Goda's Slave (Lesbian, Dystopia, LGBT Fantasy)

Chapter 32: Autophagy

They headed South until they were blocked by a row of woods, the beginnings of a forest.

Goda kept going. She dove into the embrace of the trees, allowed the truck to be swallowed by the thicket until branches were smacking them on either side at full speed. The truck parted a trail for them—or else the plants were bowing out of the way—and in that space, where the headlamps of the truck barely reached, Kanna saw the bank of a river bathed in blue moonlight.

They could go no further. They had reached the border.

* * *

"It's not your fault, you know," Kanna said.

Goda had stepped out of the truck, and she had put her face in her hands, and she had let out a loud breath into her palms. She was pacing back and forth among the trees, her body filled again with tension, with the same agitation that had seemed to flow through the crowd earlier.

"That soldier deserved it, and it's not like you had control over what everyone decided to do next. You're not God. You can't act like the entire burden of responsibility for everything that ever happens is—"

"Shut up!" Goda shouted all of a sudden, and it made Kanna recoil. "Shut up." The giant looked up from her hands, and in the beams that came down between the treetops Kanna could just barely make out the look of rage. "Do you know that woman who I struck in the face? Or the woman who attacked me and accidentally hit that boy and then was rushed by the mob? Do you know them?"

"Well, no, I—"

"Neither do I!" Goda's teeth were gritted. "They could have wives and children for all we know, and now they're both seriously injured—or worse. What I did was stupid. There is no excuse for it. Maybe it seems like something small to you—and that I should ignore the rest of what happened because it wasn't by my hand directly—but everything we do has a ripple effect in this world. I might have caused the deaths of two people just now. I might have caused the bereavement of both their wives. I might have caused the starvation of their children. And Rem, you saw her, didn't you? What kind of disease did my presence at the monastery trigger in her? She looks infested with snakes."

"Goda, you're insane! You can't put all of that on yourself! We can't be—you can't be blamed for any of that!" Kanna ranted. She felt a wave of guilt filling her own chest, and something in the back of her mind knew that she was resisting Goda's words because of what it meant about her own self and all the things that she had done in her own life. "Why do you have this fixation on flagellating yourself for everything? It's irrational. It's arrogant and megalomaniacal, even. It's the reason why you're still tied up in your guilt for something that happened nine years ago, even though that priestess that you stabbed to death deserved what she got!"

Kanna only realized that her mouth had grown too slippery after the last few words tumbled out. She shut her mouth quickly then, but it was too late.

Goda was staring at her. The look was one that made Kanna wonder if she was about to become a third casualty for the night.

Like an animal pouncing out of the brush around them, Goda jumped into the truck. She came upon Kanna, she pressed Kanna to the seat. Her teeth were bared and her breaths were rushing out of her in thick clouds of steam that looked like smoke in the cool air.

The hot sting of fear rushed through every one of Kanna's limbs. In just a matter of moments, her brain wiped clean every memory she had of everything that had happened between them. Kanna felt like her body was reacting to the giant the way it had the first night they met; she was filled with raw discomfort, fear for her life, dread that drenched every particle of every bone.