Camrin wakes in time with the early morning sun, pushing itself to rise over the land once more. Camrin thought the sleep would help her organize her thoughts, but the restless, dreamless night provided nothing but questions. At the very least Cam is grateful for the existence of a sun in the Selcar system. It gives her light to examine the room she couldn't before.
It's a small 10 by 10 feet of plain area. A bed takes most of the room, where Lila is currently sleeping, having kicked her past friend into sleeping with her head against the cramped area behind the door. Other than that, nothing is in the room but a small basin for taking care of using the bathroom, which the guards said was not a necessity for their dog, as they placed it there last night, and a tiny shelf lined with five old, crusted books.
It has not been ten minutes of boredom before the door is being shoved open and Camrin reflectively relaxes her body and keeps her eyes mostly shut. But not completely. Enough to see Lila being dragged, startling awake, out the room, by the guards, and the revolting split of one of them running down her chin, before the door closes again, locked for good. Though Camrin should feel trapped and scared, which she does, the overwhelming emotion is relief. They won't open that door again. She knows it. The smell of urine is too strong, their disgust too palpable for them to come back, even to mock her. At least for now, she has a couple of days to herself. Whatever time she gets before the princess drags her back.
Unfortunately, Camrin is as disgusted with herself as the guards. The urine sticking on her back smells stronger of humiliation then of human waste, but her instinctual desire to stay alive overrides the sense of degradation coating her cheeks. She tries to stay hopeful, resilient, but she doesn't know how. When she tries not peeing as an act of rebelling against the little bowl they gave her like a dog, her bladder eventually forces it out. And when she refuses to respond to the taunts they throw behind the tiny, closed door, the quality of the already rotten food goes down. And when she tries to not eat the food to send them a message, well.... Camrin was starting to think it made no difference. She was a college student; this didn't come naturally to her. But the more she stayed her, the more the instinctual need for survival faded and instead a rotten hard thing slid inside her heart. Suddenly she was a warrior refusing to speak. But no matter what, the strategy of starving herself only worked if they wanted her alive.
And so, the smell of human waste engulfs the room day by day, emptying it even of the scent of her tears, which also stopped after a week. A week. Seven days. Camrin does not have a mirror but if she did, she'd see the sunken sick face of a starved dog. They got what they wanted in the end. Many years ago, when Camrin was still a child, her mother once told her she was too stubborn and that one day it would hurt her because her stubbornness always had the opposite effect. Maybe, that's what happened. The more she fought with the invisible people behind the door, the more they retaliated to prove that she is a dog. The more her mind took on the role of a strange soldier imprisoned, the more they acted accordingly. And now they got what they wanted. Weak, broken, starved to obey, and smelling of garbage. Her brain receives so little water or energy, she feels much of nothing. At first, she felt the ache in her stomach, the feeling of being ripped to two, her body eating itself to survive. Then the ache in her head, where the nausea always fought with her consciousness. Then she felt it in her body, the lead inside splintering her veins. But now, she feels much of nothing. Sometimes, her spirt gets weak, and she allows herself the privilege of breaking her calm, just to drink what little water they give. Just water. Nothing else. The rest piles itself in heaps of maggots and flies. Just water. And sometimes even that she denies herself.
She's getting closer now. To either giving up her fight or of ending it. But the strange stubbornness in her does not want to end. It wants to rot forever to prove something she isn't even aware of. But she doesn't mind that strange alien part of her. She's in an alien world. And ironically enough, her feelings are just as unnatural. After the feeling of everything, where she feels nothing, yes in the nothingness, in that no pain, she feels, she lives the life of a bored child. The sitting, waiting, hating, strengthless, powerless boredom of a child left home while everyone is gone. Powerless. Powerless. She's bored. She wants something, anything, to do something, give her anything, anything! The pain is no more. She's free! She's free! No more pain, but she's bored, bored, desperate for something to do. Give her something, anything, even cleaning, and studying, and fighting and dying. She needs something. Maybe that book on the shelf, but she can't reach it, she can't reach, it's too far, her lead blood is not moving, she needs something, anything to do! Powerless, hopeless boredom of a child! Of a child, her mother used to say she was a child, she's a child, small and ignorant and normal, a child, one day-one day, the voices-the voices, one day she was a child, hopeless, powerless, one day, the voices, hopeless, powerless! One day, powerless, powerless, powerless-- The eyes-- Camrin freezes, her seizing body splayed on the ground without her even noticing how she got there. The rotting food filling her hair, her fingers crooked, and shaking, every part of her losing control. But the eyes. The eyes stay there and watch, though they don't look like eyes. The eyes, they don't judge. The eyes seem sad, no, grief-stricken. The eyes look desperate. The eyes that hold life, is that them? Is that them?
But a car running with no fuel always explodes. So, when the knight outside finally opens the door, putting the hand to his nose in disgust, he finds their new dog is quite weak. It didn't last as long as the average ones do. Its laying there in its own filth and rotten leftover, its hair tangled, twitching like a dead bug. And the guard would have treated it as such and just squashed it. But the fingernails. They are covered in blood. And the walls are painted the small color. And the face.... the face is torn, skin hanging by a thread, red seeping into every part of the body. And in the middle of the mangled unrecognizable face, its eyes. The eyes stare at the guard with a level of complete darkness not even a Sen could achieve. The darkness seems to reach, stretch, and groan with pleasure before his very eyes.
And without a second lost, the darkness comes and takes his sight.