What We Do to Survive

I waited patiently as Miranda gnawed on her bottom lip, hands folded in my lap as I stared serenely at her across the small table. Several sheets of paper lay scattered around the notebook she was studying, covered with short notes and ideas. It was not something I’d ever seen from Miranda before. Whenever we worked together on something, she was always meticulous with her notes, organizing every page with different colored inks and bookmarks. The only you could tell this was her work at all and not something I had done was the perfectly even and flowing handwriting; despite my best efforts mine still tended to come out looking like chicken scratch more often than not, particularly when I was writing something for myself.

She slowly twisted the pen I’d given her between her fingers, setting it down on the table and then picking it back up immediately after to continue fidgeting. I considered just ordering her to spit it out, whatever it was she wanted to say, but I held my tongue. This entire thing was supposed to make Miranda feel more comfortable so her eventual oath would be given in good faith. Snapping at her would just mess up all the progress I’d made so far.

Eventually, she hesitantly said, “I guess there are a few things?”

She fell silent, and this time I did decide to prod her further, “Such as…”

She took a deep breath, opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. She began to ask something, then cut herself off, teeth clicking shut loudly. Then, in a whisper I had to strain to hear even with my sensory-enhancing circulations running, she asked, “Could you please stop making me eat? I– I’m a manavore, Orion. Regular food… it doesn’t do nothing, but–“ she stopped, took another deep breath, then continued, “but it tastes like ash. Ash and pain and nothing and… Please it's… not the worst and I…” she suddenly stiffened and looked up at me with wide, pleading eyes, “I’ll be good. You don’t need to punish– Don’t put me back in the cold and the chains and… and… I’ll eat… anything, just… I’m sorry I…” she choked up and fell silent, tears brimming at the corners of her eyes. Normally, I would have suspected it was all an act, but this… I trusted that this was real.

In all honesty, I felt somewhat terrible. I’d never realized, never even considered what I might be doing to my poor pet man-eater. I thought back to all the times I had loaded her plate or told her to finish her food during our frequent meetings. It had happened often, and if she’d been considering it a punishment this entire time… Well, it did explain something about how Miranda had come to see me. As I’d told myself before, punishments should always be intentional. This was a compromise I was happy to make.

“Okay,” I said simply. “I don’t think this is something we need to add into the oath, but I will certainly keep it in mind for the future.” I considered admitting that it had been more a matter of ignorance than malice, but decided against it. We would need to have a conversation about what exactly I considered important for her to tell me later, but that could wait.

“Thank you sir.”

“I’m certain we can find a more suitable form of punishment going forward if such a thing proves necessary. Now, what else?”

“Um, I guess, well… um, it’s also about food. I… its not always easy to hunt here in Avalon, and sometimes we’re not somewhere I can do that reliably either. I was hoping, maybe…”

“You want me to find you targets to feed on?” I asked skeptically, “I’m afraid you’re probably much better at that sort of thing than I am, and I’m certainly not letting you feed on me. Oath or no oath.”

“No! No, of course not sir,” she hastily assured me, “and I won’t ask you to waste precious milk on me, but that potion you fed me a few weeks ago… I don’t know what it was, and I’ve never heard of anything like it, but… it was perfect. The concentration was a little bit too high, but it left me full for days! If it's not too expensive to produce, could you…”

I blinked, not having seen that coming at all. At the time, she’d been rather out of it and I hadn’t really followed up on those initial experiments much. If I remembered correctly, that had been when Elpha contacted me and I’d suddenly had a lot of more urgent things vying for my attention. I hadn’t stopped collecting the fluid, Rea was in charge of doing so daily, but it had just been building up without much purpose since then. I would happily agree to such a thing.

“The cost would be… manageable,” I said slowly, not wanting to say how trivial it would actually be. She would be more grateful if she thought it was actually costing me something. If anything, it was finally a purpose for something that I had been accumulating without any current use. Perhaps in the future that would change, but it wasn’t like it was particularly difficult to harvest. “Yes, I think I could do it. For as long as you serve me with faith and dedication, I will supply you with enough of that potion that you do not starve. How does that sound?”

“That would be wonderful sir.”

“Very good. I’ll have to run a few more tests on you I think, less intrusive than the first time, just to make sure it’s not having any unforeseen side effects, but it will be doable.” I was rather curious what effects imbibing so much elven mana might have on her diverse mix of heritages, and if the mental aspects she had told me about might cause some long term issues, but those were both questions that could be answered later with thorough testing.

“Now, what else?” I asked. She looked away and I decided to make an educated guess, “I can tell there’s something else you want to ask me, something important. I won’t get angry, I promise”

She looked back at me quickly, seemingly startled by my comment. “How do you– of course you– yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Whatever I do, you can always see right through me.” I personally disagreed with that assertion, but didn’t say anything. If she was going to be forthcoming without being ordered, I wasn’t going to do anything to screw that up.

“Orion,” she began slowly, then blurted out “do you think I’m ugly?”

“What?” I asked, not quite understanding what she was asking. What sort of a question was that?

“Do you think I’m ugly?” she asked again.

I wasn’t sure how this related to what we were discussing, but I had no issues answering the question, “Not at all. You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met, even without your allure.”

