Doin' Time

"Keep it moving, prisoner!" the grey Iguanodon barked at Kaiwi, shoving him forward. From eavesdropping in his cell, the raptor knew this one was called Guerilla and the smaller green one was called Mantell. They weren't very chatty with him, so he resorted to leaning his ear against the wall and listening as hard as he could through the stone wall. His cellmate, Amethyst, had been l;ed out at the same time as him but in the opposite direction and he was already missing her bulk to hide behind. The halls of this place were weird, stone walls that weren't smoothed flat like the ones back in his apartment building. They were lumpy, like they were built of individual stones stacked together. He had seen things built like this before, usually short walls around old human farms back on the surface. He looked out of the windows as he passed and saw the artificial sunlight shining over Atlantis, the first light he had seen in a while. It wasn't a comfort, the light too stale to match the healing power the real sun seemed to have over him. Noticing him slowing down, Mantell jabbed at his back again.

"We're on a time limit," he growled, and Kaiwi sneered at him but kept walking.

The Iguanodons herded him into a dead end room, standing to block the door. Guerilla grabbed a broom from the doorframe and handed it to the raptor, who took it out of confused reflex. 

"Get to sweeping," the grey Iggy ordered, "Top to bottom, I wanna see my face in this floor." Kaiwi looked down at the dirt floor and caught himself before he made a snarky comment. 

"Yes sir," he said blankly instead. As he swept he tried to take in his surroundings. Nothing was unusual here, just a plain room with plants growing through the cracks in the stone. The leaves that had fallen from these plants were covering the floor in a thick carpet of dead and dying foliage, barely revealing the dirt beneath. Kaiwi began to sweep, the bristles of his broom bending under the weight of the leaves it was trying to move. Great, they were making him do manual labour with shitty tools. He tried for another few minutes before placing the broom against the wall and stooping down to pick up the leaves in his hands instead. He walked to the doorway and dropped the litter into a pile at the threshold. Mantell gave him a dirty look but said nothing, clearly not willing to argue that his prisoner wasn't cleaning up. 

Kaiwi stepped back to the centre of the room and looked around him, trying to figure out where to start. The corners were as good a place as any, he supposed. They were where the leaves piled highest, and as he reached down to scoop up a big armful he could feel the squish of decomposed humus at the bottom. He grimaced as he did and hurried to drop the pile back at the door with the rest. Deciding to leave the mush for the broom, he gathered the top layer of leaves off and only returned to the lower levels when he retrieved the brush again. As he swept, scraping more like, the leaves from the dirt, he looked around some more. Now that he was making headway with his task he could see more of the room, especially when one of his guards shifted and allowed light into the room. It was a room similar to his cell, no windows, small, dirt floor. If it had those bamboo gates in front of it he would assume it was another cell, though maybe they hadn't placed them yet. Maybe he was getting the room ready to hold more prisoners like him. The thought made him feel a little ill, like he was collaborating with the Iguanadons to take another dinosaur's freedom.

"Quit daydreaming, you've got more to do after this," Guerrilla snapped. Kaiwi didn't hurry his pace, instead turning to the guards.

"Is this another cell you're making? Are you expecting more prisoners?" he asked, still sweeping to try and deflect at least some of the ire that was heading his way.

"Hopefully not," Mantell grumbled, "It doesn't hurt to be prepared, at least." Guerilla rolled his eyes but didn't seem to see the harm in engaging with the prisoner's inane questions.

"We've been living here undisturbed for years, next thing a bunch of troublemakers decide to land on top of us, we didn't need prison cells before all this," the grey Iggy explained. Kaiwi hummed as he kept sweeping, focusing on scooping the leaves from the corners again. 

"Understandable," he said pleasantly, "though, for what it's worth, I never meant to cause you any trouble."

"You were asking a lot of questions," Mantell pointed out.

"From a place of concern!" Kaiwi protested, holding the broom tightly, "You've got folk worried up on the surface with all these plants. It's new to us, it's crowding out our own plants, you can't blame people for worrying when their food starts to wither!" The guards didn't respond, but their grimaces softened to neutrality. Kaiwi felt satisfaction at that, glad to have made some headway with his captors. With enough grease on the wheels he could bargain his way back to the surface. When the last of the leaves had been dragged to the pile, Guerrilla produced a woven sack from seemingly nowhere and placed it in front of the pile. Kaiwi took the hint and as the larger Iggy held the sack open he swept the entirety of the pile into the bag. Mantell stepped into the room to look around, nodding as he clearly found it to be up to his standards.

"Good work," he said flatly, "Onto the next." Kaiwi could feel his face drop at that and to his surprise the striped Iguanodon began to chuckle. "Don't look so glum, no more sweeping. Come along, we'll show you to your next task." He followed them obediently and they no longer shoved him along the hall, letting him amble along to conserve his energy.