even as the sounds of footsteps and talking die down and she’s sure she’s alone. She lays there and cries until she can’t cry anymore, whimpering on the hard floor. Escape seems utterly hopeless now. She might never see Jemilla again. She might never wake up curled up with her and beg for a little longer to stay like that, just lying there with their arms around each other until they have to face the real world again. She might never see her best friend or brother or wolf or anyone else she loves ever again. Her wife kissing her goodbye when she left to go hunting might have been the last time she was ever shown real affection. She might never enjoy dancing again.

It takes a long time, but eventually a thought that isn’t about what might never happen occurs to her; she realises that lying bound on the floor with a thick bag over her head is rather uncomfortable. Especially when that bag is damp from her own breath and tears.

Though it’s a struggle, she eventually manages to drag her hands under her bound feet and find the knot in the sack’s drawstring. Unpicking it is difficult with her hands tied and going only off of feel, but eventually she’s able to loosen its tight grip on her throat. When she finally gets the bag off and sits up she finds the world outside of the sack just as dark as inside, which doesn’t bode well for her wrists. Trying to untie a rope in the dark is a lot harder when she can only use her teeth. Luckily the last rope - the one around her ankles - is a fair amount easier with her hands free. Once it’s off she attempts to climb to her feet but is quickly jerked back by the neck, and some further investigation shows that she’s been left on a short chain tether, not quite long enough to allow her to stand. One end is secured to a ring on the floor, the other to a band of metal locked around her neck. She’s in a corner between two wooden walls and a wooden floor, and the whole place is swaying.

There’s no way of telling how long she’s left alone in the dark - the only indication she has that time is passing her growing hunger. The constant swaying is starting to get to her too, making her feel ill. For hours she sits against the wall, listening to the muffled sounds that appear to be coming from somewhere above her - shouting and creaking and crashing waves and footsteps and even snippets of singing. She sings some songs of her own too, to pass the time and to distract herself from the misery of her situation, but her throat eventually gets too dry and sore and she has to resort to drumming on the planks to avoid just sitting there silently.

It feels like an age before a door opens a few meters from her and dim light spills in. As she watches from her seat on the floor, a woman walks in with what appears to be a captive flame hanging from her hand. She turns to look at Zazzalil.

“Thought you were supposed to be trussed,” she remarks as she strolls over. Like the man before, she speaks the language with an accent.

“I was. I got bored.”

“Well, one less thing for me to do.”

She kneels down beside her, setting the lantern on the floor, illuminating crates and barrels that Zazzalil wasn’t able to see before. “Hold out your hands.”

“Why?”

Instead of an answer, Zazzalil is given a hard slap. She freezes, and the woman grabs her by the arm and places a thick band of metal around her wrist, locking on a short chain, but the captive snatches away her other hand before she can grab it.

“Why do you have to bind my hands?” she asks. “What do you think I’m going to do with them?”

“Why do you need your hands free?” she counters. “What are you going to do with them?”

She catches Zazzalil’s arm and secures her wrist to the other end of the chain.

“Don’t worry, girl, you’ll get used to being kept in shackles.”

“Was the one around my fucking throat not enough?”

The woman doesn’t respond, silently gathering the ropes and bag and heading back to the door with the lantern, and for a moment Zazzalil thinks she’s about to be left alone again. But soon she returns with a wooden bucket.

“Water,” she explains simply before walking away, and Zazzalil reaches in to find that it is, in fact, half-filled with water. She scoops up some in her hands to alleviate her sore throat. Another bucket is dropped beside her. “There’s your supper.” She quickly grabs the first scrap she finds when she shoves her hands in there, pulling out a fraction of what feels like a cracker. It’s incredibly difficult to bite into and largely tasteless, but she doesn’t care. She’s famished. One final bucket is dropped beside her. “And that’s for if you’re gonna throw up.” The woman pulls a folded blanket from the bucket and tosses it to the ground. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Zazzalil watches her walk back to the door, leaving her in the dark.

“Can I at least have some light?” she asks.

The woman stops with her hand on the door and looks back at her.

"Of course not," she smiles.

And she's alone again.

The sounds from above never cease - Zazzalil has no way to tell when night falls. So she sits gnawing on her rations and trying not to think too hard about her situation. Aside from a few hard, bland biscuits she’s been given some scraps of cold, very salty meat, and she tries to eat them as slowly as possible to delay having to go back to doing absolutely nothing. The weight of her shackles becomes incredibly uncomfortable quite quickly. Lifting her hands is a chore, and the chain gets wet every time she tries to take a drink, leading to cold, damp patches on her clothes. She’s cold enough already, shivering slightly even when she wraps herself in the thin blanket she was left with.

Eventually her eyelids begin to droop, and she decides that now is as good a time as ever to try to get some sleep. She curls up on the floor, huddled in her blanket. She’s slept on cold, hard, damp floors for years but she’s never had to sleep constantly swaying and bound in shackles. It’s hard not to cry when she remembers what the woman said about getting used to them. She doesn’t want to get used to them, she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life in chains. But even if she got out of them now where could she go? She’s sure the ship has floated far away from the shore by now. Far, far away from everything she’s ever known.

It’s strange for her to realise that in twenty-seven years Zazzalil barely left her tribe’s territory. From when she was a scrappy, scrawny, scruffy little kid to when she was kidnapped the scenery hardly changed. Maybe she should have explored more when she had the chance. Followed in the footsteps of her father. Her hand instinctively moves to touch her necklace when she thinks of the man, only to be stopped by the short chain between her wrists and remembering that she doesn’t have it anymore. She gave it to Howl, and if everything’s gone like she hoped then Jemilla should have it by now. She wishes she could have kept it, but better her wife have it than the bastard holding her captive.

Giving up on sleep, Zazzalil rolls onto her back and stares up into the gloom. There’s too many thoughts chasing each other around her head that she’d have to quiet down before sleep. That sounds like too much work, so instead she resolves to pass the time by thinking them.

The tribe, hopefully, will at least have tried to track her down. But what are they going to do when they reach the shore? She can only hope someone can tell them where she’s being taken. Maybe then they’ll find some way to follow her across the water to find her - reunited they could definitely overpower her captors and free her. Maybe they could hide on another ship. If they all have dark, all-but-abandoned spaces like this it shouldn’t be too hard.

After a while of turning this concept over in her head, clinging to the hope of some rescue, Zazzalil sighs. “You’re dreaming again, Zazzy,” she mumbles to herself.

Once again, she’s neglected to think about what could go wrong. Because so much could go wrong. The people on the shore, the ones who heckled her when she cried and called her a savage, who saw no injustice in her enslavement, won’t have sympathy for her family. They had no problem with her being kidnapped. What if they decide to do the same to her tribe? There were so many people there, definitely enough to outnumber them. She thinks about Keeri, about how the two of them used to dance together just for the joy of movement. She thinks about those people exploiting her friend like they exploited her. Her skin crawls.

The captive pulls her blanket tighter around herself, the swaying of the boards she’s lying on not helping the steadily growing feeling of nausea in her gut. How fucking selfish was it of her to hope they’d follow her? Put themselves in danger of suffering the same torture she’s been living through just for her? No, they should turn around as soon as they reach the shore. Realise the danger, cut their losses and go home. And Zazzalil… Well, either she’ll find her own way home… or she won’t. But at least nobody else will have to suffer.

They’re not going to do that, though. They’re not just going to abandon her, she knows they’re not. She knows they’ll disregard their safety to try to help her, even after everything she’s done wrong. It brings her a strange mixture of comfort and grief to think about. It’ll be her fault if they’re harmed, she led them right into danger. Maybe she shouldn’t have sent the necklace back in the first place, maybe she should have fought harder to break free on her own.

“Please turn around, Jemilla,” she whispers into the darkness. “Don’t go onto the beach. Don’t bring anyone onto the beach.” She cries to herself as she realises she’s wishing for her wife to abandon her. Maybe it is a good thing she sent back that necklace. At least Jay will have something to remember her by.

Zazzalil wakes up famished. Groaning as she sits up and shuffles towards the buckets, she barely bothers to open her eyes. She finds one scrap left when she feels around the bottom of her food pail; a small, soft block of something that she can’t place the taste of but eats anyway. She’s still famished, but unless she wants to deplete her emergency stash there’s nothing else. She takes a drink from the water bucket, then leans back against the wall to go back to sitting alone with the darkness.

Time drags on. Fiddling with the heavy locking device hanging from one of her wrists, Zazzalil finds herself listening to muffled singing from above. With her very limited grasp on the language she can’t make sense of the lyrics but the rhythm still reaches her, and she taps her feet in time. When there’s no song filtering down from the rest of the ship she fills the silence with her own singing, near-whispering to herself in the darkness. For most of the day the most exciting thing to happen is her having to make use of the sick bucket about an hour after waking, which doesn’t help her hunger. It does take away the stomach pain and general queasiness she was feeling, though.

She guesses it’s evening when the door opens and that woman returns, striding over to the buckets and wrinkling her nose.

“You were sick?”

“No, that just manifested there of its own accord.”

“Very funny, girl.” She snatches up the sick bucket as well as the empty feed pail. “I’ll be back with your supper.”

When the woman eventually returns Zazzalil quickly snatches up a scrap of meat from the bucket and rips into it with her teeth.

“Hungry, Annie?” she chuckles. Zazzalil only pauses briefly between bites to reply.

"Don't call me Annie."

"Why, you prefer Anne? That's what your master actually named you, right?"

"That's not- my name is Zazzalil the Firebringer. Not Annie or Anne."

"Zazzalil the Firebringer. Well, I apologize. I thought I was talking to just a dirty, stubborn little cavegirl. Didn't know I was talking to a dirty, stubborn little cavegirl with a title."

