"Come, Ciara, I must walk you back to the compound. I must rejoin my brothers or they will come to look for me if I am late," Christof said pointing back the way we'd come.
As we walked I took Christof's hand in mine. His presence was a blessing and I was glad for it.
"Why are you doing that?" he asked looking at our joined hands.
"Because I want to," I answered grinning.
He pushed me gently against a tree and ran a finger under my jaw. "Does it mean something?" he asked watching my eyes.
"On my planet when two people hold hands it's because they like each other," I said watching him.
"I like you too, Ciara," he said grinning at me. His face turned to a frown quickly, "My brothers, when they come, will probably just feed you."
"That's okay with me," I said, "I appreciate knowing someone understands."
We walked back to the Keeper's compound holding hands the whole way.
The other girls were dying to know why Christof took me outside. I lied and told them he had wanted to have sex.
"He wanted sex out of doors?" Rose asked suspiciously. "They hate that. They all hate that, I thought. He really is strange," she mused
I hadn't known that would be a mistake and asked her why they didn't like sex outside, normally.
"The way the women take them is not comfortable for them. They like to use us privately in their places for resting, where everything is comfortable," she answered.
I didn't talk to her anymore about it. My gut instinct told me what Christof and I did at lunch didn't usually happen. It was best to keep it a secret.
After lunch I had to pee, really bad. Fuji told me to go tell the Keepers. I wasn't permitted to go by myself. Much like at my new home I was watched and cleaned, it was weird.
I was distracted from the strangeness of it all by our after lunch activity. The Keepers took us outside the back of the compound. We walked through sand and I was thrilled to see water in front of us. The sea, much like the sky was a shade of bluish purple. The Keeper's compound sat right on the shore.
We were in a protected alcove with rock walls almost encircling a little bay. The beach was beautiful, it was a light coral color. The sand felt like sand at home. Little waves broke on the beach. I almost ran into the water with my outfit still on, Fuji stopped me.
"You have to get permission from the Keepers to be in the water and they will take off your panels. Your owners will get mad if it gets dirty," she said pulling me back.
I went and asked the Keepers and they said I was allowed to swim. My owners had permitted it. They took my little outfit off of me and placed it to the side.
When they undressed me I had tried to help them and they looked at me like I was strange. Despite my discomfort of sitting around nude with my new friends, I raged at the other women that I could take care of myself. Rose laughed at me.
"It takes some getting used to," she said, "but this is the way they look at it. You can't do anything for yourself. It stems from the experience with their earliest slaves. They bought the ones that fought them, but broke them. They treated slaves horribly and the slaves lost the will to live. If they didn't do everything for them after they were broken they died faster."
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