Show Your Worth

Jerb:

Sitting idle for too long didn't suit the cloned girl, who know stood peering into the Throne Hall with determined eyes. No task was too big...or too small. Many thought themselves above janitorial work, but it still needed to be done. In the very short time she'd been an official member, the silver and gold surfaces were already cloudy with dust and grime. Armed with a spray bottle of cleaning solution and a couple different rags, she set to work.

This was her comfort zone. Despite not being told to do it, she operated on the old words of Dr. Raelin. Back at the lab, she was expected to keep it spic and span. The work he did was messy. Fleshy abominations glurked across the floor, oozing and bleeding everywhere. She was hardly the first clone he'd made. She wasn't even part of his only batch. The man's project was never-ending, but not always successful. For science, he tested every boundary. How far could he push DNA and cells before they collapsed? Everything could be improved, it was just finding that limit before it broke the experiment. He never explained what he was searching for, but he often took his frustrations out on her or whatever had failed. The magic council still poured on the pressure over some notion unknown to her, and the doctor had yet to repeat his former success, let alone make any breakthroughs accomplish whatever he was searching for. By comparison, cleaning dust from being exposed to heavy foot traffic was nothing.

Too bad she couldn't dream about the glistening ornamental parts of the throne she scrubbed instead of the atrocities she'd seen in the lab. Sivvy didn't know what she'd seen had embedded themselves into her psyche, but sure enough, they were there. They simply added themselves to the warped and surreal cast of characters from her dreams. She felt most comfortable when things made perfect sense. The young woman was smart. Her education was top notch, and though she'd learned about dreams from various outlets be it psychology or novels and biographies, they still didn't make sense to her. The physical science behind the need for sleep and dreams was understandable, but the visions witnessed there terrified her. Any sleeping moments reaching REM were spent in abject terror while her mind raced to try and make it align with the real world. It was a form of torture thrust upon her by the theft of her childhood years, though even the thought of what it must be like to be a child was bewildering. She'd only ever been Sivvy, the same size and mentality as she was now. Dr. Raelin said if they weren't physically growing, they'd be more focused on growing in mind and skill, which had been correct. However, despite her inexperience, children fascinated her. What would she have been like that small and enamored with every facet of life?

Perched on the very top of the throne several feet off the ground, her rag squeaked against the metal orb at the top. She probably looked silly, but Sivvy didn't care. Her perfectionist nature coupled with her obsession with being useful required her to disregard appearances for the sake of making this room the cleanest and shiniest it had ever been. Surely then someone would notice her skill and appreciate her for what she could do, right?


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