The captive glares as she fishes a biscuit out of her rations, but is cut off before she can respond.

"Anyway. Zazzalil, was it? Interesting name, that, but a bit of a mouthful. Mind if I cut it down?"

"I-"

"Lilly. That's a good nickname, hm?"

Zazzalil freezes. "Don't… Don’t call me that," she says quietly.

"What's up, Lilly? Not a fan?"

"I don't want you calling me that."

"Alright then, I'll let you choose. I could call you Lilly. Or I could call you Annie."

"My name is Zazzalil."

"So Lilly then?"

"No! No, that's not what I said."

"So you want to be called Annie?"

"No. And not Lilly either."

"Choose, girl."

Zazzalil bites her lip. She hates that they’ve tried to take away her name - as if they haven’t stolen enough. But to have that nickname twisted…

"I… I guess… call me Anne," she mumbles. It’s the lesser of two evils.

“Annie it is, then!”

“I said Anne. Not Annie,” Zazzalil clarifies. “We’re not friends, don’t fucking nickname me.”

“Sorry to break it to you, girl, but that’s what you’re known as now. Annie, the little dancing girl chained up in the hold.”

“I’m not just a fucking dancing girl.”

The woman crouches to eye level, reaching out to grip the captive’s chin. “Oh, but you are, Annie. And I must say, you’re not half bad at your job.” Zazzalil scowls, realising she must have watched one of the sick performances she was forced into.

“You’re fucking disgusting,” she snarls, shoving her hand away.

“I was trying to compliment you! You’re not half-bad when you fucking get on with it. Your master brags about you, you know.”

The woman snickers at the revolted look on Zazzalil’s face. “Yeah, I almost pity you, being stuck with him. If he was joining the crew proper I think I’d pitch myself overboard.”

Zazzalil cocks her head. “What do you mean?”

“The guys that brought you on board are earning their passage. They’re working for the Captain just for this trip, so I only have to deal with them for a few months.”

“Months?”

The woman stands. “Yup.”

“You can’t leave me here for months!”

“I didn’t put you down here, I’m just your keeper.”

“But-”

“Goodnight, Annie!”

And she’s alone in the dark again.

That one brief conversation gives Zazzalil a lot to think about over the next two days - she’s not sure whether it's out of forgetfulness or deliberate neglect but two days pass before the woman returns. Luckily she finds a decent chunk of meat hidden under the usual scraps, which is as confusing as it is relieving. It’ll stop her from being left quite as hungry as she could be, but she can’t see why the woman feeding her would give it to her. She obviously doesn’t care about her starving.

Even with that extra meat, the captive is sat with a gnawing feeling in her gut. She can’t do this for months, she knows she can’t. She’ll go mad left alone in the dark like this, singing the same songs to herself over and over. She needs to get out of these shackles, but tugging and shaking and hitting the things is just as ineffective as she expected. The only way she’s getting out is if someone lets her out.

Zazzalil spends two days trying to come up with a way to get that woman to free her from her chains. She doubts trying to guilt her into it will work, and if she claimed to be ill she’d most likely just remind her about the sick bucket. No, the only idea she thinks could work comes from the words of the woman herself. Unfortunately it involves her least favourite thing in the world. Work. But it’s that or months of crushing, lonely darkness. So, when the woman finally comes back to feed her again, Zazzalil takes a deep breath and makes her request.

“I want to talk to the Captain,” she says. The woman raises her eyebrows.

“Why?”

“I… I want to earn my passage, too.”

Chapter Text

Jemilla looks down at her hands as she trudges down the forest path, running her thumb over a carefully-shaped piece of flint. They found it in the remains of a campfire some time ago, charred twine still tethering it to a chunk of charcoal. It’s all that’s left of what she’s certain was her wife’s spear.

Each time she looks down at the stone, she can’t help but wonder how it got to where they discovered it; while the reassurance that they’re going the same way as Zazzalil is welcome, the thought that someone burned her weapon is… not so much. Did she try to escape her captors? Fight back? Jemilla can’t shake the thought that they probably made her watch them destroy it.

“Does anyone else hear that?”

The nervous question snaps Jemilla out of her thoughts. Stood at the front of the group, Keeri gently places her hand on Growl’s back; she’s been keeping herself occupied with caring for the wolves, taking over tending to Howl now that he doesn’t have Zazzalil.

“What do you hear?”

“...Voices.”

After hurrying to catch up to Keeri, the tribe leader pauses to listen herself. It’s true that the sounds seem human, but the language - for the most part - is incomprehensible. As the rest of the tribe reaches them they stand together in silence, processing what this means, waiting for their leader to speak up on their next move. For a while, Jemilla stands stock-still, a mix of emotions twisting in her gut. The potential that they’ve caught up to whoever took Zazzalil is thrilling, the thought that she may be about to see her for the first time in months making her want to throw caution to the wind for once in her life and dash ahead to find her. But she’s held back by the thought of having to confront whoever did this, of what condition her wife may be in after so long in captivity. What they might have done to her. It makes her sick to her stomach just thinking about it.

“...Be on guard,” she tells her people after a long pause, pulling her pack from her shoulder to stow the stone and detach her spear from it. Zazzalil made it for her years ago now, but for all that time it’s been purely ornamental; she never really got into hunting. It feels almost foreign in her grip. Beside her Smelly-Balls readies a club comprised of a heavy stone set into a thick handle of tree branch and gives her a reassuring smile.

“We’re gonna get her back,” he says, clearly determined. “We have to, she’s our family. We’re gonna get her back no matter what, right? ”

Jemilla nods, taking a deep breath. “Right. C’mon, guys, let’s go!”

The path doesn’t last much longer. As they continue walking they notice the trees thinning slightly, the voices getting louder, and the presence of ruts running through the dirt under their feet. Soon the wolves bound ahead, scenting the air, and Keeri hurries after them, quickly disappearing into the trees. Though Jemilla calls after her, she pays no heed.

When the tribe leader once again catches up to Keeri she’s already made her way onto strangely loose ground, frantically looking around a patch of trees at the edge of the forest that the wolves seem obsessed with.

“Zazzalil!” Keeri calls. “Zazzy, are you here?!”

Though Jemilla looks too, the two women soon have to admit that the woods are empty, even if the wolves seem to think Zaz is there. Or at least, she was there . But their attention is grabbed again when they hear Tiblyn behind them.

“Woah,” she breathes.

Focused as she was on catching up with Keeri, Jemilla didn’t fully take in their surroundings at first. Now, as she turns around, she’s dumbfounded. She didn’t think water could be that big.

Before the tribe have had time to fully process what they’re seeing, Howl bursts out of the undergrowth and would have started to bound down the beach, if Molag didn’t hold out her stick to block his path.

“Slow down there, boy - someone grab him, quick.”

Being next to him, Ducker crouches to wrap his arms around the wolf’s neck, though he seems hesitant to touch what he still considers a trickster spirit. The animal snorts indignantly.

“These people are trouble,” the elder explains, once she’s satisfied that the wolves aren’t about to run off. “I can feel it. Keep your wits about you.”

“Can anyone see her?” Emberly says, scanning the crowd for a familiar figure. The answer, unfortunately, is a resounding ‘no’.

“Someone must have seen her, though,” Tiblyn points out. “The wolves seem pretty sure she was here, so should we… ask someone?”

Though much of the talk on the beach is incomprehensible, there are a few voices amongst the crowd that are speaking their language. Asking around isn’t out of the question, though it isn’t particularly inviting.

“I suppose we’ll have to,” Jemilla says. But before she can take another step down the sand, Grunt stops her.

“Wait, Jemilla,” he says, Emberly helping to steady him as he pulls off his pack. “If you’re gonna ask if anyone’s seen her, I- well, I thought bringing this could be a good idea.”

He hands over a folded piece of fabric. She recognises it before she’s even fully unfolded it; sketches of flames rising from overlapping lines of triangles and crosses.

“That’s almost exactly what’s on her arm,” Grunt elaborates. “I don’t know how much more it’ll help than just describing it, but maybe it could jog someone’s memory?”

Jemilla nods, staring down at the drawings. She remembers when the artist and her wife first showed her this same bit of fabric, excitedly explaining this strange new concept called ‘tattoos’. She didn’t understand why Zazzalil would spend so much time willingly getting poked with a porcupine quill, but nevertheless she stayed beside her through the whole thing. She understood a little better when it was finished, when she saw Zaz’s eyes light up as she stared down at it. When she first traced her fingers over it as she laid with the Firebringer half-asleep in her arms.

She’s pulled out of her memory by Growl living up to her name, the wolf alerting the tribe to the presence of a stranger. Those that noticed the man approaching assumed he would just walk past them, but when he steps a little too close to Keeri the wolf plants herself firmly in front of her human, snarling. The tribe shifts a little closer together.

“Hey, hey!” the stranger says, raising his hands. “Call off your fucking dog, I just came over to ask what’s bringing you here!”

“The dog’s staying right where she is, thank you very much,” Molag retorts, before anyone can ask what a dog is. He steps back slightly, looking warily down at Growl. “And what brings us here,” the elder continues, “is a girl - Zazzalil - going missing: little smaller than this one-” she points to Emberly with her staff “-lotta freckles, hair’s always a mess, and she’s got this on her arm.”

She indicates to Jemilla, who holds up the sketches. He glances at them briefly.

“And you’re asking if I’ve seen her, is that it?”

“We just want to know where she is,” Jemilla says.

He takes a moment to think, seemingly considering the tribe carefully, then nods. “Sure, yeah, I’ve seen the girl. Tanned, brown hair, dark eyes?”

“Yes!” Jemilla’s grip tightens on the fabric. “Yes, that’s her! Do you know where she is?”

