Excerpt: Collars and Charm Bracelets

Olette frowned a bit as she went to check on Kairi. She found the other girl sitting on a stool, wrapped in a large, white bath towel. It wasn't that Olette didn't trust Kairi to be in a room by herself. To have lived with Marluxia for however long Kairi did, the girl seemed pretty stable to Olette. She just wondered how the other girl felt.

That crate had to be uncomfortable, and the trip had to be scary. Until that point, Olette never gave much of a thought to the institution of slavery. Until then, she always figured that it was one of the Lesser Evils, the result of a need to rectify the problem of prison systems being filled above and beyond capacity, among other things.

“Hey,” Olette said, “Are you all right in there?”

Kairi looked up. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

Olette didn't have to read into that 'Why do you ask'. The way it came out, Kairi might as well have asked, 'Why do you care', as if she was incapable of doing that.

Maybe Kairi wasn't completely unharmed by her time with Marluxia. Whatever he did, though, it had to be something that went deeper than any of the bruising or scarring that other Owners were fond of doing.

“Is it because I'm your property now?” Kairi asked. She smiled and said, “You can come in, you know. I didn't think that slaves had privacy.”

Olette frowned. “Kairi...”

“You're a good person,” Kairi said, “I don't get why I was sent here, but right now, I'm kinda glad I was.”

Olette smiled a bit. “I won't hurt you. You can come out of there now.”

Kairi stood up, wrapping the towel around herself and following Olette out of the massive bathroom.

Olette smiled again. Perhaps there was hope yet, as Kairi had neither drowned herself nor tried to run away.

After all, she'd heard that not all slaves needed to be “tamed”.