Generations of Weakness

Isla’s toes wiggle in soft golden sand. The shouts of fisherman bringing in a haul draw her already pleasant smile a little wider. Turning to look at them her hair is blown across her face in a constant wind carrying salt spray in from the ocean. Everyone will eat tonight, and she will-

Her brief mental escape crumbles into a grimace at the sound of animal skins flapping opened and sliding closed across the clink-and-rattle of bone jewelry.

He’s back.

She sets her jaw, tightens her shoulders, and tries not to wince at feeling the vine-rope digging into her forearms. This animal has no concept of mercy, or at least her pain and pleas had never stopped him. Not even pissing the bed or her heaviest-flow days of cycle would slow him - he’d just be angrier and take longer.

She hadn’t given up, yet. She wont. But its no use inhabiting her body while this jungle beast is here. So she leaves. She won’t go back home, the island is already a place she’ll never see again. She can’t ruin the memory just to shield herself from this temporary pain.

So she goes no place in particular, maybe inward, but wherever it was it worked. She hadn’t been present for any of his visits in a week.

Once he was gone this time she spent a long while staring at the low leafy ceiling of her prison. It was his home; his chieftain’s hut in his jungle kingdom, but her prison. And she would escape, maybe even with this chieftain’s prized tool.

His son brings her water and a bowl of dried meat, mushrooms, and berries. This boy may only be a year younger than her, but that is fully old enough to know what his father is doing to her. And that its wrong. She can tell from his face that he’s also an unfeeling beast. Probably only a matter of time until he tries something similar.

With her body’s full impetus of disgust she spits at this boy. This product of generations of weakness cowering in the jungle’s rotten undergrowth. He doesn’t react, like he never has, but instead sets down the bowl and shoves one of the bristly furs at her chest.

His sad sense of modesty makes her teeth grind.

May as well grind on this leather-tough meat.

So she eats. Staring at this boy, with his father’s green eyes, hooked nose, jet black hair, and doing nothing to hide her disgust or her nakedness. If his father’s deeds make this boy uncomfortable, then that is his shame to bear. Her ability to feel shame had been burnt out of her. All that remains are the vile twins disgust and hatred.