The man shrugs. “Not anymore, no. But I can give you some info.”

Jemilla can’t hide her disappointment then, but Keeri quickly accepts his offer. The man nods, then turns to call to another.

“Hey! Matt!”

This other man, Matt, looks up from sketching, sat in front of his hut not too far away on the sand. “What? Who the fuck are they?”

“Some tribe who’ve lost a girl.” He turns back to Jemilla. “C’mon, Matt will’ve seen her too.”

Before following the man, Jemilla hands the tattoo designs to Molag. “Make sure everyone stays together, and… keep an eye on me, please?”

Molag nods, and her daughter turns to leave. The tribe leader’s theory is that talking to the men alone will make them more comfortable and therefore let them talk more freely, but she doesn’t protest when Smelly, Keeri, and Growl silently follow her. In all honesty, she’d rather not do this alone.

“Matt,” the first man calls again as they approach, “you remember that dancin’ girl from a few nights back?”

Jemilla’s brow furrows. Sure, Zazzalil likes to dance, but they’re making it sound like a job title. Are they… making her dance?

Matt thinks for a moment before replying. “What, the dead one?”

A chill runs down the Peacemaker’s spine, her body freezing up.

Zaz can’t be dead. Surely the man would have told her outright if Zaz was dead?

Surely.

“No, no, the one after that, little one with flames up her arm,” the man clarifies, and Jemilla has never been more relieved.

“What was her name?” the man continues.

“Wait, we already know her name,” Keeri cuts in. “It’s-”

“No, you don’t,” the first man says. Matt shrugs.

“Dunno, it was something like Amy or Angie, wasn’t it? A - something - E?”

“Annie?”

Matt snaps his fingers. “Annie! Yeah, that was it.” He looks up at Jemilla. “She’s a dancing girl now, they’re calling her Annie.”

“But… Her name’s Zazzy,” Keeri mumbles, running her fingers nervously through Growl’s scruff. Smelly, however, is a lot less quiet.

“Who’s calling her Annie?” he demands. The man raises his hands once again.

“Hey, I’m not someone out to make enemies. I’m not gonna snitch on the man.”

Smelly’s grip tightens on his club. “Look, this woman - Zazzalil, not Annie - she’s our family. I love her, okay? I grew up with her, I used to carry her around on my hip because she was so fucking small, we playfought, I combed her hair when it grew out, and she combed mine. I love her like she’s my sister-”

“-and she’s also actually your sister,” Keeri adds quietly.

“Yeah, that too! She’s my little sister, you have to tell us who’s got her!”

The man grits his teeth, glancing back at his companion briefly.

“Okay, I… I really don’t want to name the guy, but he- he’s got this long, curly, blond hair that he has tied back most of the time. Lots of earrings too. Pretty distinctive.”

“And that’s all we’re gonna say,” Matt says sternly. “Good luck finding Annie, but don’t get your hopes up.”

Though the tribe gains a lot more information on their missing member here and there over the course of that morning, the experience is draining. It feels dirty to ask after a dancing girl called Annie, but that’s what gets results - when the people they ask understand their words, that is. Even then, receiving answers like ‘yeah, figured she was a newbie, took her a while to get going and she was mouthy as all hell,’ or ‘she called her master a fuckface and told him to fuck off and die in a fire, that sound like her?’ isn’t overly encouraging. But, if nothing else, they give the reassurance that Zazzalil hasn’t given up. She hasn’t given up, despite everything they’re being told she’s gone through.

A few people describe a night when a small, freckled, messy-haired woman named Anne was forced into a ring by firelight and whipped across her feet and ankles until she did as she was told and started to dance. She was a good dancer, and that surprised people. Because judging by how she yelled and cried and had to be kept chained to a stake, she was fairly new.

Others describe a night when a dancer more of them seem familiar with - a woman named Katie - collapsed in the sand, quickly replaced by a terrified younger girl with a flame tattoo and dirty, ill-fitting clothes. Annie. She’d seemed disoriented, sobbing and gasping for breath. Many mention her stumbling into their friends, and said friends responding with a hard slap to her cheek. A few admit to hitting her themselves. By dawn word had begun to spread that Katie never woke up.

Some even talk about the loading of a ship a few days ago, when it took three men to truss up a kicking and screaming slavegirl and bundle her into the cargo hold. They heard her shrieking, and though her head was covered most swore it was the same woman. She hasn’t been seen since.

The tribe hears about a few other incidents, mostly the woman arguing loudly with her captor. But it’s clear that Zazzalil hasn’t been in the area for days. They’re able to deduce, eventually, that she was put on some floating contraption like the one currently stationed by the shore and taken away across the water. Which is how they came to be stood at the water’s edge, staring down at the waves.

“I’m sure we could swim that far,” Ducker says. “If the spirits are on our side, that is.”

“I’m not so sure,” Emberly says, before turning to her partner. “Grant, can you swim?”

He shakes his head. “Even if I could before, well…” he indicates to his stick. “Can you?”

Emberly nods.

“We all can,” Tiblyn clarifies. “When we were around seven Emberly’s dad realised we couldn’t and kept throwing us in the watering hole until that was fixed.”

“He was a good man, K’niv,” Molag nods, before turning to the sea. “You’re not gonna swim it, Smelly-Balls, get out of the water!”

From his position chest-deep in the ocean, the man turns to face the shore.

“What?”

“I said-”

But before Molag can repeat herself, a wave strikes the man from behind, knocking him off his feet. He bobs back to the surface a moment later.

“Never the brightest, that one,” she mutters.

“If we can’t swim it, then what are we going to do?” Jemilla asks, nervously running her fingers over Zazzalil’s necklace. “I don’t like the thought of asking these people for any more help. They let… all this happen to Zazzalil, they’re not safe.”

Molag nods. “I agree with you there, J-Mills, but it does narrow down our options a fair amount. I don’t see where we go from here.”

“But- Molag, you said you weren’t giving up on her!” She grabs the elder’s arm, eyes wide.

“And I’m not. Just a bit stuck. Look, I know you’re freaking out but I need you to use that big old brain of yours, okay?”

“Okay, I… I don’t know, I-”

She can feel tears welling up in her eyes, a feeling of utter hopelessness clouding every other thought. But before she can ask Molag for some time to just sit and process, the tribe’s attention is once again diverted by a stranger.

“Hey!” the man calls from a little further up the beach. “Are you looking for Zazzalil?”

Jemilla freezes, gripping the necklace tight. And before anyone can react, she’s sprinting up the beach to reach him.

Kaoruk, as she soon learns is his name, quickly clarifies to Jemilla that though he saw the missing woman being whipped and forced to dance and carried onto a ship, he isn’t just another dismissive whittness. He tells her - rather bluntly - that he was made to perform alongside her.

“Everyone’s talking about you lot,” he says in hushed tones, “so watch your back and get out of here as soon as you can. I’m sorry - really - but you’re too late to get her back, she’s gone.”

“We know she’s gone,” Jemilla says, matching his volume. “So we’re going after her. She’s my wife, I’m not just going to abandon her.”

The man pauses. “She said she had a wife,” he eventually comments, though his tone doesn’t change. Jemilla grabs the bone necklace again.

“You think I’m going to just leave her to die?” The tears that had been threatening to spill return, but she angrily wipes them away. “You must know that a woman died doing the exact thing they’re forcing her to, right?”

“Yes I fucking know,” he snaps, for the first time dropping his stoic demeneour. “I buried her in my own blanket days ago, I did notice she was dead.”

Jemilla is speechless for a moment.

“Zazzalil doesn’t know, by the way,” he continues. “She saw her collapse but we weren’t sure if she was dead at that point. I didn’t tell Zazzalil before she left, reckon that’s not what she needed to hear just then.”

He sighs. Jemilla almost reaches out to touch his arm, but hesitates.

“Kaoruk, please,” she says gently. “If you know any way we can get to where they’re taking her - any way we could, I don’t know, hide somewhere on one of those ship things? Please. I can’t give up on her.”

His gaze shifts to the ship floating nearby. “That one’s leaving at dawn. Going to the same place,” he mumbles eventually. “I helped load the thing, I know where you could hide…”

The man fixes Jemilla with a hard stare. “If you get caught, I don’t know you.”

Kaoruk leads them down to the hold under cover of darkness, creeping through the night as silently as possible. As promised, he knows exactly where to hide. He even shows them which crates to steal from to feed themselves, warning them to eat as little as they can without starving if they want to keep the whole tribe and two wolves alive undetected. Molag asks the man if he’s coming with them, and he thinks for a moment before solemnly shaking his head. She doesn’t push the matter, and the rest of the tribe follow her lead.

“Thank you,” Jemilla whispers as he turns to leave. The man shrugs.

“Taywikie would’ve hated me if I let Zazzalil be abandoned.”

For a moment Jemilla considers clarifying whether Zaz and Taywikie ever met, but thinks better of it.

“Goodbye,” she says instead. “Good journey.”

He doesn’t return her well wishes.

Chapter Text

Part Two: Saltwater

Chapter Fourteen: Swabbie

"Hey. Annie. Get up."

"Huh?"

Since making her request, Zazzalil has had time to eat a little, throw up again, and fall asleep. Now, being kicked awake, she's half-forgotten what she resolved to do.

"Annie! Do you want to talk to the Captain or not?"

The captive sits up, remembering the plan now. She’s going to ask for a job. Her keeper crouches to unlock the metal collar around her neck.

"Can I at least eat something first?" she mumbles, trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes.

After a moment of consideration, the woman clicks the collar's lock shut again. "Quickly. I'll give you as long as it takes for me to deal with your sick bucket."

