“Keep it moving, Gaijin.”

A rough shove from behind sent Xiubao’s arms flailing forward in a huff of flared black silk. As she regained her balance, she groaned and clasped her hands together—pretty white things delicate as a dove and utterly foreign to the mere idea of prison. “Oh, rush, rush it is! All I want is a breath of air before you tie me up in another cesspit.”

The look of her eyes then, so deep and dark and blue with the innocence of a lamb, almost made the guard hesitate. A second later and he corrected himself by giving her a rougher shove than before, nearly taking her to her knees as she skittered forward. 

“The humanity!” Xiubao clapped a hand over her nose as the shadow of the prison’s walls fell over her. The dim stoniness of it struck her almost as heavily as the stench did, all the ungodly horrors of rotting men washing over her like a sickly miasma. She felt it as much as smelled it, sweat and B.O. matting over the fine hairs of her scalp and imposing the sense of dread she’d been trying to fend off since being carted away by her glowering guards. She hadn’t fallen from great heights to end up in such a place, but it certainly was a humbling reminder of why she needed to take her work a mite bit more seriously.

Ah, that classic metal creak of a cage opening! She was shoved inside with all the care of a man flicking off a flea, the force of the gesture making her do a full spin as she half-fell backwards. She managed to catch herself at the last moment, fully bent forward with one leg crossed over the other. It was like a ridiculous curtsey, her white hair brushing the filthy floor as she glanced up and realized she wasn’t alone. 

She snapped up at once, touching a finger to her bottom lip as she took in the odd fellow eating his mat. The first comparison that came to mind was a slightly less hairy gorilla, what with that thick frame of his body and the wild hair sticking up from his head. There was another figure in the room—something she caught only a periphery glance at before realizing another prisoner was getting jammed in behind her.