#ciabhan

Is Cilodhna and her previous marriage with Ciabhan is going to be explored more in future stories?

The following is a monologue, as Sadrienne is unable to write in her diary at this time--contains torture references.

All I have right now are my thoughts. Even my boots are destroyed—I feel betrayed by that. After Virtie told the guard not to cut them from me, he cuts them anyway to get to my tendons. Rude. Just rude. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, I guess night’s come—it’s colder. I saw snippets of the jungle out the windows on the way in, I can’t be too far from home. 

Far enough, though. It’ll be a week before I’m noted absent from the Inflorescence—and I’d rather they didn’t come here for me. Let the others find me instead.

I can still taste my own sap. There’s stringy bits of my own flesh stuck in my teeth, and I want to lift my hands to pick it out—my tongue isn’t quite able to dislodge it—but even though I can feel my fingers they’re not there. I wriggle my fingers and look down expecting to see them, but no. Just stumps. No hands at all.

They will grow back.

I have to remember that. Fingers and all, the hands will grow back. So will the breast. 

It’s just physical pain.

He’s taking my body part by part. He thinks this makes me helpless. He’s wrong.

Helplessness isn’t a state of physical pain. For all the agony I’m in, I have my own mind and he’s not encroached on that. I make my own decisions, I defy him of my own volition, when I joke it is because I choose to. He may have carved ‘little bitch’ into my flesh, but I am not his bitch. I am a bitch. I choose to be, and I choose to be strong. So long as I can choose, they don’t own me and I will be okay.

For anything they do to me, I remember what I have survived. 

He took my liberty, but I’m not locked away in a box.

He sliced me up like a slaughtered pig, but the wounds haven’t been left to fester. He wrapped them rather well, even if it was with regeneration inhibitors.

He fed my flesh to me, but it was more filling and nutritious than anything Mavern allowed.

He called me a liability, told me tales of terrible things done by those I consider my friends and family. But what have I come from if not the worst of masters and poor choices? Perhaps I am a liability, but the road to fixing that is in training and healing, not in accepting it.

He took my magic. I can’t—I’m struggling to find a way of making that okay. Something so completely part of me is suddenly gone, the world feels smaller. I reach out for it and hit walls that have never been there, walls that are closing in, trapping me while I’m trapped. I’m limited. Physically, I am completely and utterly stuck here, and it feels like the first time I was in that box. 

Except this time, I don’t have what I need to get out.

I’m going to suffocate here.

I’m going to suffocate.

And they’re going to bring others, too. They’re going to hunt and bring the others here, anyone stupid enough to be walking out alone will be right here with me. He reckons he wants to see me work against them, to turn my skills for cruelty upon those I love—but I can’t. I won’t. I will not. I own my mind, he cannot take it, he’ll take my head from my shoulders before he becomes master to me.

Please, though. Everyone. Stay safe.

I am frightened. I’m cold and everything hurts, I passed out from the pain but got no rest from it. Perhaps I’ll die here. Maybe that’s preferable to returning home with mismatched breasts and a wardrobe of dresses that won’t fit right anymore. Jokes, jokes. That’s what Red would do. That’s what kept Red strong. 

I almost wish Virtuosity would come back. I don’t care what he does to me, it’s less frightening than sitting right here as I am now. We talk. Our banter is almost enjoyable, and in another world we might have been friends. Sassy, bitchy, volatile friends. 

He’s probably out with his boyfriend. That—that shouldn’t make me as jealous as it does. I’m the damn captive here, pay attention to me! Is it tomorrow yet? I’m not sure. Perhaps I can feel the temperature rising as the sun comes up, or maybe my body is confused and I’m in shock. I lost a lot of sap last night. It’s hard to tell.

Maybe none of this is real.

Who has a house this overdone anyway? Less is more. Ye gods.

At least I didn’t love those daggers. I doubt I’ll see them again—but the staff. Fuck. My staff. My precious fucking staff. There won’t ever be another like it, and fuck. They’d better not destroy it. That staff means more to me than anything I own. What else did they get? Not my bell. That’s still on my side table at the Source. My medical pack—my scalpels. They’re replaceable. My communicator. That will have been disconnected already, that’s okay. It’s just a piece of techno-junk now. Money. Some interesting rocks I picked up that have absolutely no value what so ever. I wonder what they’ll make of those? My diary. Some—my diary.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

They have my diary.