The air was strange in the bakery—hot and stuffy inside but bitterly cold just outside. Walking in and out felt like being slammed with two extremes that left you feeling disoriented, maybe even a little sick. The heat lamps overhead gave off this yellowy, artificial glow, humming faintly like they were alive, while the baking machines chugged and beeped away in the background, tirelessly working to churn out pastries. It was a constant rhythm, mechanical and monotonous, but still not enough to drown out the oppressive silence that hung in the room. Small talk was practically required to fill the void, no matter how much I hated it.
The old goat who owned the shop was in the back, likely counting inventory or muttering over his books. His absence gave the worker and me a bubble of privacy, not that I wanted it. But I wasn't about to stop him from talking. People always think their words are profound, that they're about to enlighten me. Spoiler: they're not.
"So," the worker started, his tone somewhere between casual and probing. "How'd you get so good at manual labor, Sableth? Aren't you supposed to be some rich girl with a silver spoon in her mouth?"
Stack. Box. Stack. Box. My hands moved methodically, my body conserving energy with each efficient motion. Every lift and turn was calculated, requiring the least effort to get the job done. If someone had timed me, they'd see I wasted zero seconds. My body's like a machine, the kind that could run on fumes and still outperform. You find your rest in the pauses between motions, those split seconds where your muscles relax just enough before the next task. It's almost meditative, in a bleak, factory-line kind of way.
Honestly, I wonder why factory workers complain so much. If I were a factory worker—and not the hypothetical owner of the business producing the products—I'd be phenomenal at it. Efficient. Durable. Reliable. I guess it's in my blood. My species, or more specifically, my breed, wasn't shaped by nature's randomness. We were designed—built to be hardy, useful, and yes, beautiful. Even our flaws were deliberate.
I shot the worker a sidelong glance as I reached for another box. "You think it's nice being rich?"
He shrugged. "I mean, must be. Right?"
I smirked, setting the box down with a deliberate thud. "That's just it. They hate me because I'm rich." I straightened up, turning to face him fully now, my voice cutting sharper with each word. "In their minds, all rich people are villains. Monsters. Never mind that my family didn't stumble into wealth by robbing anyone. We got here because we didn't blow our money on pointless crap or temporary pleasures. We saved. We lived below our means. We built up slowly, over generations. And for that? We're hated."
The worker frowned, clearly trying to keep up. "Still, owning your own factory sounds nice."
"It's not some glamorous brand," I replied, voice dripping with disdain. "It's a wholesale operation. You know what we make? Socks. That's it. Socks." I grabbed another box, my motions sharper now, as if venting my irritation through the rhythm of my work. "We've been making them for generations, and as the years went on, the costs just kept climbing. The profits dried up, but the production line never stopped. Loans piled up. Debt suffocated us. Fines, penalties, violations—they just kept coming. Taxes, too, of course. Can't forget those."
He shuffled awkwardly, looking like he regretted bringing it up. But I wasn't done.
"And then there's the unions," I continued, slamming the box onto the pile. "It wasn't enough to pay them money we didn't have. No, they demanded we replace our skilled, experienced workers with their handpicked candidates. People who were incompetent. Lazy. Unqualified. Half of them had criminal records as long as my arm, but sure, let's give them access to the machines and the payroll." I laughed bitterly, the sound harsh and humorless.
The worker muttered, barely audible, "Well, at least you're European. So you can't really complain about them…"
I turned to him sharply, my eyes narrowing. "You think so, huh? Here's the irony: I'm a minority. Shocking, right?"
He blinked, taken aback. "Wait—what?"
"Yeah," I said, leaning closer, my tone daring him to contradict me. "I don't get handouts. I don't get 'special rights.' I don't get any of the 'advantages' they love to throw at other so-called minorities, even though most of those groups number in the millions—sometimes billions. My species? We're a relic. A heritage breed. There are a few hundred of us left, maybe." I tilted my head, my voice dripping with mock sympathy. "But sure, let's force my family business to pay for their schooling, their healthcare, their housing. Reparations, they call it. For things I didn't even do."
"Why do they blame you?" he asked hesitantly, like he was afraid of the answer.
"They blame us for the 'displacement' of their species in its 'natural habitat,'" I said, rolling my eyes. "Because I'm part European sheep, they act like I'm personally responsible for every environmental shift in history. Never mind that the other European sheep hate me just as much. They don't even see me as one of them. To them, I'm a dirty mutt. Some filthy, mixed-race chaff."
He looked confused, probably because I wasn't exactly what he expected when he thought of a 'minority.' I decided to educate him, not because he deserved it, but because I felt like it.
"I'm from the Chubku," I said, enunciating the word deliberately. "If you've never heard of it, congratulations. That means the brainwashing worked." I smirked at his puzzled expression. "Most of our own youth don't even know that word anymore. It's what we originally called ourselves. The 'formal' name is Ovis nivicola, or snow sheep. Boring, right? Stripped of all its character. That's what they do—anglicize, Latinize, erase. It's part of the great sanitization project, turning every non-English word into some sterile, Westernized label. They claim it's for the greater good, but really, it's just about making room for the new while sweeping away the old."
I let the words hang in the air for a moment, watching his expression shift from confusion to uneasy understanding.
"My family's been here since before the British," I went on, my voice softer now but no less sharp. "Back when this land belonged to the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese. Even the Dutch, Irish, and Germans were here before the British started importing their animals. But you don't hear much about that anymore, do you? They like to pretend it's all one unified 'heritage.' And the kids—well, they're none the wiser."
I paused, the faint whir of the baking machines filling the silence. Then, with a shrug, I added, "Anyway, back to me. I'm an Ovchubuk—part Chubku, part Eastern domestic sheep. There's some European sheep mixed in recently, which is why I can pass as one." I glanced at him, smirking. "Though there's more to it than that."
He frowned, about to ask something, but I cut him off with a casual wave. He didn't push further, and I didn't offer more. If he couldn't handle the surface level, he certainly couldn't handle the rest.
He didn't want to know what I really was under this thin skin of wool.