Zazzalil scrambles to her food pail as the woman walks away, quickly finishing off the block of soft, unknown food she half-ate the night before and finding another decently sized piece of salty meat. Again, this confuses her, but she wolfs it down anyway before scooping up a few cupped handfuls of water from the near-empty bucket. Soon after the door opens again.

"Ready to go now?"

"Yeah." She’s not sure if that’s the truth.

"Good, 'cause we're going."

Once the collar is unlocked again the woman tosses it aside, not giving Zazzalil a moment to rub her sore neck before she's dragged to her feet. The captive stumbles, struggling to find her footing on the unstable floor after days of barely using her legs.

"Stay close to me," the woman commands as she heads to the exit, "and don't you fucking dare speak unless the captain asks you a question."

Zazzalil grits her teeth and nods, shakily following her to the door. She squints as it's opened, the lanterns lighting the narrow passage harsh in comparison to the darkness she's been kept in. The woman shoves her out of the room first. Though her legs are still unstable and her wrists are shackled, the captive tries to keep her head high as she walks, attempting to calm herself with deep breaths. It doesn’t help that every so often the corridor lurches under her feet and she has a hard time coordinating her chained hands to catch herself. Stumbling into the wall and struggling to right herself isn’t particularly dignified, nor is nearly falling down a creaking set of stairs.

I’m still the Firebringer, she tells herself as she pushes herself off the wall for the third time and shakily puts one foot in front of the other. I’m still a person. And I’m doing this because I asked to, not because they’re making me. They haven’t broken me yet.

If opening the door to the hold was harsh on her eyes, then opening the hatch to the deck is blinding. The captive shuts her eyes tight, covering them with her hands, swearing under her breath.

“Don’t be a fucking whimp, Annie, get up here!”

She takes a deep breath and lowers her hand, still squinting in the light. It’s only the second set of steps she’s ever climbed, and the world is still swaying, but she manages to stumble up beside the woman and onto the deck.

As her eyes adjust to the sunlight Zazzalil stares around herself, stunned by just how far the water around them seems to stretch. As far as she can see, nothing but water. If someone had told her such a place existed before she saw it for herself she’d have laughed. She wouldn’t have believed it, much less the idea that you could move through it on a settlement made of wood and cloth and twine.

"C'mon, girl!"

The woman grabs her by the chain between her wrists and begins to drag her across the deck, ducking under ropes and weaving through the sailors. The boards are damp under Zazzalil’s almost-bare feet, the water soaking into her bandages, and the wind pulls at her thin clothes and tangled hair and makes goosebumps rise on her arms. With the woman leading her she doesn’t bother to look where she’s going, too busy taking in all the new sights and sounds and trying to figure out what on earth is going on up here until they stop outside a wooden door.

“Not a word unless you’re asked, remember?”

Zazzalil nods, unable to keep the glare off her face as she looks up at the woman.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that! It’s no skin off my back if he decides to have you flogged and thrown back in the hold. Just trying to give you some advice.”

And, before the captive can respond, she opens the door and shoves Zaz through.

Zazzalil barely notices the man rising from his seat behind an old wooden desk, too busy trying to keep her footing. Why won’t the floor fucking stay still?

“Annie?”

She struggles to keep the glare off her face as she meets the man’s eyes. "Yeah," she answers curtly, though it sickens her to say it. His next words are incomprehensible. Zaz freezes. She didn't even consider what to do if the man couldn't understand her. But as she's wracking her brain for something useful to say, he speaks again.

"Don't know that one, girl?"

"I- No."

The man gives a disappointed sigh. “I suppose I’ll have to translate, in that case. I said 'on your knees'."

"Oh. Okay."

He raises his eyebrows. "Go on then. Kneel."

Zazzalil takes a shaky breath before slowly lowering herself to the floor. At least it’s easier to balance herself against the room’s swaying like this. That’s what she tries to focus on, and not the blatant degradation, or the fact that the already tall man now towers over her.

“So, Annie,” he says as he gets to his feet and walks around to the front of his desk, “I hear you want a job, correct?”

“Well… no, not really,” she admits. “But I also don’t want to stay chained up and starving in the dark for months. And if I have to work to be allowed out, then…” She shrugs, staring down at the floor. The man steps a little closer.

“You understand, girl, that you’re offering to sell yourself for slave labour in exchange for sunlight and better rations?”

Her brow furrows as she looks up. Sell? "I don't know-"

"Oh, your little tribe hasn't figured out trade yet, has it?” he interrupts. “I'll rephrase: you understand that while you may be allowed out of the hold and given better food, you will still be put to work as a slave?"

She stares down at her hands, trapped in heavy shackles. In truth, she hates that she’s doing this. Being exploited is bad enough, but fucking asking to be exploited? Kneeling in front of this stranger, shivering, asking him to enslave her? Just so she can fucking move. Just so she doesn’t have to spend day after day locked up in pitch darkness. Just so she can be around people, even if those people see her as nothing more than a source of labour. But what else is she supposed to do?

“I understand,” Zazzalil mumbles, trying to blink back the tears. “I… I’ll do as I’m told, just… don’t put me back there.”

The man nods. “Good, we’re on the same page then.”

She looks up. “The same what? ”

A glare reminds the woman what her keeper said about staying quiet. She looks down at her hands again.

“Anyway, we’ve established what you’re willing to give and stand to gain from this arrangement, but I’m not yet convinced it’s worth my while.”

“I said I’d work for you, what else do you want?!” Zazzalil snaps, her hands curling into fists. She’s glaring daggers at him now, but she can’t bring herself to care. “I don’t have anything else. Unless you’re going to try and take my tattoo? Cut off my fucking hair? Everything else got stolen already.”

“I’m aware, Anne. Now control yourself or I’ll have you locked back up and starved for a week for wasting my time.”

Gritting her teeth, Zazzalil resolves to focus on the man’s boots. Maybe that way it’ll be easier to stay calm.

“As I was saying, I understand you are offering your labour. But I have no use for a dancing girl.”

“I’m not just a dancer,” she tells the boots. “That’s just something I can do, and that’s what… Jeremiah makes me do. I'll do whatever needs doing. I'm used to having to work to survive."

She struggles to keep her eyes on his shoes as he stares down at her. For a few long moments she can only hear the creaking of wood and the muffled shouts of the crew outside. But eventually the Captain breaks the silence.

"Tell me, Annie, what did you do for your tribe?"

“I was a leader,” she says quietly, almost laughing from the sick irony of it. “I shared the position with… with my wife. And I hunted, I tried hunting basically anything I came across. I was an inventor too. Made things. Before that I collected nuts and berries and fruit. Anything edible.”

Her gaze flicks momentarily back to the shackles around her wrists, and she digs her dirty nails into her palms as tears well up in her eyes. Just thinking about her life before the traders hurts. She stares determinedly at his boots, hoping he hasn’t noticed. But a moment later he takes a step towards her, and she finds herself flinching back hard.

He doesn’t need to ask, as soon as she glances up at him she sees the question on his face.

“I... I guess I thought you were going to kick me,” she mumbles.

“You’re used to being kicked, are you?”

"It's happened a few times."

He silently considers her for a moment, before ordering her to stand. She climbs to her feet, still unsteady on the swaying boards.

"How old are you, girl?" he asks.

"Twenty-seven."

He circles the woman, looking her up and down. “Small for your age, aren’t you?

“Always have been.”

The man hums. “Despite that, I’ve been told you were a fine specimen, when you were bought. You’re looking a little weedy now.”

Though the comment confuses Zazzalil, she figures now is not the best time to ask what ‘bought’ means. He takes a hold of her right arm, running his thumb over her scar-slashed tattoo. She has to resist the urge to wrench her arm away.

“The work will do you some good,” he says eventually. “Especially since I hear your merchant has been letting you waste away in a cage.”

“So… You’re agreeing? You’re giving me a job?”

“Yes, girl. I’ll allow you to eat with the crew and sleep in their quarters - though you will most likely be on the floor - and in exchange you will do what you’re told when you’re told it. The crew are all free men and women, and as a slavegirl you will treat them as your superiors. I’m expecting you to work hard, Annie. Earn your keep. And if you don’t it’ll be back into the hold with you.”

“I understand.”

“Good.”

As he pulls a key from his pocket, the man holds out his hand. Zazzalil hesitates; nothing good has ever come of offering her captors her hands.

“You want to stay in your shackles, do you?”

Begrudgingly, she presents her wrists, and he frees her from the chain. She rubs at the red marks on her skin as he ushers her to the door.

Zazzalil doesn’t understand a word the Captain says to the man he hands her off to, but she follows him across the ship and takes the heavy bucket of saltwater he thrusts into her hands, and she watches him show her how to work it into the deck with a broom. Once left to her own devices she takes a few moments to unwrap the tattered bandages from her feet and tie them around her ankles instead - damp bandages around her feet are not very pleasant - and then she sets herself to scrubbing.

And scrubbing.

And scrubbing.

Nobody pays her much heed while she works, but as soon as she pauses for even a moment to try and rest her arms or regain her balance on the swaying deck someone barks at her to stop slacking off. She’d love to yell back but that could only make things worse, so instead she grits her teeth and does as she’s told. The wind still chills her skin and drags her hair into her face. The shouting of the crew and the creaking of wood is loud in her ears, sailors bumping into her and near knocking her over. Her arms ache and her stomach hurts. She doesn't last long before following the lead of a seasick man and emptying her stomach over the side of the ship, adding the taste of bile to her problems.

Though she tries to wash her mouth out with saltwater, the taste lingers. She starts to wonder if she should have stayed in the hold.

