First: A story featuring a male keeper and a female Kept.
Previous: Trouble

🌳🏚🌳

The wagon rumbled on.  Mélanie stared at her Owner and tried to decipher something from his expression.  His eyes were closed. Sometimes he muttered into the gag, but it was nothing that made any sense.  Sometimes his eyes fluttered open, but he didn’t look at her.

Possibly, he was still drugged enough that he thought he’d imagined her there.  Possibly, he was drugged enough that he was seeing pink elephants and purple unicorns and hadn’t seen her at all.

She didn’t know.  So she waited and listened and hoped, held her breath with a Working sitting right on the tip of her tongue in case there was enough of a distraction, praying that Jasper would trust her and let her do what she had to or that, if his plan was already in action, her plan wouldn’t interfere with his in any bad manner.

She hadn’t been walking that long, had she?  She resisted the urge to look up, to twist around to look bout between the brutes’ feet.  Even if she could see the road without getting noticed, she didn’t know the area well enough to recognize any landmarks. She thought, though, that they ought to be almost there.

A groan from Jasper almost made her jump – it was loud, pained, distressed.  She bit her tongue and held still.

The big one turned around, the seat creaking. “He looks sick, Anan. Should we do something? Should I take the gag off? If he pukes, he’s gonna get it all over the gag. Should I-”

She was cut off by another loud groan from Jasper at the same time that the shorter woman smacked the big one in the arm.

“’Should I take the gag off?’” she mimicked in a high-pitched voice. “What are you? A nurse? No, you shouldn’t take the gag off.”

The big one turned back around for a moment, sulking, and Jasper’s eyes opened. He winked very pointedly at Mélanie before closing his eyes and going back to the groaning.

“If he pukes on himself-” the big one complained. “It’s going to be bad.”

“It’s not like we want him *happy.*  Weren’t you paying attention? We don’t like him, we want to hurt him. Got it?  Seriously.” Anan huffed as Jasper started groaning again.

Mélanie took the opportunity to make herself invisible again with a whispered Working and then held her breath.  If “Anan” really had some sort of tell-when-trouble-was-near sense, she was going to have to do something really obvious or really really subtle.

She held her breath and waited while the big one turned around again to check on Jasper.  He was moaning and putting up quite a fuss, turning this way and that and looking like he really was going to vomit.

When the big one started complaining again, she used a Working to distract the little one, sending her thoughts of sleep and getting-home and, although it made her feel a little sick, a revenge fantasy. She kept the images rather vague and concentrated on some of the things she’d wanted to do to former owners.

“I really think he’s going to be sick,” the big one complained.  She crawled into the back when Anan didn’t answer, lumbering over the seat-back and landing with a foot on either side of Jasper.

Mélanie froze.  She was beginning to get the idea that the big one wasn’t nearly as dumb as she was treated by Anan, and if she noticed something was off, she might start looking for something wrong.  If either of them had the Words to Know if someone was around, Mélanie’s invisibility Working wouldn’t help her at all.

The woman pulled Jasper’s gag off.  “Don’t talk,” she warned him. “But if you have to puke, nod.”

Mélanie’s view was obstructed by the woman’s leg, but there was a sound like gagging, and then, as the woman danced backwards, a very clear series of vomiting sounds.

Mélanie held down her own gorge and let herself smile, just a bit, as the woman groaned and whined. “Damnit.  I said to NOD, not to puke all over me. Anan!”

“Just rip out his intestines,” Anan answered dreamily.

Mélanie squeezed her eyes shut.  No, no, please no. No, that wasn’t what she wanted, that wasn’t what she had meant at all.

Jasper made a concerned sound and started vomiting again.