Charity didn’t remember falling asleep in the darkness of Alejandra’s battered backpack, only the numb black of it, the stale air, the scratchy fabric pressing against her cheek as the motion lulled her under. She stirred awake when the motion stilled. No more swaying, no more heavy footsteps vibrating through her bones like a drumbeat. Just silence, broken by the faint hum of a refrigerator somewhere too far away for her to see.
She tried to sit up inside the cramped fabric burrow. Her spine ached a dull, humiliating reminder of how fragile she’d become. Her body didn’t belong to her anymore. It was a new creature’s flesh: a Little’s frame, remade for someone else’s world, small and clumsy and so pathetically light.
She pressed her palm against the inner lining of the bag, felt the thin plaid sag and shift. She could hear her, Alejandra, moving through the house beyond. Her house. My house, Charity told herself, a desperate thought that instantly curdled on her tongue.
No. Not hers. Not anymore.
The faint shuffle of Alejandra’s footsteps padded along marble floors Charity had walked barefoot at night when she was bored and wanted water from the big Sub Zero fridge. Back then she’d flicked lights on without thinking. She never heard these floors creak. She never knew they even could.
The steps paused. She felt the bag lift, jostled roughly as it swung and landed with a dull thud on something hard. A desk? The scent of her room hit her nose through the zipper’s cracked teeth: lavender candles, dry shampoo, the faint musky note of expensive moisturizer. For a second she felt dizzy with longing.
Then the zipper’s rasp cut the air and bright light stabbed her eyes. She flinched, raising a hand. It took everything not to crawl deeper into the hoodie’s folds like a terrified mouse. But she forced her body to move, to crawl toward the opening, to blink at the world that used to be hers.
Charity’s room. Her kingdom. The thick white carpet she used to lounge on doing homework halfheartedly. Her vanity, with the expensive tubes of gloss lined up like trophies. Her perfume, her perfume, lingering like a ghost.
And then Alejandra.
Standing there beside the desk, in her faded jeans and plain hoodie, looking at everything as if she’d always owned it. She didn’t even sit right away. She just stared, eyes flicking over the vanity, the bed, the shelf with its neat row of travel souvenirs that cost more than Alejandra’s shoes combined.
Charity’s breath caught. She hated the feeling in her throat, a sour, twisting knot that made her want to scream but left her mute instead. She hated how small she must look, crawling out like a bug waiting for the boot.
She forced her voice to come.
“Alejandra… wh-what are you doing?”
But Alejandra didn’t even flinch. She just lowered herself slowly into Charity’s plush desk chair, the expensive faux leather creaking under a weight it was never meant to serve. She grabbed something off the nightstand: Charity’s phone. Still plugged in. Still warm from being idle all night while Charity was zipped up in darkness like someone’s lost pet hamster.
Charity’s heart gave a tiny, traitorous lurch of hope. Maybe she would hand it back. Maybe they would talk. Maybe
Snap.
Charity’s ears rang. It took her half a second to process the soft, sharp noise: the SIM card. Alejandra broke it between her fingers like a dry twig, then tossed the halves into the wastebasket without even looking at Charity.
It was the sound of her old life breaking in half.
“No, no, that’s mine!” Charity’s voice came out high and tight, so pitifully small. She hated it. Hated how the word mine tasted bitter now, meaningless as dust. She wanted to say more, to rage at her, to order her to stop, but all that came out was a squeak.
Alejandra didn’t so much as glance at her. She slipped her own battered SIM into the pristine tray, fingers working with calm confidence. She plugged a cable into both phones: hers and Charity’s, side by side on the desk. A grotesque mirror. The old and the new. The servant and the master.
Then Alejandra’s voice cut through the thick, perfumed air like a knife:
“Patrona code.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement carved in stone. The nickname she’d used to mock her once, Patrona, now a chain collar around her neck.
Charity’s throat burned. She could lie. She could spit nonsense and hope the phone would lock her out forever. But her brain, once so quick, once so invincible, betrayed her in a heartbeat.
“…Zero-six-one-four.”
Her birthday. The one her parents used to write on all the checks for the chef’s cakes.
Alejandra’s thumb tapped the numbers. Each tap slammed into Charity’s gut like a boot on a roach. Then the phone bloomed open, her world, her messages, her photos with Kira, her carefully curated, filtered little universe, flicked through like cheap gossip pages under Alejandra’s thumb.
Then:
“Good girl.”
A whisper. Soft. Cruel. Final.
Charity trembled when she felt Alejandra’s fingertip on her hair. A gentle pet, like she was a puppy who’d done her trick on command. Part of her wanted to bite. Part of her wanted to sob into the soft carpet and never crawl out.
She watched in stunned horror as Alejandra flicked through her apps. A message popped up: Kira is typing…
Alejandra’s thumb flicked. Gone.
