PILLOWTALK - FREEDOM

"Edwin, are you asleep?"

"mmmm... no, not yet."

"Remember when you told me how I was a real person? I understand it. And I believe it. But... please don't be angry... I'm a real person... and you bought me, so... do you still own me?"

Edwin sighed and turned over to face her. As with most of her late night musings, it was dark in the room but he knew she could see him. He'd expected this moment, this conversation, to eventually come and he'd dreaded it. "This is why I recommended Mister Twain's books to you. In his time, it was common for some people to buy and sell other people. To own them. He hated that, so he wrote stories like Huckleberry Finn to try to show his readers that they were buying and selling real people who had feelings and dreams and everything that makes a human being. I see you got his message."

"But all that changed a long time ago, didn't it?"

"Yes, it did.” Edwin took another deep breath and let it out as a long sigh. “If you were an average catgirl, owning you might be excused, just a little, because you'd need someone always looking after you, taking care of you, because you couldn't. But you're not. You're a real, complete, fully capable person and it's wrong to buy or sell... or own you."

He groped in the dark until he found a paw, took it in one hand and laid his other on top of it. He swallowed hard. "Nicolle, I do not own you. I didn't know what a real person you were until later… so... all that I ever bought in that little shop that day, Nicolle, was your freedom. You're free to go anywhere, free to do anything you wish. Do you understand?"

"Yes. No... are... are you saying I can leave and go anywhere? Would I need to repay my price?"

"No, of course not. Nothing like that. The time we've been together has been worth far more to me than anything I could ever have afforded to pay for you. You owe me nothing. Nothing at all." He released her paw and turned over again, so she couldn't see his face anymore.

"Edwin, I..."

"Shhh, I'm not finished.” It seemed to her that his voice changed, “Anything I have that you need, when you decide to go, take it with you. Take everything, even. I owe you far more than that. Just promise you won't decide to go until after the laws are changed. It would be dangerous before then. But I promise you, they will change."

"I promise. I believe you, Edwin."

She saw that he lay unusually bunched up and still. To her senses, he felt… frozen. Her little eyebrows furrowed in confusion. It had all gone wrong and she tried to understand what she'd said to make it so. Once, she reached out to touch him but drew her paw back as she thought, "Why did he say that about going away? I don't want to go. I don't even want to be free. I want to belong to him. Doesn't he want it as much as I do?"

Bewildered by the unexpected ending, frightened by words that felt like rejection and by the emotions she sensed from him, she didn't lay against him as usual. And Edwin noticed it. "This is it, then," he thought, misreading the missing cuddle, "how it begins to end. But I had to. She's too bright to not eventually see that I couldn't keep her like property forever, not even if I wanted to. I'd become a hateful thing to her. I have to let her go. It was too good to last; anyway, I ought to have known that. Idiot. She chose me because she needed me then, but now… it's time to start letting go."

Later that night, she dreamed that she woke up in the morning and he was not in their bed. In his place, she saw her original owner's papers, torn in two. A little note left atop the pieces said, "I release you." She ran through the house and outside, calling for him. But he wasn’t there, and she ran on and on and on.

Edwin dreamed that he sat motionless in an empty house, staring at a blank wall, everything gone except for a simple wooden chair he sat on. A sound, like an ancient clock somewhere in another room, seemed to softly tick off seconds... until he noticed the sound was the last of his blood dripping onto the floor from his opened wrist.

Next: Part 19 / 25, “Katsandra’s Council”