"Okay, but you can stop me whenever you want," Shell says, and she starts.
She meanders, but she tries to keep her transitions as clear as possible: here is something Voice did (here is a digression on how torturer's control works, the finer points), here is how that is different from this one who caught here there or that one who caught her the next neighborhood over, here is her rueful description of how she tried tried tried to fall away from caring, any of the thousand times she's been tortured, because all she'd have to do to have a fair shot at escaping would be to bear one person's sentence - even a piddling single hour - without trying to change her mind. She never could; she is not whatever stronger-willed person took her original sentence (because she remembers the first time Voice hurt her; she'd remember if there was an occasion before that; if only she hadn't contracted it out her assigned torturer would have found her in Voice's basement and taken her away and tortured her for some much shorter period of time and then she'd have been free, she admires contractors but wishes she'd procrastinated on getting one). She never even made her way to the Crescent to try to sit the exam. She's desensitized, to dehydration (here is how she learned when it was time to sit down and wait to torch), to all manner of injury, but she has never gotten to the point of not wanting it to stop, and that forbids her the contractor's blessings. She certainly wasn't going to become a torturer, not even to turn it into a contest whenever someone took a liking to her. Here is something else Voice did. Here are the fragments of unbelievable fantasy stories she invented to console herself, stories in which she could do magic just like the Important Person and could get out and put Voice somewhere where they'd never be able to catch and harm another pet.
Here is a tangent about her apartment, and about how it is small so probably only one person mourned her, but it's nice, it's not a ramshackle hovel, and that means that this one person must have loved her very much. She is sure someone loved her, and she was sure even before the Important Person said it was true (though she does not know how the Important Person came to have this information, she does not think the Important Person would lie to her.) Her psychology does not make sense without it. And since no one has loved her since she died, and because her apartment confirms it, she is sure that this happened when she was alive.
no subject
She meanders, but she tries to keep her transitions as clear as possible: here is something Voice did (here is a digression on how torturer's control works, the finer points), here is how that is different from this one who caught here there or that one who caught her the next neighborhood over, here is her rueful description of how she tried tried tried to fall away from caring, any of the thousand times she's been tortured, because all she'd have to do to have a fair shot at escaping would be to bear one person's sentence - even a piddling single hour - without trying to change her mind. She never could; she is not whatever stronger-willed person took her original sentence (because she remembers the first time Voice hurt her; she'd remember if there was an occasion before that; if only she hadn't contracted it out her assigned torturer would have found her in Voice's basement and taken her away and tortured her for some much shorter period of time and then she'd have been free, she admires contractors but wishes she'd procrastinated on getting one). She never even made her way to the Crescent to try to sit the exam. She's desensitized, to dehydration (here is how she learned when it was time to sit down and wait to torch), to all manner of injury, but she has never gotten to the point of not wanting it to stop, and that forbids her the contractor's blessings. She certainly wasn't going to become a torturer, not even to turn it into a contest whenever someone took a liking to her. Here is something else Voice did. Here are the fragments of unbelievable fantasy stories she invented to console herself, stories in which she could do magic just like the Important Person and could get out and put Voice somewhere where they'd never be able to catch and harm another pet.
Here is a tangent about her apartment, and about how it is small so probably only one person mourned her, but it's nice, it's not a ramshackle hovel, and that means that this one person must have loved her very much. She is sure someone loved her, and she was sure even before the Important Person said it was true (though she does not know how the Important Person came to have this information, she does not think the Important Person would lie to her.) Her psychology does not make sense without it. And since no one has loved her since she died, and because her apartment confirms it, she is sure that this happened when she was alive.
She hopes they are okay.