Chapter Text

Zazzalil spends hours on the deck with that broom. Well, it feels like hours, but she really has no way to tell; a glance up at the position of the sun is just risking an accusation of daydreaming. Once the scrubbing is done she’s tossed back and forth between jobs and sailors, barely knowing what she’s supposed to be doing or getting a chance to breathe. Go there, fetch that, pull this. She’s lucky to be given orders she can understand - it’s mostly either pointing or foreign words. One man backhands her across the face for ‘ignoring’ what he’s yelling at her, even after she tries to explain that she has no clue what he’s saying. Nevertheless, she tries to honour her agreement and do as she’s told. Her only comfort is the Captain’s assertion that he doesn’t need a dancing girl; whatever they make her do, it won’t be… that.

They just barely stop her for lunch. The woman who has been feeding her for the last few days pulls her aside sometime around noon, sitting her down on an upturned bucket with a few hard biscuits that she can’t eat fast enough for anyone’s liking and the order to hurry up so she doesn’t waste time. Once she’s gulped down a cup of water it’s all “get up, get on your feet, go help them haul on that rope and don’t you dare let me catch you complaining.” It’s hard not to snap at her but Zazzalil manages to keep it in, giving the woman a stiff nod and standing up.

Her arms already feel like they’re about to drop off, but she goes where she’s directed and grabs the rope. She’s weaker than she used to be, and it’s getting more and more apparent as the day drags by. She supposes she should have expected that, after being kept caged for so long. Yet another reason to hate her captors. The sailors around her sing as they work, a tune she recognises from the faint echoes that reach the hold. Even if she knew the words, she doubts she could sing along through the exhaustion. She’s never been so grateful that one hand is calloused and almost all feeling has been burnt out of the other.

Being dismissed from the rope and put back to running back and forth to fetch whatever anyone wants isn’t any better. Holding directions in her head while trying to keep herself upright as the floor tips and rolls under her is a struggle, and that’s just when there’s someone around who knows the right words to give her directions. And when she shows back up on the deck with the damn thing she’d been sent for, bruised and aching from stumbling into walls and even falling over a few times, all she gets for her troubles is another set of orders and the demand to get it done quicker this time.

The day seems to last longer than it should, but like all things it nears an end eventually. The sun comes close to setting. Zaz finds herself sent below deck again, following directions to a room lined with shelves and unfamiliar objects she’s too tired to look too hard at. It’s far warmer than the open air, that’s what she notices. The man at work there gives her a sympathetic smile that confuses her a little, and tells her she’s to help him take food out to the mess deck. She has no idea what a mess deck is. She'd much rather stay in the warmth of this room - fall asleep there, if she could - but she pushes down her complaints and once again does as she's told.

The mess deck, apparently, is where they eat. It’s also where she first encounters a bench that isn’t just a log used for sitting. She tries not to look at the sailors she hands out food to. She doesn’t want to see them, doesn’t want to hear what they say to her. What they say about her. She just hands out the bowls of stew and follows the man out again.

He explains, back in that strange warm room, that half of the crew eats at a time, and in an hour she'll have to help him hand out food again and she can have her dinner then. But, for now, she's got to go back up and start scrubbing the deck again. It's worse than the first time. She's tired and cold and hungry, and it’s starting to get dark. But they still yell at her not to slack off. They still shove past her and almost trip her over. They still treat her like dirt. The hour feels like a lot longer.

Eventually, to her relief, she’s sent down to hand out food again. She soon notices, however, that the trio that brought her here are included in this half of the crew, and until she sees the man working with her hand them their bowls she’s on edge. An encounter with them is the last thing she needs right now. She’s fine with hating them from a distance.

It doesn’t take long for them to finish their task, and soon the man is holding the last bowl. “This one’s yours,” he tells her, but he doesn’t let go when she tries to take it. His voice lowers to almost a whisper.

“If it ever gets too much on deck,” he says, “just tell them I’ve asked for your help, okay? Tell them ‘Janvoi wants me in the galley,’ and then come and find me. I’ll be down here. You can do some kitchen work for a bit, warm yourself up, avoid this lot. Okay?”

Zazzalil just stares for a moment, trying to figure out whether this really is a kind offer. “I… Okay…” she mumbles.

He flashes her a small smile. “Great. Now go rest, and eat slow ‘cause they’ll probably turf you out as soon as you’re done.”

Following a nod from the man, Zazzalil takes her bowl to an empty spot on one of the benches, perching herself on the very end to stay as far from the man beside her as possible. She’s immediately aware of the rest of the table staring at her. She’s too tired to glare back. Instead she tries to focus on her food. There’s some kind of carved wooden stick sticking out of the bowl, and the people around her are using theirs to eat. She’s never seen, let alone used one of those things in her life, and she’s not going to start now. It seems largely pointless. So her first move is to take that out and set it down on the tabletop. From there, it’s just a bowl of stew. Just like when they gave her the leftovers.

So why can’t she eat it?

She wants to eat. She’s starving. But in this moment, nothing has ever been more terrifying. She sits frozen on the bench as it sways under her, holding the bowl in place with one hand to stop it from sliding across the table.

“You alright there, kid?”

Zazzalil flinches at the voice of the man opposite her breaking through her thoughts. “Yeah,” she lies. When she looks up, he’s looking down at her with concern. She returns to glaring at the dinner, trying to figure out why she feels like it’s going to bite her.

“The stew’s not as bad as it looks, promise,” he says, a hint of humour in his voice. “But don’t tell Jan I said that.”

She doesn’t reply.

“You must be hungry, kid. C’mon, eat up before it goes cold.”

This stranger towering over her and telling her to eat is probably the last thing Zazzalil expected to help. But nonetheless, she finds herself doing as he says and hesitantly raising the bowl to take a sip.

“Fuck, why does it taste like that?”

The man gives a quiet, relieved chuckle. “Salt. Everything’s over-salted to make it last, you get used to it.”

“I thought they were just deliberately giving me shitty meat while I was locked up.”

The man is silent for a few moments. Thinking he’s just done talking to her, Zazzalil turns her attention back to her food.

“Oh Lord,” he mumbles eventually. “You poor girl.”

“What?”

“I wondered why I didn’t recognise you. You’re the slavegirl they were keeping chained up in the hold, aren’t you?”

Zazzalil doesn’t respond, but the look on her face is enough of an answer. After another few moments, the man nods.

“Well then. What’s your name, Annie?”

The woman narrows her eyes, trying to figure out what, exactly, he’s asking. “...Zazzalil,” she says eventually. “Zazzalil the Firebringer.”

He smiles. “Evening, Firebringer. I’m Jonny.”

The man sticks out his hand. Zazzalil just stares.

“I, uh… I’m offering a handshake,” he explains. “It’s a greeting.”

Zazzalil stares for a few more moments. “...No thanks.”

“Oh. Okay...”

She goes back to her stew. Jonny seems nice. So does the cook - Janvoi, presumably - but the last time she trusted a man who seemed nicer than the rest she lost three teeth. The key to survival on this ship, she’s decided, is going to be independence. Isolating herself. Not forming any more attachments. Even though it goes against everything she is.

For a while they both just eat, Zazzalil heeding the advice to take her time. Jonny seems hesitant to continue the conversation, and she pretends to be okay with that. It's not like she hasn't had a regular, friendly conversation in months. It's not like the absence of her tribe has left her feeling constantly exposed and achingly lonely. It's not like the man just calling her Firebringer made her the happiest she's been in far too long. She's fine. She doesn't need to talk. She doesn’t need connections.

She can live like this.

Once her stew is done Zazzalil tries to stay as still and quiet as possible, trying not to draw attention to herself. It’s warmer down here, and she’s off her sore feet. Everything still aches. She doubts she could go back to work without collapsing from the sheer exhaustion of it all. But as promised, once it's noticed that she's finished eating she's yelled at to get out of the room. And when it takes too long for her to react to the foreign words, a woman grabs her by the back of her dirty, bloodied vest and drags her away.

She doesn't know what the woman says to the crewmate they meet on the deck, but it must be bad because he almost pushes her over as he shoves her towards what looks like a huge, smooth tree trunk jutting out of the deck. He points upwards, yelling down at her until she gets the message and starts climbing. She's a good climber, she knows she is, but exhaustion and a lack of food on top of barely being given exercise have taken its toll, and it's harder than it should be. She barely has breath left in her body when she reaches the top and tumbles into what seems like some sort of basket. Her hands hurt. Well, the right one does.

She's just managed to sit up when the man climbs into the basket beside her and drags her to her feet, giving some command.

"I don't-"

"Quiet!"

The command does nothing, but the yank on her hair effectively cuts her off. He points out to the sea. She follows his gaze, and sees only darkness.

That's all she sees for a while.

He doesn’t keep her up there for long, thankfully, but the minutes she’s stuck in the sky crawl by like snails. She quickly realises that they're on lookout duty. Looking out for what, she doesn't know. But though the ocean remains dark and empty, he yells at her for taking her eyes off it. He yells at her when she's looking at it, too. She tries to ignore him, staring out at the glow of the setting sun through the hair being blown into her face. She wonders if somewhere out there, back on the shore, her brother is screaming at the coward to scare him off. She misses him. Her brother, that is, not the sun. But she can’t ponder this for long - the man behind her soon decides she’s doing something wrong again. By the time he sends her back down to the deck she's certain he just wanted someone to hit.

Jonny can’t stop thinking about the woman he saw at dinner. He's heard her mentioned a few times over the last few days; a dancing girl, apparently kidnapped from somewhere inland, dragged onboard, and left chained up alone in the hold. And now it would seem she's been put to work on the ship too. He’d almost forgotten how cruel the world can be.

It’s just gone sundown when he sees her again, outside the crew’s quarters he was about to enter himself. She’s holding a roughly-bundled up blanket, obviously trying not to glare at the woman with her.

“Just find a spot on the floor,” her keeper is saying. “Understand?”