“Then… Why do you never do anything?” she asked, an almost pleading tone in her voice, “Every day, every hour I am at your mercy and I know how other people look at me, but you never do anything. You’re always looking, always touching and probing and… and testing, but never anything more. Am I not good enough for you? Do you hate me? That day in the laboratory I thought… I thought maybe, but then it was just… just more pain and cold and chains, and you said it was an accident and you apologized, but even then you didn’t even touch me and you… and you…” she took a deep breath, clearly trying to calm her increasingly frantic words. “I’m no threat, I swear I wouldn’t hurt you, I can’t hurt you, but you never do anything. You’re never warm,” her eyes teared up and she pressed her hands against her face, “I… I don’t understand!”

What? I really had no idea what Miranda was trying to say. Was she asking why I’d never decided to have sex with her? I would have imagined that was pretty obvious after the way our first meeting had gone, but maybe I was misunderstanding something?

Miranda fell silent, holding her head in her hands as she leaned heavily on her elbows. I closed my eyes and repeated her words in my head, doing my best to follow along with her thought process. It… didn’t really help though, my memory was good enough that I didn’t glean any new information from the exercise, and she didn’t seem interested in saying anything else.

Maybe… I tried to think of things from Miranda’s perspective, was this some cultural thing that I was missing maybe? I thought back to what she’d told me about her background. She’d grown up in a siren colony, raised by a gaggle of ‘aunts’ with little contact with the outer world. I knew neither her mother or father had been in the picture, both dying when she was very young. Her father had died in his sleep, his inherited abilities tearing him apart from the inside out. Apparently the blood of a powerful succubus did not play nicely with a male body. Her mother on the other hand had simply been an unfortunate casualty during a raid on a nearby human settlement.

That might be it? I didn’t really know much about siren culture, but it was clear she’d grown up with a much different view on sex and intamacy than I had. She’d told me her abilities awoke when she was barely a teen and she hadn’t been able to last nearly as long without sustenance at first, so she must have been feeding from a rather young age. Living in an all female settlement of litteral man-eaters had meant that that sort of behavior would have seemed rather ordinary, all things considered.

I shook my head, still not quite getting what Miranda was… asking? Saying? I wasn’t even sure about that much. Seeing that she seemed to have composed herself slightly, I decided to try and get some clarification. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I quite understand what the issue is. Are you asking me why I’ve never gone and had sex with you?”

“I guess that's… sort of what it boils down to,” she answered from behind her hands, “It sounds… a lot sillier that way.”

“Was I supposed to be?” I asked, “Did you want me to be doing so all this time?”

She shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again. “No. Yes. Maybe. I… I don’t know.”

“Explain then.”

“I guess I… I was always expecting it. I don’t know if I wanted it, but it just… seemed like a natural progression. But you never did. You never even implied you wanted to. You look at me just like everyone else does, and I know everyone else wants me. I can tell who’s interested and how much, it's how I hunt, but with you… I could never tell. Whenever you looked at me, I just felt… like a piece of meat. A bundle of potion ingredients at the market. You always looked at me like a desirable thing, not a woman. I know you were interested, still are interested, but you never did anything. Ever. Nothing.”

She paused for a moment, lowering her hands and looking at me with bloodshot eyes. “That first time… I thought you would be an easy target. You had the most… passion for me, I guess. Maybe not passion, but something like it. You seemed so open and earnest and then…” I shifted slightly in my chair and she flinched away from me, “and then suddenly you weren’t. Even with the chain around my neck I… I thought that I had a chance. But I didn’t. I never had a chance. And then… What if that was what you wanted? Is… is that what gets you off? Blood and cold and pain and whips and chains and… and…” she swallowed heavily and fell silent, looking away from me. “I’m sorry sir. I… I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It's fine,” I said quickly, hoping to reassure her somewhat, “I’m not angry.” I was still somewhat confused, but was finally starting to catch on. Miranda could tell that I was physically interested in her, but having me never act on that had left her confused and afraid. I could sort of see where she was coming from, but her worldview was just too alien. I couldn’t even really understand what the problem was.

She didn’t seem eager to say anything further, so I decided to elaborate. “I never touched you for… a lot of reasons, really. To be perfectly honest, I never felt the need. I like sex as much as the next man, but it doesn’t control me. You were my property, but also… my friend. It would have felt wrong to force myself on you.” As much as I didn’t want to admit it, that was probably a lie. In reality… I decided to be a bit more open than I was typically willing to be. She would be bound with tight oaths soon enough, “Additionally, I… I was concerned about your abilities. You’re a dangerous woman, Miranda. Even with our bond–”

“I would never hurt you Orion, I swear. Please believe me, I would never…” she suddenly realized that I was still speaking and fell silent. I’d never punished her for interrupting me before, but I think she knew I didn’t appreciate it either.

“As I was saying, even with our bond I’ve never been one to give in to recklessness. Perhaps if you truly wanted me too… but I wouldn’t put my head in a dragon’s mouth even if it promised me not to bite.”

She waited a moment to make sure I was finished. “I’m sorry sir. I think I understand. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for.”

“...would you do it though?”

“Maybe. If I thought you’d earned it.”

“Okay. Thank you Orion.”

“Good. Now, I see you’ve made some comments here…”