At first she was simply his companion, someone who traveled with him to learn with him and from him. This time wasn’t very long for soon they were married and she was so very happy. She had never known that this is what life as a human was like and she loved it!
It was so different and new! Especially when he found a home, a fort looking place that had space around it and needed repairs. This is where her life changed again, but this time it wasn’t for the better.
Whenever she looked back on it she was never sure if it had started deteriorating fast or slow. Because she hadn’t had a lot of interaction with other ways of living before her husband she was never certain if this was the way that people lived in healthy relationships or not.
At first, he didn’t want her to leave their home without him. Considering she had never really interacted with others of his species without him there she had agreed with little trouble to his request. She was always worried that she would cause a problem like she had when they’d first started traveling together. It was easy to have a misunderstanding when you didn’t understand what money was and that you needed to have a certain amount in order to pick something up and walk away with it.
She was fine with learning all of the things that were needed in order to repair and maintain their home by herself with her husband gone so often. They didn’t have any visitors except when he sent something home or came home with some movers himself. This started to change as well when her husband started to be home more and more and would take over work in some of the rooms.
Then he started hiring others to come in and do the work that she had been doing. some of it had been a relief to let go. She wasn’t very good at cooking with ingredients, though if it was meat or toasting something already put together then it was very easy. All she had to do was control the flames around whatever was cooking and it was easy to keep things from being under-cooked or burnt.
Then he started wanting her to stay in only a few rooms. She had been hesitant at first, after all, with the other people being in the house she could start learning how to interact with other humans more, but after a while she bowed to this as well. Some of the people she had tried to speak with would just stare at her, precious few would even acknowledge her with more than a nod and a ‘yes, ma’am’ or a ‘no, ma’am,’ which had made her feel even more alone.
Soon, she was spending more and more time alone and only seeing her husband now and then.
She was unaware of how much she would miss this in the years to come.
Written for this week’s Trifecta challenge: http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/2013/11/trifecta-week-104.html, but after checking the word count I realized I had gone way over. So this won’t be entered into the challenge, but I wanted to post it anyway because it is another part of my ongoing Phoenix ‘Verse.
Breathing In 