Goda's Slave (Lesbian, Dystopia, LGBT Fantasy)

Chapter 9: She Who Wrestles With No One

Kanna put one bare foot in the sand. Somehow, she had awakened with every limb intact.

She was standing at the threshold, the door half-open, her body shielded from the wind. She didn't want to step into the outside world, to feel the sharp sand pelting her body out in the open—but she knew that she couldn't stand there with indecision forever.

Maybe if I feel too vulnerable, she thought, I can take refuge behind a boulder. But from where she was hiding behind the door, she could no longer see a single rock. Her view was clouded by the sun rays that had lit the dust in front of her and created out of it a swirling mist.

She squeezed the edge of the door with her hand. The rough sides of the metal dug into her palms, and her swollen knuckles pulsed angrily as she flexed them, but she couldn't help the urge to cling hard onto something. With the last bit of courage that she could muster up, she walked straight into the haze and closed the door behind her.

The finality of it was unnerving. She could hardly believe what she was doing, and some very deep-seated part of her was screeching with terror, writhing with discomfort at her nakedness. As she had feared, the wind huffed gritty sand against her bare skin as reward for her audacity.

Still, she persevered. She took another step forward. Every time the wind paused, she felt a bit of relief even as she shivered. When her eyes finally did land upon that boulder that she had promised to herself, the fear only thickened—but she pushed past this, too.

Kanna stared at Goda. In the morning light, she could see a red, fist-sized bruise that had formed on the back of the woman's shoulder. Kanna winced with shame, but again, she pushed herself, and her feet scraped against the gravel, and soon enough this made the woman in front of her turn around.

Goda, who was holding a handful of water, tilted her head up and squinted across the space between them. She seemed to have been jolted from some kind of daze.

"I haven't bathed," Kanna murmured. "Not since the cleanse the other day. Do you mind if I...?"

Without saying anything, Goda slid over to the side, as if to make room for Kanna to come hover next to the bucket. It was hardly necessary, of course: Goda was the only bather and the basin was wide open on all sides, so Kanna instead took it as a gesture of token acceptance.

When Kanna crouched beside her, the woman ignored her. As Goda went back to splashing water onto her face, Kanna tried not to comment about how futile it was to take a bath with the dusty wind swirling, since she had realized by now that it was more for the ritual.

Goda was a very religious person, Priestess Rem had told her—a religious person who believed in no gods and who sinned every day with full intention. Maybe the water was meant to wash these less visible impurities away instead.

Kanna dipped a hand into the container, then jerked back for a moment because the water was cold, but eventually she was able to relax into the discomfort, and she came to mirror Goda's movements.

Goda still did not look at her. Kanna examined her face for some twinge of anything—annoyance, amusement, even rage—but there was nothing. The corner of her eye carried only the reflected image of Kanna's stooped form in the bright sunlight.

Kanna pressed her now freezing hand to her own face. "Look," she said, her voice shaky. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I did to you. It wasn't right. Even if I say that you deserve it because of what your people did to my people, that would still just be a stupid excuse." Her hand brushed against Goda's as she reached for more water. She fought the urge to pull back. "The real reason I did it was...to provoke you."

Goda finally lifted her gaze up. Her brow had furrowed; her eyes had narrowed. She was listening. Kanna looked back at her for a long moment, feeling awkward at the confession, but knowing that she couldn't just leave it at that. There was a question hanging in the air.