It was so quiet in the room that Charity could hear her own heart pounding in her chest. She felt naked, not in the way of lost clothes, but stripped down to her veins, her nerves, her secrets. She couldn’t even remember her mother’s phone number. She couldn’t remember Kira’s either. She never had to. The phone did all that for her. The phone that was now being rebooted in front of her face like a fresh kill stripped for meat.
When it restarted, it wasn’t hers anymore. Alejandra’s cracked nail tapped in a new passcode. A new lock screen: not Charity’s perfect filtered selfie but some blurry family photo, kids with Alejandra’s same nose, a tired mother, brown tiled floor. Her real life, bleeding into Charity’s perfect glass prison.
Charity felt bile rise in her throat. She swallowed it down, the taste bitter as shame.
Then Alejandra’s voice cut the air one last time, bored and sharp and so impossibly final:
“You want your Kira? Llámala. Go ahead.”
She dangled the phone for half a second. Charity’s breath caught in her ribs, a wild, stupid animal hope flickered, then Alejandra pocketed it so casually, the fabric sagging over her hip.
“Pero, Patrona… no number. All gone. This phone’s mine now. And so are you.”
Charity’s legs buckled under her. She didn’t remember sitting. The plush desk smelled faintly of the rosewood polish she’d once bragged about ordering from Paris. Now she pressed her cheek against it, wishing it would swallow her whole.
Outside, through her window, the trimmed hedges and the endless green lawn swayed gently in the wind. She used to stand at that window and think the world was hers.
Now it was Alejandra’s.
And so was she.
Welp, there goes Charity’s attempt to get help. The only thing she can hope for now is that Al’s a good guardian because she’s all hers now.
Unless there’s a twist coming, but that feels unlikely.
True, although I feel like the rehoming rate of littles is probably fairly low at this point in time. Especially in alejandra’s case where Charity is one of the few possessions she has.
in my opinion, Ml is now the Bad person. Finding happiness in causing mental and physical pain to others is not right. she is also treating a American little like a Mexican little which is worse. Yes charity has done bad stuff but torcher is too much. Sara was hurt by charity the worst, but as a person of god would never treat her like Ml.
Well Charity is now a mexican little. So she’d be treating her for what she is. I don’t think Alejandra is finding happiness in it though. I think she is just treating her like a little and not thinking much else about it.
Is the same last week but form Charity POV can we another
It’s just 1 per day Monday thru Friday. They are pre scheduled. Posting one early means no episode tomorrow at some point things become due where you wouldn’t have any content for a period of time.
Traffic wise and for seo the unfun part of the conversation is the reality of running a site is daily content and uploads means regular traffic. When i was on deviant art and other places where audiences were built in that was less of a concern. But now I’m on my own. So I have to rely on traffic search engine placement notoriety, etc to maintain traffic. Having extended periods of nothing always means that no one may come back.
So doubling content and creating gaps where no content posts is always a risk as then that means more work to cover that gap.
1) “Charity didn’t remember falling asleep in the darkness of Alejandra’s battered backpack” gotta be your sleepyest little yet.
2) “a Little’s frame, remade for someone else’s world, small and clumsy and so pathetically light” i think clumsy might be more on Charity than on Littles.
3) “the shelf with its neat row of travel souvenirs that cost more than Alejandra’s shoes combined.” Souvenirs are typically more expensive then shoes.
4) “It was the sound of her old life breaking in half.” that’d be devastating for Charity to watch.
5) “No, no, that’s mine!” Valid reaction
6) Then Alejandra’s voice cut through the thick, perfumed air like a knife: “Patrona code.” didn’t she get the code first in the last episode?
7) “The nickname she’d used to mock her once, Patrona, now a chain collar around her neck.” wait until she actually gets a collar.
8) “Each tap slammed into Charity’s gut like a boot on a roach” she did say she felt like a bug waiting for that.
9) “She couldn’t even remember her mother’s phone number. She couldn’t remember Kira’s either. She never had to. The phone did all that for her” (Boomer voice) kids these days can’t remember anyone’s phone numbers.
9) that was my thought as well when i wrote it. I got the idea from a coworker who was taking about not remembering phone numbers as never has too.
8) now she is getting the full expierence
7) yeah she will probably love that.
6) this is charity’s pov of last episode during the same sequence of events.
5) it’s one of charity’s more reasonable reactions.
4) especially at her age where her phone is her whole life. That is like your whole existence breaking in half.
3) well true but it’s also doubtful Alejandra’s shoes cost that much. Atleast not in charity’s view. Her shoes probably cost 100s. Where Alejandra is 20 to 50.
2) clumsy would be charity adapting to the new body. As her mind a.mind body need to get in sync with its new size which takes time.
1) well it’s the same sleep as before. As it’s the same scene from a different perspective
(I’ll get the rest when I have time but thus ones bothering me.)
6) last episode Alejandra cot the code first and snapped the SIM later, in this one she snapped the Sim before getting the code, that’s why I was confused,
I figured out this was last chapter from Charities perspective.
The difference is just because i was writing and i tried to make them the same as possible while being unique. I just didn’t catch that difference