The captive nods, turning to enter the quarters.

“Hey! I didn’t dismiss you, Annie!”

There’s no response. The woman calls out to Jonny as he enters the rooms himself - “Give the little brat a smack for me, will you?” - but he just gives a non-committal hum and avoids eye contact.

He soon catches up with the captive. She’s pawing at the floor with her bare foot, seemingly searching for the best spot to sleep, glancing around at the hammocks surrounding her. They’re the last in, the rest of the watch already asleep around them. He’s half-asleep himself.

“Evening, Firebringer.”

She jumps a little as she turns, but seems to relax slightly when she sees him.

“What do you want?”

She’s obviously exhausted, clothes dirty, face bruised.

“Sorry to startle you there, I just wanted to offer finding you a spare hammock.”

“You don’t scare me. And I don’t need… whatever a hammock is.”

“One of these hanging beds.”

“Okay, I don’t need one. I can cope on the floor.”

He can’t help but think that’s meant to be a jab at him, but he lets it slide. “Alright, fair. You sure you don’t need anything, though? I can track you down an extra blanket, get you something to tie your hair?”

She regards him with suspicion for a moment, before looking away and nodding. “A hair tie would be good,” she begrudgingly admits. He nods, trying to give her a reassuring smile. She doesn’t seem to appreciate it.

The woman follows him to his wooden box of belongings, her bare feet quietly patting along behind him. He quickly locates his spare bootlaces and hands them over with the advice to braid her hair so the wind would hassle her less. She tosses her blanket to the ground, using one lace to tie her tangled hair back into a ponytail before separating it into three to quickly form a messy braid.

“This doesn’t mean I trust you,” she mutters as he climbs into his hammock. That gives him pause, but he says nothing. After all, he’s not certain whether she was talking to him or herself.

By the time he thinks to look over to say goodnight, she’s fast asleep on the boards below.

Chapter Text

A few hours after settling into his hammock, Jonny wakes to a commotion below him. Someone’s yelling. Someone he soon recognises as Zazzalil.

“paks!” she says as the sailors around her begin to stir, “paks, mikis!”

“Shut up, Annie!” someone else shouts back as Jonny clambers out of bed. Unfortunately, he isn’t the only one to get up to see what all the fuss is about.

“teh mikis,” Zazzalil is mumbling, wide-eyed and frantic, trying to stumble to her feet, tangled in her blanket. “mikzal, aya-”

She’s cut off by a hard slap to her cheek from the first person to reach her. A woman that Jonny recognises - unfortunately - as the one he’s overhead complaining about one of her trading partners and the dancing girl he’d bought.

“Shut the fuck up, you little brat!” said woman snaps.

“Hey, hey, there’s no need for that,” Jonny cuts in, stepping towards the two of them with his hands raised. “She probably just had a nightmare, she’s going on about tigers. Right, kid? Nightmare? jafex?”

She shakes her head wildly, trembling, pointing towards the corner. “dia! teh mikzal!”

The sailors follow her gaze. There, in the dim lantern light, stands a rather startled-looking ginger tabby.

“The cat?” Elizabeth asks. “She thought the cat was a tiger, sweet Jesus-” she grabs the woman by the front of her shirt. “That, you fucking idiot, is a cat. Cat. You woke me up because the cat came in?”

Zazzalil squirms in her grip, trying to pry herself free. “batak, El!” 

“She didn’t know, he scared her.”

“I don’t give a shit!”

She slaps her hard again and shoves her back to the floor. People are grumbling around them, some voicing their displeasure at Zazzalil, some telling the other woman to give it a rest. Jonny carefully crouches down beside the captive but she puts her back to him, shivering, still glaring at the cat.

Luckily for Zaz, she managed to wake up half the crews' quarters only a few minutes before they had to get up anyway, and so didn’t anger them quite as much as she could have. As they walk up to the deck, Jonny tries to explain that the ship's cat is not a tiger cub, but rather a small animal meant to kill rodents. Either way, she'd rather the thing didn't cuddle up to her during the night without her knowing.

It's still dark outside, but by lantern light she finds herself back with her bucket and broom, scrubbing the planks yet again. Is this really going to be her life for months? Her arms are still sore from yesterday. Her feet are cold and wet. Her face is freshly stinging on top of yesterday’s bruises. She didn’t sleep too well being tossed around on the floor. Her stomach hurts. But she tries not to think about that as she works. At least I’m not in the hold, she tells herself. At least she’s not still stuck chained up on the floor. At least she’s not being kept in isolation. At least her dinner was more than a few scraps out of a bucket. She has more to do than just curl up and cry.

The sailors around her are singing again; some tune to make the work pass by. The lyrics are beyond her, but that hardly matters. She has her own songs.

“I don’t really wanna do the work today,” she sings quietly to herself as she scrubs, fully aware of the irony of her words. “I don’t really wanna do the work today, I don’t really wanna do the work today, I don’t wanna do the work today.”

It hurts to sing those songs. There’s a hundred different reasons why it hurts to sing those songs. But it’s that or the ache in her bones and the stinging of the bruises she’s given up keeping track of. It’s the pain of what she’s lost or what she’s gained. So when sailors shove past her and feed the pain in her already sore body she shuts her eyes and just keeps singing. When the broom feels too heavy to push she forces herself to move it to the quiet beat tapped out by a cold, aching foot. She tells herself the story of a woman, brave and brash who thought herself invincible. It’s hard to recognise herself in the tale.

“Into the black, into the unknown,

No turning back, onwards, now,

All alone…”

The hours pass only a little easier than the day before, but that little bit is appreciated. She’s below deck by sunrise, sent into the crew’s quarters as the second watch leaves, left alone to scrub the swaying floors. Away from prying eyes she slows down, taking the occasional break to rest her arms, longing to just sit down and rest but knowing there’ll be hell to pay if someone comes to fetch her and sees she’s done nothing. She’s not sure what that hell would consist of, exactly, but it’s not something she needs to know, nor wants to know. Just something she needs to avoid.

“There's been a change in the climate, something's in the air, I feel the heat. No need to define it, we don't really care…”

She falls silent when a woman appears in the doorway, the same woman from the hold.

“Don’t glare at me like that,” she says, eyebrows raised. “This was your idea.”

Zazzalil’s expression only hardens in response to her smirk. “Being happy about it wasn’t part of the deal,” she points out.

“Yeah, but doing what you’re told was. So drop the attitude, Annie.”

The captive looks away, closing her eyes for a moment, trying to compose herself. Fuck, I should have just stayed in the hold.

“Alright, well… What do you want me to do?”

“Get your arse to the galley.”

“To the-?”

“Galley, girl. The room where they sort the food, you remember where that is?”

“Yeah, I-”

“Well go on then, scram!”

As much as Zazzalil doesn’t appreciate being ordered around, the excuse to put down that godforsaken broom is a welcome one.

The next time Jonny sees the girl, she’s practically collapsing onto the bench across the table from him at breakfast. She barely acknowledges him, sitting with her head resting on her hand for a while.

“...Firebringer?” Jonny asks eventually. “Are you okay?”

She shifts slightly, one dark brown eye glaring up at him.

“Alright, stupid question,” he admits. “But I’ll say it again, you must be hungry, right?”

He nods towards her breakfast - a few bits of hardtack and marmalade on a tin plate. For a moment she just stares down at it, before reaching out, flinching, and ultimately pulling her legs up onto the bench and hugging them close as she grabs a biscuit to gnaw on. And though Jonny returns to his own rations, he glances up at her every so often.

Now that her hair is out of her face, he can see the messy scar above her left brow. And while there’s every chance she could’ve got it as a free woman, he can’t help but think that gash - and the ones up her arms, and the missing teeth he gets the occasional glimpse of - are more recent. That, and the marked lack of meat on her bones. He knows she won’t want his pity, so he says nothing. But he can’t help but feel it.

She only looks up from her food again when another man at their table calls her.

“Annie,” he says, “hey, Annie!”

For a while she manages to ignore him, but eventually the woman beside her shifts a bit closer and lightly hits her arm to get her attention. Jonny sits up a little straighter as Zazzalil flinches.

“He’s talking to you, swabbie.”

Zazzalil glares, but it’s a confused glare.

“She doesn’t speak-” Jonny begins to point out, then falters.

“Firebringer, can you speak any English?”

“English?”

“What they’re speaking, the language.”

“...A little. A tiny bit.”

“She doesn’t speak a lot of English.”

The man raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, no shit. But she knows her name, doesn’t she?”

“C’mon, Joe, let the girl-”

“Annie!”

This time, the captive drops her hardtack and glares over at the man. “sie? sie vik quip?”

“Spot any more tigers, Annie?”

Zazzalil and Jonny are the only two at the table who don’t seem to find this hilarious. The woman looks from Joe to the man opposite her.

“What’s he-?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Hiding in the lower decks, are they?”

“Prowling ‘round the hold?”

“Jonny, if they’re talking about me-”

“Just ignore them, kid.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“C’mon, Jonny,” Joe goads, leaning across the table to playfully punch his arm. “C’mon, ask her if she’s seen any more tigers.”

Caught between his grinning crewmate and Zazzalil’s glare, Jonny sighs. He silently prays for God to have mercy on the girl for once. And he translates.

Zazzalil’s face scrunches up in confusion.

“What d’you mean more?” she asks. “I didn’t see a tiger, you were the one who explained that.”

“He… He’s mocking you, Firebringer.”

She looks down at her plate for a moment, her eyes flicking back and forth like she’s trying to figure something out. “Oh. Yeah, ‘course.”

Though she very briefly looks like she’s about to make some kind of response to Joe, she seems to give up on it. Shaking her head, she picks up her last piece of hardtack.

