Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 144433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
I scowl. "But the barn is filthy."
"I know, right?" She brightens and points at me. "That can be your first task. Helping me clean up the barn. And if I see you put in good effort, then maybe tomorrow you can come inside and sleep inside for good. But not in my bed. Because I've decided that was too lenient. You get the couch."
As long as no animal shits near me while I sleep, I will consider that success. "Very well, then. Show me how one would clean a barn, and I will give you my best effort."
We get to our feet.
People will want to murder you in your sleep.
I push the words out of my head and try to focus on the terrible present instead of the terrible past. Maeve's barn is worlds away from a coup. As long as I lie low here, I will be safe.
Or at least, safe enough.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
MAEVE
I expect more sass from Zhur as we head out to the barn and I point out things that need to be done, but he's pretty quiet. His normally starchy, I'm-too-good-for-this-shit personality is subdued, and I wonder if he's coming down with something. Cleaning the barn is a big task, but I know it's something that will take several days, along with ongoing maintenance. The bots clean up the biggest messes and sweep up, but they're bots so they don't get things perfectly. There's hay and dried dung around the edges of the walls, and cobwebs in the corners, and Zhur points out that the trough they drink from is kinda gross and gunky because cows don't have clean mouths. There's also maintenance scripts that I run, but when errors pop up, I'm not exactly sure what to do with them, so I sorta...ignore them? In short, I'm a crappy farmer, but I figure if the cattle are healthy and well-fed (they are), and the crops are growing (they are) then I'll worry about stuff when it breaks.
Zhur doesn't complain about the task list set before him. He listens to the things I point out and adds a few others, like the trough. Again, no arguing. No bitchiness.
Kinda feels like I broke him, and I don't know how I feel about that. At least when he's haughty, he's lively. This is just rather...listless. All because of a little manual labor? The man is gonna really struggle the more reality hits him in the face.
Then again, I have to remind myself, what is reality? Because before this I had a job on Earth and spent the weekends hanging out with friends or my roommate. My new reality is far, far from that. It makes me feel a bit of sympathy for him and his situation, because I know how hopeless and alone I felt in the first few weeks of my captivity, and again when I reset here on Risda, only to be dumped onto a farm to handle things alone.
Zhur gets to work and I head inside the house to tidy up after breakfast. I take one of the biggest uniforms and the smallest and work on adding length to the arms and legs. I cut the sleeves at the elbow and add a thick strip of fabric, then sew the end of the sleeve back on. I do the same for the legs, and when I'm done, it looks kinda jaunty. It's not bad, if I say so myself. I put on dinner—another soup of freeze-dried odds and ends since he ate all the fresh stuff—and then head out to check on my “friend,” because he's been too quiet.
He's still out in the barn, wiping at the layer of grime on the trough with his fingers to clean it, and grumbling to himself. I point him to a shelf of cleaning supplies—and a scrub brush—and he looks astonished that such a thing exists. It reminds me that he really, truly doesn't know much about cleaning and I'm going to have to show him even the basics. So I go over how to clean the trough with him, adding a bit of detergent to the water and showing him how it cleans that much better. When I leave, he's going over the sink again with the brush, stroking it like he would a lover...or his mane.
Well, whatever. If he wants to caress the sink clean, that's on him.
I eat one bowl of tasteless soup and Zhur eats three of them. He looks wrecked, his fur a mess and his uniform filthy. He's exhausted, too, and doesn't even protest when I suggest he spends one more night in the barn. I don't want to give in too easily, after all, or he'll push until he gets his way. I tidy up the house and launder his new uniform and then head to bed, clicking on the feed in the barn just long enough to check in on Zhur. He's asleep, curled up in his blanket near the door. His fur looks pathetic and I feel a stab of pity for him.