Scraps

It was quiet. So quiet. The only thing she could hear was her own heart beat and the sound of her stomach growling and rumbling endlessly even though there was nothing she could do to quiet it short of eating her own leg. The chains wrapped tightly around her neck and forelegs had worn painful sores into her skin from where she had attempted to pull free of them time and time again to no avail. Her skin was stretched over her frail frame, her bones on display through her once striking coat. Now it was dull and worn, small patches of it missing from past wounds that hadn't healed nicely. Everything ached from laying on the hard ground of the cave she was trapped in.

She stared across the empty cave, sunlight just barely reaching where she was laying. How long had it been since they left? She had lost track and now it was a hopeless endeavor to even try to guess. She kept willing herself to die, to finally let her be free of all of this, but each day that passed she opened her eyes and found that she was still alive. When the slave masters went to move their camp they couldn't take them all with them, too many of the slavers gone or killed for one reason or another. It made it impossible for them to transport all of their slaves so they took the best with them and abandoned the rest. For the first few days she could hear other women in other parts of the cave, but now all those noises were gone, she was the last one left it seemed. And yet for some reason life wouldn't let her go.

"Iris"