Frostbite

'What is your name, girl?'

'It's Snow, sir.' Snow peeked up from the desk in front of her. The hotel owner was a tall man with the saddest eyes Snow had ever seen.

'Hmmmm.' The master rubbed his chin. Like all the men Snow had seen in this city, the hotel master had completely shaven his beard off. She would never get used to how feminine the men here looked.

'I don't like it. Way too soft.' The master grabbed his pen and started to write something down on the contract in front of him. 'Maybe.... Yeah, Frostbite it is. Much catchier.' The master curled his lips into a grin for her.

'What do you say?'

'Eh...' Snow didn't dare to answer him. He wasn't seriously changing her name like that, was he?

'Thank you, sir.' The master waved at her as if telling her to go on. 'Say thank you, sir.'

'Ehm, Thank you, sir?' Snow's cleared her throat.

'Good girl. Then for the mods.' The master scanned through her papers. 'Currently solely in possession of a standard IQ reduction, lip pigmentation, and a small submissive boost.' The master frowned as if her scarse arsenal was a suprise to him.

Snow nodded nervously. She didn't dare look up from the table again. They wouldn't throw her on the streets right now, would they? Over the phone, they'd said it wasn't a problem if this was all she had.

'Here, take this.' The master had finished signing her documents and handed them over to the man behind Snow's wheelchair. 'Bring these and the new whore to the clinic. I'll see you back tomorrow.'

The new whore.

Snow wouldn't cry. That would be a betrayal to her old man. . It wasn't his fault that her value was too low to get a personal owner, let alone a husband. She'd accepted that.

She'd accepted this. They would care for her. A man steered her wheelchair for her. Nobody had ever taken the effort to push her.

It surprised her how much she hated to lose even that last bit of control.

She was still biting her lip to stop herself from crying when they arrived at the clinic. Like everything in this city, the clinic was clean, white and wealthy. These people had never known hunger or cold, but it smelled wrong, the heat was pressing, and despite the wealth, nobody was smiling with their eyes when they laughed.

Snow blinked her eyes. But it was too late. A lonely tear had already escaped her eye.