She could feel the floor under her knees, hard stone digging in. She kept working, ignoring the silence around her, unfazed by the screams and whimpers that occasionally echoed up from the Necromancer's Laboratory below.
Instead she scrubbed on seemingly oblivious to the sound of someone coming down the great hall stairs, and walking only a few feet past her. Violet silk whispered over the rough stone and rustled on the stairs. She ignored the slamming of a door and the sound of voices rising. A scream of rage made her pause for a moment but then she simply continued scrubbing, perhaps a little bit harder, maybe a little faster.
Her eyes stayed on the floor as the door slammed again. As the footsteps approached her scrubbing grew more and more frantic, the wires of the brush scratching like nails against a cell door. Then the bucket of water hit her in the head and she fell backwards onto the wet stone staring up at the cobweb draped gloom of the ceiling. She lay still, not even breathing, and waited as the footsteps retreated again up the stairs. Waited until it was safe for her to move again.
Slowly, painfully, one hand closed into a fist around the brush, metal bristles piercing unbleeding skin. She pushed herself up and looked around the room for the first time that long day. Her fingers probed the place where the bucket had hit and her dark eyes squinted shut at the pain. It would go away soon.
The last vestiges of sunset cast red light on the rotting staircase up to her Mistress' room, and soon the sconces on the walls would light with the violet of the Alchemist's flames. Soon, perhaps, she would be able to slip off for a moment to the tiny rickety tower that was her place. Maybe soon-
"Glory!! You good for nothing, zombie! You ugly stitched up creature! Get up here!" Shrieked her mistress from the master suite. Glory stood, shaking her dress around her to loosen its soaked and clinging folds. She climbed the stairs to the ancient door paying no mind to the wobble and the shift of the decaying wood under her bare feet.
Glory opened the door as silently as possible. Her mistress was sitting at her dressing table, staring at the mirror. Green eyes that glowed with sickly fire glared back, skin stitched together with heavy black thread stretched as she moved her head, revealing gray-green flesh beneath it. With nails that were more like talons the woman traced the face in the mirror. Her coarse black hair rustled like straw as it trailed on the floor behind the chair. Glory picked up the brush without another word being spoken and began to pull it through Mistress Vixona's tangled hair.
"The front hall looks almost habitable." Vixona mused. "Perhaps we should move some furniture there." The green eyes watched Glory in the mirror as they often did.
"There are some whole chairs and a sofa, Mistress." Glory tried not to give any sign she was looking back as she worked. She liked to watch her own hands in the mirror when she could get away with it. They were delicate, long fingered things the same violet as the Necromancer's lights. They trembled like leaves in the lightest of breezes even when she tried to hold them still. Glory ducked her head before Vixona caught her slacking off and continued brushing.
As she brushed a hank of her own elflocked dark hair swung into her face. She reached up to push it away. When she did she pulled harder with the bush in her other hand. An immediate shriek froze her in place, except for her hands which shook all the more.
"What's wrong with you, you stupid puppet! Can't you even brush through my lovely hair without trying to snatch me bald in jealousy! You ugly monster, you should be grateful I let you even serve me!" The baleful green eyes stared at Glory in the mirror making her hunch in on herself.
"Fur-forgive me, Lady Vixona...." She spoke softly, her voice like a child's, hands shaking as she began to brush again. Only after the pale purple balls of light had appeared in the sconces, and the moon hung high in the one large window was Glory dismissed to scramble down the stairs in the dark.