Dove.
"Can you twist?" Raven asks me, her fingers gently prodding at my ribs.
I take a shallow inhale and try. All I can feel is pain. I shake my head no. She sighs.
"How did this happen to you?" she asks. I don't say anything, speaking it out loud risks summoning memories I'm trying hard to put behind me.
Raven told me I've been here 18 days now. 18 days since the last time he's hurt me. I know I'm not safe, I can't be safe, I'll never be safe again.. but I can't help the glimmer of hope that's growing in my chest that he might be done with me. He may have grown bored.
Raven comes and goes now. Sometimes when she comes back her beautiful pale olive skin is marred with cuts or bruises. I wish I could do more for her but I have no power.
She gestures for me to lay down again and out comes the leaves and the paste. She starts to wrap my body like some do their dead with the balm that she says will fix me.
Once again when she's done applying it to me she sneaks some on her leg.
"You don't have to hide that you know" I mumble.
She jumps, looking guilty, "Please don't tell the madame." She rushes out looking like she's going to cry.
"I would never, you've been kind to me. If you need more, take more, how will she know you didn't use it on me?" I answer with what I hope comes across as sincerity.
I think it worked because her shoulders relaxed and she gives me a small smile. "Thank you, I... it helps with my leg, I think it's made a big difference actually."
She flexes her limb in front of me and for the first time since I met her I realize her range of motion is almost perfect.
"So the limp.." I ask.
She flashes me a real smile, "I don't want the madame to know, she'd beat me if she found out."
"Well, she won't hear from me." I whisper back to her like a co-conspirator with a secret.
"She'll probably give you a room soon, another ten days and you probably won't need the balm anymore for anything other than your leg or your ribs" Raven comments good-naturedly.
"A-a room?" I ask, breathless. Was I to receive callers after all? Had the madame changed her mind?
"No-no-no" she stops me mid-spiral with a wave of her hand reading my thoughts off the expression on my face, "she's told me you won't take callers. I mean a bedroom, a place to sleep that isn't the hot springs."
I exhale, still not entirely convinced, but she hasn't lied to me yet that I know of.
Raven slips into the baths again with her mostly healed leg sitting out of the water on the lip, while I slip from the table to the floor besides her. We settle into a comfortable silence that's followed us around for a few weeks now.
"Do you have any family?" I ask her quietly a few minutes later.
When she doesn't answer for a long time, I don't think she will.
"I might, I'm not sure actually. I come from a tribe of people that used to travel around the emerald isles together. We were nomads." She says quietly.
I wait for her to continue.
"I.. I was taken as part of a raid, I know some of them didn't make it but I don't know how many." She finishes looking up at the dome of the glass ceiling.
A vibrant ruby red wing peeks through the one patch of unstained glass. The dragons circle the island sometimes in the afternoon.
"I'm sorry" I whisper, "I'm so sorry you've known loss so thoroughly."
She exhales and I feel her eyes on me, "I don't think I'm the only one. You can tell me you know?"
"I.. I can't give life to those words. If I do I may never forget them." I finally answer, and that answer seems to satisfy her --for now. The silence settles around us again and I start counting the number of times the dragon circles us above -- 2, 3, 4, 5..
"When I was a girl my mother's specialty was this special meat pie, it was mixed with salt she harvested herself and wrapped in banana leaves to bake in a clay oven she'd build just for the meal." She reminisced quietly, here voice growing in intensity as she continued on.
"After a long day, I would smell them on the breeze and know it was time to come home to her. I didn't think I'd ever forget that smell but it's been so long now." She whispers sadly.
I reached over and squeezed her arm gently, the motion making it hard for me to breathe but understanding that she needed the momentary comfort more than I needed the moment of air. I still rush to exhale when I put my arm down.
"When you get out of here, you'll find her." I say back to her.
She hiccups, and I turn to look at her for the first time since we started chatting. Big tears are trailing down her cheeks.
"I won't" she whispers, her shoulders shaking and her face in her hands.
Despite the pain, I sit up and then slip into the bath beside her, leaves and all. Some of them come loose and slip up on top of the water.
I pull her into my arms and pat her back, keeping the pressure off my broken shin.
"I'll figure out a way to get us out of here." I vow, surprised at how confident I sound.
She cries harder, "You don't understand."
I keep trying to soothe her.
"She died, she died trying to help me get away. Even if I get out of here, my mom is gone and.. and the others weren't really family, they were just people we travelled with. They may not even remember me, it's been so long now."
I step away and take her face in my hands. Her face is blotchy and swollen from crying so hard.
"I understand, and there's nothing I can say to make this better for you so I'll just say -- stay with me then, when we get out of here we'll make our own family."
"You barely know me" she mumbles, still crying like a raw broken thing, "why would you take that on?"
"I'd like to be your friend.. friends are family that you choose for yourself you know? It's a special kind of magic that we can take together one step at a time." I whisper back to her. She gives a barely noticeable nod.