“Y’know what? Fuck this, I’m- the food guy, what’s his name?”

“Janvoi?”

“Yeah, him. He said he wanted help with the food stuff. So I’m gonna go… do that…”

The table continues to jeer as she gets to her feet and leaves the room. Jonny shakes his head.

“Hasn’t the girl suffered enough?” he asks.

The woman who had been sitting next to Zazzalil rolls her eyes. “C’mon, Jon. It’s just a bit of fun.”

“Cashing in your out already, Zazzalil?”

Zaz doesn’t return the cook’s sympathetic smile as she drags her feet into the galley. “How d’you know my name?” she asks instead.

“Jonny told me. Besides, doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Annie…. doesn’t quite fit.”

“You can say that again.”

“And I will - Annie doesn’t fit. But anyway, there’s not much going on right now, so I think I’ll take the chance to give you the tour. Don’t suppose you’ve been in a kitchen before, have you?”

“In a- huh?”

“Kitchen. Room for storing and preparing food?”

“No. Not unless visiting Emberly’s hut counts.”

“I won’t pretend to know.”

A lot of what Janvoi shows her goes right over Zazzalil’s head, but she nods along regardless. In fact, she quickly stops trying to understand, instead taking the chance to shut off her brain and bask in the warmth of whatever it is she’s currently ignoring the explanation of. If the cook notices her steady decline in responses, he doesn’t comment on it.

“And that’s that, you’re an expert now.”

“I- huh-?”

“Kidding, kidding. But that is the tour done, so I should be putting you to work around about now.”

“Great.”

“It’s just in case someone pokes their head in here. If someone caught me letting you catch a break, well, that’s a drama neither of us need.”

“Sure.”

“I just need you to chop some meat for me, kid-”

“-I’m not a kid-”

“-nothing too difficult. Here.” He pulls a knife from a drawer and hands it to Zazzalil before turning to retrieve a slab of meat. “You know what to do, right? Small chunks - hold it from the handle, like that - there, you got it.”

It’s familiar and strange at the same time. She’s cut up meat before - skinned and gutted it too - but with sharp stones rather than a knife. It feels strange in her hand. And soon after she’s left to her own devices, she catches the blade glinting in the lamplight in a way that makes the scars up her arms itch. She knows the power the thin bit of metal holds.

“Oh, and do me a favour?” Janvoi calls from the other side of the galley, snapping the woman out of her thoughts. “If you’re going to steal food, take it from the scrap bucket?”

She turns to see him pointing down to a bucket on the floor, not turning away from his work.

“That’s what I was eating while I was locked up, isn’t it?”

“In the hold? Yeah, that and a few other bits. I know it’s not much, but I’ll turn a blind eye if you’re hungry.”

Zazzalil nods, making a mental note of the offer. There were a few times in the hold where she gave in and chewed on a nut from the pouch tied to her leg, this could be an opportunity to restock away from prying eyes. That is, if Janvoi is telling the truth. She goes back to chopping, but soon pauses, struck by a memory that still doesn’t quite make sense.

“...Hey,” she says, the curiosity overtaking her resolution to keep to herself as much as she can. “When I was down there, I think a couple times you accidentally dropped a decent chunk of meat in with the scrap.”

“Right, yeah. Accidentally.”

She nods again. “That’s what I thought.”

Curiosity satisfied, she again returns to the chopping. But after a few moments, she gets the feeling that someone’s looking at her and turns back.

“What?”

“I was joking, Zazzalil.”

“Huh?”

“It wasn’t an accident.”

“Oh. Well… Thanks, in that case. It helped.”

“Glad to have been of assistance.”

He turns away again, leaving her to keep working. Which she does. Very, very slowly. She gets the impression that Janvoi won’t be one to comment on her speed, and she’s fully prepared to take advantage of that. And so the work isn’t hard, per se.

Just utterly, mind-numbingly boring.

There’s only so much chopping that Zazzalil can get through before the urge to put down the knife and wander off sets in. At home, this is the point at which she’d shoot Keeri a mischievous grin and ask whether she’s up for ditching whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing for something a little more tempting. And of course her friend would be all for it. But, obviously, she’s not at home. So instead this is the point at which she takes a deep breath and tries to keep going. And she doesn’t think about Keeri.

As she continues chopping, she keeps her mind on her work. She doesn’t think about how many months it’s been since she’s seen her best friend. How she can’t remember ever going so much as a day without her before all this. How she can’t remember a time before they were best friends. She keeps working, and she doesn’t spare a moment for the thought of how her laugh sounds, or her smile, or her habit of adopting any animal that didn’t manage to squirm away. She doesn’t recall how deep it cut her when they argued. She doesn’t consider how her disappearance must be affecting her. And she definitely doesn’t think about how they laughed and joked as they figured out how to dance together, and how she doesn't know if she’ll ever be able to dance in such a carefree way again.

The hand not on her knife shifts onto her arm, but there’s nothing but scars under her fingers. No stitches to mess with this time. Zazzalil takes a deep breath and wipes her eyes. She’s almost finished, she can get through this.

Chop. Chop. Chop.

“Done.”

Zazzalil doesn’t turn to look at Janvoi as he crosses the room, absent-mindedly tapping the flat side of her knife against the edge of the worktop.

“Alright, looks good. Thanks, Zazzalil. Ready to go out and face that lot again?”

She turns her gaze to the ceiling, listening to the ever-present noise of the bustle above them. “...No, not really. But I suppose I have to, right?”

“Right. And I’ll be needing that knife back.”

The tapping pauses. Zazzalil glances down at the blade. There’s a temptation, however fleeting, to hang onto it. It would be nice not to be back amongst the crew completely defenceless. But there’s no way she’s going to be able to snatch it from right under the cook’s nose, so she sets it down on the workbench and heads to the door.

“Thanks, Zazzalil. And one more thing?”

Already at the door by this point, she turns to face him again.

“It gets easier. Not easy, but easier.”

Zazzalil hates to admit it, but the cook is right.

The work is still taxing and boring, but with the half-decent food and the exercise she begins to regain her strength. She goes to bed on the floor a little less sore as the days drag by, aided somewhat by her growing ability to keep herself upright. Her knowledge of what the hell is going on around her improves a little too, though she still finds herself baffled by some things; why they want the deck scrubbed so much, for one. Jonny’s attempts to explain do little to clarify, either. No, she doesn’t clean the floor of her hut, the floor is dirt. How are you gonna clean a dirt floor? There’d be no floor! But regardless of how little sense the man makes sometimes, as time goes on Zazzalil finds it harder and harder to keep her distance.

She can’t trust Jonny, or Janvoi. Andrew taught her that. So she tries her best to convince herself that her new companions are similarly malicious. Janvoi must just want her labour. Jonny must just be trying to gain her trust. Nevermind the fact that she only works in the kitchen when she chooses to, and the cook doesn’t seem to mind when she doesn’t. And nevermind the fact that she has no idea why Jonny would want her trust. She just can’t trust them.

It’s not so hard to mistrust the rest of the crew. Though the physical abuse decreases as she learns how to work without pissing too many people off, they’re still less than pleasant to her. Not that she expected anything better. But regardless of how little she likes them, she comes to be familiar with those she sees regularly over her first few days working with them. She starts to learn names, though of course she refuses to use them in full until they use hers. And that’s not the only thing she learns; by the time Jonny convinces her to actually try to learn English, she’s already picked up a few more words and phrases. Not quite enough to carry a conversation yet, but enough to pick up on the general idea of what’s being discussed over supper. And enough to understand the gist of the argument that takes place on the deck on the morning of her fifth day.

“You should have consulted me,” she hears Jer complain over the general bustle of the sailors. “She’s my girl, you can’t just decide to bring her out and work her for yourself.”

Zazzalil just keeps her head down, scrubbing at the deck. There’s no point getting herself any more wrapped up in whatever this is than she already appears to be.

“I see your point, Mr Stainton,” comes the reply, in the cold, measured voice of the Captain. “But the simple fact is that when she’s on my ship, she’s my girl. You’ll get her back in one piece when we reach harbour, likely in better shape too. But until then, Annie and I have a deal.”

She can feel eyes on her, both the debating men and her fellow evesdroppers staring. She wishes they wouldn’t. They’ve all seen her swab the deck before, after all.

“You expect the little savage to make good on that?”

“She has so far. And if she doesn’t, I’ll have her beaten bloody and tossed back in the hold. Unless you want similar consequences, you’ll drop the issue.”

It’s later that same day when she has her first real interaction with the man since the night she realised he might work her to death.

She’d been sent to fetch something from below decks when she’s grabbed by the back of her shirt, spun around, and shoved against the wall. Though the sudden attack surprises her, the perpetrator doesn’t. She’s barely registered him before he starts yelling. And though she yells back in her native tongue that no, she hasn’t magically learnt english since the last time he went off on her, she does pick up on a few things. Like how often he uses the word ‘mine’. Quite frankly, it makes her feel sick. And then she’s hitting the floorboards, the breath kicked out of her lungs when she tries to get up. There, on the floor, she watches as one of his feet taps against the boards. She can’t help but think it’s to bring attention to the sheathed bayonet strapped to his boot. But after a few moments, without another word, he turns on his heel and leaves her to catch her breath.

It rains that evening. Usually Zazzalil wouldn’t mind that too much, rain is just a part of life. But when she’s been set to hauling on ropes and she’s soaked to the skin and freezing and everyone around her is yelling to be heard over the wind, she decides that she doesn’t like rain. She sits shivering through supper, dreading the moment she finishes and someone chases her out of the mess deck, but apparently everyone else is too cold and miserable themselves to pay her any mind. Jonny doesn’t say a word to her until they’re back in the crew’s quarters.

