“We should be in Cold Garden in an hour. The Landau needs to stay in the carriage house outside the city, but we will be met by smaller carriages.” Xiatokte looked idly out the window, thinking through his next steps. There was certainly going to be a blizzard of appointments and meetings. The Gods only knew what sort of messes poor old Xiatoktok had gotten into.

Sighing, he reached over for a fruit. Xiachoii knelt on the floor of the landau, holding a small fruit bowl above her head. Her stomach growled. ’Te picked a particularly good looking plum. It was as juicy and flavorful as he imagined. Sweet, lightly sour, with purple flesh and dark, syrupy juice. The juice was so plentiful it almost spilled down his chin. Some quick work with a handkerchief saved matters, for the moment. He looked down at the young woman at his feet. Her total focus on him slightly eased his hunger and inspired his curiosity.

“I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I am conditioning you. Indoctrinating you. Most people fight against it. At the very least, they struggle to preserve some core of their own will. You, on the other hand, are leaning into it. I can’t recall seeing someone ask for more indoctrination. So just why is that, ‘Ii?”

Xiachoii kept her eyes fixed on the carpet. Her arms burned after holding the bowl up for so long. Her knees ached, and her lower legs were lost amongst the pins and needles. She had eaten nothing in almost eighteen hours, and drank only water, lapped from The Expert’s hands.

“Because when your words fill my mind, I don’t have to think. If I don’t think, I don’t become anxious. I am, by nature, an anxious person. I am painfully aware of every change in my surroundings, every look, every silence. Perhaps it would be better to say I am scared all the time? So I am cruel. I hunger to control those around me. To prove my control with cruelty. To make them incapable of hurting me. Although after this trip, after you started conditioning me, I realized that it wasn’t just fear of being hurt.”

Xiachoii sounded lost, unable to express herself. Searching for words, she said- “I dream hungry dreams, Expert. I have all my life. Not dominance or glory, but… eating. People. In my dreams I eat people. Not just their time, but their flesh. I haven’t done it yet. But some part of me knows that I will. It’s just a matter of when, not if. Not even why.”

Xiatokte raised an eyebrow. She didn’t have Ma blood that he knew of. Not that he had such dreams.

“I know that I am a predator. I… like being a predator. I like the cruelty of power. I like… being a Xia.”

She gathered herself for the final push.

“But on this trip, I discovered something new. I want to be a leashed predator. I want to hunt for someone, not just for myself. I want to take the prey I am aimed at, then eat what I am given. Because I am a predator. I’m not a senior analyst or a Vice-President of Mortgages, or any other sort of thing. I am no longer certain I even want to remain a human, at least mentally. That “human” is just a disguise I use to get close to prey. I want to give everything up to someone else. All the fear and anxiety. They can take that burden for me. In return, I will be their huntress. And that is all.”

She smiled slightly. “I sound insane. I think hunger, stress and isolation are making me be more dramatic. When I am back amongst the prey, I will probably look back at this in horror. But, truly, I think this is my heart. So yes, Expert, indoctrinate me. Break me. Make even my innermost thoughts obedient to you. I will be your evangelist, bringing the time and attention of the masses to your feet. I will poison their minds with your words. They will become devoted to you, or they will die by my hands and your will. Just so long as you take away the fear.”

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Xiatokte nodded slightly. He finished his plum, spat the pit into a trashcan, and picked another from the bowl.

“You are struggling to put into words just what you want, because you think you are crazy, a freak, some sort of deformed Xia. Rest easy. You aren’t any of those things. Let me guess… Your entire life you have struggled with empathy. It’s not that you can’t feel it, it's that you really only feel it for a few select people. Generally people who can benefit you in some way, or could be on some level considered "yours." Occasionally, the world feels heavy, or perhaps a particular person or moment feels more significant than it might otherwise. You always know where something is going to be, even if you can’t move your body fast enough to react to it. Your lessons in the Xia legacy came very easy to you, even if you had to work hard on other parts of your school work. How am I doing so far?”

“Like you have walked beside me my whole life.” Xiachoii shuddered. Her arms were vibrating a little now. They both knew she physically couldn’t hold the bowl up much longer. The only question was whether Xiatokte would force her to fail and then punish her, or if he would let her put it down.

“You dreamed of eating Xiachoram.”

“Yes. And offering his flesh to you, Expert.”

Xiatokte smiled. Xiachoii couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the smile in his voice, feel the fond affection coming from him.

“You are no freak, Xia Cho Ii. You are an atavism, a throwback to some primal ancestor of ours. One that thought almost exclusively of the hunt. A being focused on survival amongst other predators and dangerous prey.”

She heard him taking another bite, and her stomach growled again, the shaking of her arms got worse, but she wanted this. She wanted to hear this. She would rather die than he stopped talking and telling her that she wasn’t insane.

“You are, in fact, a superb Xia. Your need to serve a more powerful person is actually a survival instinct in you. You know on some level that monsters, especially monsters dressed in human skin, are hunted. Humanity may be individually weaker than the monster, but in the end, they always win. So you don’t want to be a monster, you want to be a weapon. Because weapons are taken care of. People don’t blame weapons for the terrible things they do, they blame their wielder.”

The fruit bowl was visibly shaking now.

“I can’t prove it, but I have long suspected that the existence of atavists was one of the reasons the Xia have big families. Sooner or later, one of us is going to win the genetic lottery. Then the Clan has another powerful weapon.”

’Te chuckled, a little sadly, a little sadistically.

“Other Clans take a different view. The Pi thinks atavists are actively harmful, and tries to avoid creating them. The Bo don’t care, because if they want a kid to have a certain set of traits, they will. I would dispute their status as atavists, but that’s how the Bo think about it. And then there’s the Ma. Your actual monsters, people who do impossible things with radiation… and without a conscience.”

Te reached past the bowl, and stroked the side of Xiachoii’s face.

“The Ma Clan takes its best children, and with terrible violence and cruelty, make them just like you. An entire Great Clan, uncountable millions of dead children, just to make themselves just like you.”

The bowl was about to fall. They both knew it. Xiachoii was crying without making a sound.

“There is something about you that inspires me to be cruel, but also makes me want to protect you. So here’s the thing, ’Ii. If that bowl drops, I am going to hurt you. Today, tomorrow, probably every day for the rest of your life. For no other reason than I want to, and you will let me. If that bowl drops, I will take responsibility for you. You will be one of my people. You will eat what I say, when I say, and hunt whatever prey I choose. Your mind and body will be exclusively for me. Your obedience to me is your safety and your joy. Now, listen carefully. You have my permission to put the bowl down. But ’Ii. I want you to drop it.”

“Thank you!” The bowl tumbled from her fingers, spilling precious fruit across the floor. Her arms didn’t work well, but what remained of Xiachoii did her best to hug Xiatokte’s legs, pressing her face against his feet, and sobbing her thanks. For the first time in her life, she felt truly seen. She felt safe.