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

Chapter 11: Belly of the Beast

Goda glided across the desert and Kanna followed her strides much less gracefully. She didn't know where they were going at first, but when her eyes adjusted to the darkness outside, she saw that Goda had turned straight in the direction of the caverns.

Kanna knew that in the morning, they would be heading out of the desert and into the Middleland. To be able to set out on such a journey in the first place, they would of course need fuel—but she couldn't imagine that Goda was planning to steal from the priestesses. Even though the fuel in those caves technically belonged to Jaya, Kanna had a feeling that this would hardly make a difference to someone like Priestess Rem.

As usual, Goda was unhelpful. She explained nothing, her eyes trained on the cliffs, and she barely glanced over her shoulder when Kanna fell a little behind. As they passed by one of the military trucks—the one that had been parked close to the garden—a soldier peeked her head out the door. It was the same woman Kanna had seen the evening before, when they had been coming back to the storage room from Parama's shack. She had a cigar stuffed in her mouth again, and the glow of her match as she lit the tip of it was the only thing that allowed Kanna to see her face.

Perhaps it had only been the dim light, but Kanna thought she saw a dark circle under the woman's eye that hadn't been there before.

The soldier took one look at Goda and recoiled into the truck, slamming the door behind her. Kanna raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment. By then, she had grown used to all the negative reactions that people had towards her master; she herself had them still.

Nonetheless, Kanna kept close to Goda as they walked through another patch of trucks. "Are you sure this is a smart thing to do?" she asked. "What if we get caught? Priestess Rem already knows that we've been in there."

"If we get caught, then we get caught. The caverns are our best option now."

Kanna glanced around at the machines that surrounded them, some of which were rumbling conspicuously, wasting their precious fuel. "What if you steal from the soldiers?"

She was a little surprised at her own suggestion, but it was true that she didn't think much of the military, perhaps because they had been the ones who had driven her family out of their own lands. She wasn't a thief herself, but if she had been, stealing from other thieves seemed to be the most reasonable strategy.

Goda shook her head without turning around. "No, I tried that already," she said. "Earlier this evening, when you were hiding from me, I went into the back of that nearby truck and rummaged around for some spare fuel. The soldier inside the cabin heard me and confronted me. It was then I learned that only one truck is carrying extra fuel, and it's heavily guarded. They plan to refuel in the Upperland where all the product is, so the fuel they have now is rationed and tightly locked, even for the soldiers. It would be unlikely that I would be able to siphon anything without breaking the tanks open and causing a scene."

Kanna glanced back towards the truck that stood near the garden, and she watched it grow smaller in the distance. She could just barely see the small point of orange cigar light through the dark windows of the cabin.

Then something connected in Kanna's mind.

"You hit that woman, didn't you?" she asked. "The soldier. You punched her in the face. She had a bruise on her eye."

"Yes, that's right."

"But why?"

"She didn't like that I was looking through her things. That's understandable—but I was in a hurry and I didn't have time to deal with her emotions. She swung at me and she missed."

"Then what?"

"I swung back at her and I didn't miss."

Kanna's heart raced a little harder, so she crossed her arms over her chest. It was that mix of fear and curiosity together again, a response that her body had when it became aware of any edge of Goda's power. It was the conflict between her reflex to run away...and her burning desire to witness what the woman actually looked like in a wild fury, naked of her usual restraint, charging hard with her hands clasped into fists.