“You’re soaked through, Firebringer,” he points out as he peels off his shirt. Behind him, Zazzalil sits down beside her blanket, weighing up whether she should bother using it. It would probably end up soaked through too within a minute.

“I noticed,” she mutters.

“You don’t have any dry clothes, do you?”

“No.”

“Well, you can borrow this for the night, should cover you.”

She turns to see the man holding out a pale blue shirt. She takes it hesitantly, still not wanting to trust him, but the opportunity to get out of her sodden clothes is too good to pass. And he’s right - the shirt would be loose-fitting on him, and as such is about as long as the dress that was stolen from her all those months ago. As she makes an attempt to settle, the man gathers up her wet vest and trousers alongside his own.

“Jan lets me air out damp stuff in the galley,” he explains. “I’m sure he’ll be fine with yours too.”

“...Sure.”

She watches him go, knowing she shouldn’t’ve agreed. She should have just resigned herself to being cold and wet. It’s not like she’s never slept like that before. But fuck it, she’s done it now. So she wraps her blanket tighter around herself and shuts her eyes, trying to convince herself that she still doesn’t trust anyone on this fucking boat.

Chapter Text

Though Zazzalil has gotten herself out of the darkness of one hold, her tribe is fighting it in another.

It’s not been an easy journey. Day after day of heaving walls and churning floors, cold and damp and dark. Trusting Kaoruk’s word on where to scrounge blindly for food, hunkering down and holding their breath at any hint of someone entering the room.

It’s an unimaginable blessing when one of those someones, in some sort of desperate hurry, leaves their little cage of flame behind.

The tribe tend to that flame for days, hiding it away and feeding little scraps of fabric and string into its cage, determined to prolong its life as long as possible. They take turns with the privilege of sitting by it, watching it dance, feeling the slightest hint of warmth. Grunt is the only exception. Grunt stays beside it as long as it takes. Emberly watches over his shoulder as again and again he scrawls figures on whatever the tribe can find, edging closer and closer to what they need. He’s improved vastly since they met, she notes with pride. She never has to ask him who’s who anymore. Even if it wasn’t obvious from the context of all this, she’d know from a glance he’s sketching Zazzalil.

“Do you think it’s a decent likeness?” he asks her, holding up the latest scrap of fabric.

“Absolutely!”

Grunt turns it back towards himself, not looking all that convinced. “You know what I’m aiming for, though. I’m not sure it’s enough for a stranger to recognise her. And I still can’t do feet…”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to be identifying Zazzalil by her feet, Grant. It’s distinguishing features that are important, right? Like the tattoo design.”

He nods, thoughtful. “Do you think Jemilla could help me paint her face? She’d know it better than me.”

“Of course, once she’s awake. But I think we should let her rest for now. She really needs it.”

He nods again, flipping over the fabric and readying one of the charcoal pieces he carries with him.

“Are you gonna try starting without her?”

“No. Not the face, anyway.”

He holds his left hand out beside the fabric, studies it for a moment, and then turns back to Emberly and asks to borrow hers instead.

“It’s closer to hers than mine. You’re about the same size.”

“Zazzalil’s hands?”

“Yeah. Distinguishing features. I don’t know many people with their hand burnt up like hers.”

Miles away across the water, Zazzalil wakes from a dream.

It’s all quiet in the crew’s quarters, aside from the muffled sounds from the deck above and the ocean outside. And in the spirit of not being yelled at, she tries to keep it that way. So she rolls onto her side and tries to stifle her tears.

Someone’s feet hit the floor. They’re shuffling around with something, maybe boots, and the woman tries to muffle her sniffles in the overlong sleeves of the shirt she was lent. Soft footsteps walk past where she’s lying as still as she can.

And they stop. And walk back.

“...Firebringer?”

She allows herself to be relieved for a moment at the sound of Jonny’s voice, but no longer than that. Sure, he’s less likely to kick her when she’s down than the rest of them, but she has to keep her guard up.

Unfortunately, her guard is a little battered by dreaming. So when the man crouches down to ask if she’s okay, the gentleness she’s been deprived of is enough to break it.

“Hey, shh, shh,” he whispers as she balls herself up tighter, releasing a choked sob into her sleeve. "C'mon, let’s get you out of here.”

Zazzalil allows herself to be helped to her feet and steered out of the room, Jonny’s hand resting lightly between her shoulders. He seems on high alert, checking around each corner, and somewhere in the back of her mind Zaz realises that he probably doesn’t want to have to explain why he’s up leading her around the lower decks dressed in only one of his shirts. If she was less wrapped up in her grief, maybe she’d wonder that herself. As is, they’ve already stepped into the galley by the time she realises that’s where they’re going. Jonny helps her sit down beside the stove.

“I’m going to go get Jan.”

Zazzalil nods numbly, and he pats her gently on the shoulder before he leaves her. By the time the two men get back, she’s lost the fight to keep herself from crying again. Jonny takes a seat beside her, his hand returning to her back, Janvoi on her other side. Zazzalil makes an attempt to steady her breathing.

“I’m fine,” she mumbles.

“You’re not,” Janvoi says.

“But it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” Jonny quickly clarifies. The two men share a look over the woman’s head, and Janvoi hauls himself to his feet.

“I’ll get the stove going,” he says.

Zazzalil watches him, silently, for a few moments. She wants to talk about it, to release it into the world so it can stop pacing around in her head. But she shouldn’t be trusting these people. She shouldn’t let them get her into such a vulnerable position. She tries to hide her face in her knees. Maybe if she shuts her eyes tight enough she won’t be here anymore.

“Hey, Zaz?”

Janvoi’s sat back beside her, holding out a cup. She takes the weak tea he offers her. The cup warms her hands, the stove warms her face, and Jonny’s hand is still resting on her shoulders where she was burned all those months ago. Zazzalil takes a long sip of tea, mostly to avoid speaking. Because the thought is getting louder and louder and more insistent that maybe if she confided in these people, they’d have the decency to keep it to themselves.

“Fuck,” she mutters, resting her forehead on her knees, not wanting to see this damned ship anymore. “I just… I just want to go home.”

Neither man responds, but she doesn’t blame them. She wouldn’t know what to say either. She takes a deep breath and slowly shifts, moving to sit cross-legged instead, but still not looking up. She fiddles with a button on the shirt Jonny lent her.

“That’s what I was dreaming about,” she explains. “It… It was the first good dream I’ve had in a while. A long while. It was like none of this ever happened, I didn’t even remember it. I was just… Home.”

She squeezes her eyes shut for a long moment, trying not to think any deeper into it. Because if she thinks too hard, she won’t be able to keep talking through the tears.

“It’s warmer back home,” she mumbles, despite herself. “Not as much wind. And the ground… it’s been forever, but it’s like my feet perfectly remember what the plains feel like to stand on. I could feel it now if I thought hard enough about it. The ground was hard, and the dust would coat your feet in seconds, but it warmed your soles in spring. The way shadows look on the dust, the shade… And the people. My people, my family. My best friend, my brother, my… my wife. You… I’ve never told you two I have a wife, have I?”

“You haven’t,” Janvoi confirms.

“Don’t worry,” Jonny adds. “We certainly won’t be ones to judge.”

Zazzalil looks up at him, momentarily confused out of her grief. “Why… would you?”

“That’s an issue for another time,” Janvoi tells them both.

“...Right. But it was- I don’t really remember what I was doing, what it was really about, aside from being home. And it just… it feels like there’s a hole in my chest. I woke up with this hole in my chest, because when I opened my eyes I remembered where I was.”

“I know the feeling,” Janvoi says. Zazzalil looks at him out of the corner of her eye, ready to protest that no, he doesn’t, but she takes a moment to consider first. Consider the fact that this man speaks her language without the accent that the other sailors have. When she thinks about it, in fact, the occasional quirk in his voice or dialect is something she recognises. He speaks like Grunt.

“How long’s it been for you?” she asks quietly.

“I swore I’d give up trying to count when I became a free man. It won’t take me back.”

“How’d you get free?”

“Good service to a man who wrote it into his will.”

Zazzalil doesn’t bother taking the time to ask what a will is. Someone let him go, something that she knows without question that Jeremiah would never do. She looks down at her half-drunk tea, and can’t bring herself to finish it. Setting it down beside her, she rests folded arms on her knees.

“I hate it here. Everyone seems to hate me, but they’re still fine using my labour. I can’t catch a fucking break. The food sucks - no offence, Janvoi. And the whole place moves so much that I constantly feel like I’m gonna throw up.”

“Still?” Jonny asks, sounding concerned. “I thought you were getting your sea legs.”

Zazzalil glances down at her legs. “My what?”

“Sea legs. You know, learning to compensate for the ship’s movement. Keeping your balance and not feeling so seasick?”

“I can walk fine now. It’s just my guts playing up all the time.”

“That’s… odd,” Jonny says, but Janvoi seems like he’s thinking hard.

“It might not be,” he says. “It might be the cheese.”

“Cheese?” Jonny repeats.

“What the fuck is cheese?” Zaz asks.

“Zazzalil, does your tribe drink animal milk?”

“Do we what?”

It takes a bizarre, confusing conversation, but they eventually establish that no, Zazzalil’s tribe does not do that, yes, other people do do that, and her body is likely unable to process cheese as a result. Easy fix, Janvoi says. He’ll just stop feeding her cheese. Jonny pats her back.

“Well, that’s one thing, at least.”

Zazzalil looks up at him. The man who gave her his own shirt just to get her dry. Who found her crying after a nightmare and took the time out of his own rest to bring her here to huddle by the stove and sip on a hot drink, provided by the man who figured out why she’s been feeling so sick, and resolved to stop it without question.

Maybe she can trust these men.