She opened her eyes to a ceiling and the sensation of being bounced around. Gasping, she tried to sit up. Ropes creaked as she strained against them. Even her head was tied down.
“Now I be wondrin’ if what she’s goin’ ta hallucinate next,” someone said nearby. She tried to turn her head, but the ropes held her fast.
“Nah nah, I think she’s past the fever,” said someone else. “Ya is, right? Yah, I can tell. I feel it, Bobbie. This one was no waste o’time.”
“Good. Now feed her afore she dies on us,” said the first voice.
Cold mush was pushed into her mouth with a wooden spoon. It was difficult to swallow lying as she was on her back. “Who are you?” Domino managed to ask between mouthfuls.
“Yer new masters,” was the amused reply. “And even if ya were free aforehand, ye owe us yer life now. T’was me and Bobbie here wot nursed you to health. We had ta lance yer leg wound to let the infection out, and a right mess that was. Ye’ve been mumbling ‘bout marriage and someone named Hadis for days now.”
“Looked like ye weren’t gonna make it,” said the second voice from before. “Well, now ye’d better. Medicine ain’t cheap, y’know, and I’d hate to think we’d wasted it on a slave!”
That was the last they had to say to her. Despite Domino’s repeated inquiries and protests, the two voices remained stoic as stone. When the spoon finally stopped shoveling mush into her mouth, Domino resigned herself to staring overhead. By the way she was being bounced around; she guessed she was in some sort of covered wagon.
When sleep started to overtake her, she regretted eating the mush – not that she could have done anything about it. “You drugged me,” she mumbled accusingly.
“Ha, no! That’ll come later when ye get yer strength back,” said the first voice.
“I’m guessing the next time she wakes up,” said the second voice.
“After such a fever, yer exhausted… which is good for us, or we’d not have been able to keep such a splendid piece o’ Demon Folk as you!”
“Great,” Domino’s thoughts ran as she slipped unconscious. Everybody probably knows…
