My name is Loren. I'm not an Animorph, although I have their power to morph into any animal I can touch, for two hours at a time. I'm not a resistance fighter against the aliens invading Earth, although I did participate in a mission to destroy the Yeerk Pool, and I may have actually been one of the first human beings to encounter them. I'm not a teenager, although as far as I can recall, my life started about fourteen years ago.

Let me explain this properly. I was a grown woman with a husband and a son, or so I am told, until I lost my husband, my eyesight & my memory in a car accident. Because I was blinded and stricken with amnesia and had to learn basic life skills like dental hygiene all over from scratch, I lost my son too. He was sent to live with relatives, but I didn't know anyone from my family any longer. By the time I was released to live on my own, I had no way of finding the boy or his caretakers. It was not as hard as you might think, since all I knew of him was that someone had told me he was mine. I had a vague memory of a blonde little boy, but nothing else. I don't remember giving birth to him or holding him my arms or feeding him or changing him or singing him to sleep. And neither he nor the relatives he lived with ever contacted me until very recently.

I woke up one morning after getting harassed by some punks in a convenience store, to find one of them sitting in my kitchen. He revealed he was my long-lost son, Tobias, now a 16-year-old boy. He told me I was in danger and rescued me from the Yeerks, by giving me the power to morph. As a side effect of morphing back to my human body, I regained my eyesight, and the facial scars from my accident that I had only felt and never seen, disappeared. Now, we both lived in a valley populated by aliens with the parents of some of the other Animorphs, all of whom had fled here to avoid revenge from the Yeerks who resented our kids spending the last three years ruining all their schemes to take over the planet.

I had begun working on forging a new relationship with Tobias. It was a little hard, since he kept leaving the valley on missions, and the rest of the time, well, Tobias isn't big on sharing his pain. He talks freely about the good things in his life, but that's also a kind of short conversation. I think he's like that normally, but I also believe he doesn't want me to feel bad about having given him up, though I remember the pain in his voice when he first confronted me about it. Neither of our lives seem to have been very good in the years we spent apart, so there's not a lot we want to say about those days to each other.

One thing I did learn about him, when he was going over the details of the morphing power he shared with me, was that he had once spent too long in the form of a hawk, and become trapped, unable to morph back to human. He revealed that he had been given a one-time restoration of his power, and the ability to morph into a human boy the way his friends could morph into aliens and animals. He kept the specific details from me, but it must have been a strange exception.

Supposedly this happened not long after he first gained the power and then became trapped, which was almost three years ago, but his human form doesn't look much like the middle school boy he was when he started fighting the Yeerks. He looks like a sixteen year old, nearly as tall as a grown man, lanky but on his way to filling out. And the look in his eyes...all the Animorphs have it to a degree, and it's not a look you see on kids. Inside, they're all old men and women, veterans of brutal hand-to-hand combat, who've all seen things no adult should have to see, let alone children.

And now he's going again. Things are coming to a head. The Yeerks are getting ready to expand their invasion, as soon as they recover from the destruction of their Pool. The Andalites, the aliens who are supposed to be our saviors, are coming not to save the planet, but to save themselves, by destroying Earth to take the Yeerks down with us. The kids had some master plan to stop all this. They aren't sharing all the details, which probably means it's suicidal levels of dangerous, but what can we mere parents do? I might have the power to morph, but I'm still getting used to seeing again, I don't have anywhere near their experience in fighting or morphing, and I don't have the wide array of animals they've acquired in three years of fighting.

Anyway, after Tobias said good-bye and flew off, I wandered through the valley aimlessly, occasionally tossing a ball to Champ, my former seeing-eye dog. Most of the other parents were gathered together, talking. Sharing their fears and hopes for their children, trying not to think of their sons and daughters leaving them safe in this valley while they went to risk their lives.

I didn't want to talk with them. It's weird talking with other parents, when you're not really a parent. All anyone wants to talk about is the child they hope they have not kissed goodbye for the last time. But I didn't feel the same way. Sure, I wanted Tobias to come back so badly, but deep down inside, he was still a stranger to me. Losing him would be like losing something I never really had, and it would not compare to the loss of one of the other parents. Being around them made me aware of this stuff and made me feel worse because I didn't feel worse. Because I would not grieve for the same reasons they would or in the same way, and I felt bad about that, like I was an unnatural mother. It all got to be too much, so I usually went off on my own during these endless waits. Tobias would spot me when he returned anyway.

Eventually, one of the giant Hork-Bajir who made this valley a permanent address approached me.

"You are mother of Tobias?" the alien asked me.

"Yes, I'm Loren," I replied, wondering what the Hork-Bajir wanted. I had barely said two words to any of them since fleeing to the valley. One of the few flashes of memory that remained to me from before the accident had been an image of a Hork-Bajir and the terrifying certainty that these creatures were enemies. My amnesia, unfortunately, made me forget that most humans had never seen such things and when I attempted to share those memories with my doctors, I ended up being committed to a mental facility for delusions. Now that I thought about it though, from what Eva had told me about the Yeerk invasion, I might have actually been one of the first human beings ever to see a Hork-Bajir.

Not for the first time, I racked my brain trying to dredge up any old memories at all, to figure out what sort of life I had before the accident. Did Tobias end up in this life because of what our family had been up to back when we were a family? If we were a family…damn it.

"Ket Halpak is name," offered the Hork-Bajir helpfully. "I have daughter, Toby."

"Oh, wow. Did you know that's a human name, too?" I asked.

"Yes. She name for Tobias. Tobias save Ket Halpak, save kalashi Jara Hammee. Ket Halpak and Jara Hammee free. Free to have kwatnoj who is free. Free because of Tobias."

"Tobias saved you guys? He saved your lives?" I was surprised to have something in common with an alien.

"We escape with head voice. Jara Hammee grab Ket Halpak when Yeerk out of head, and run down tunnel, come to door. We out in Earth trees, but lost. Yeerks chase, but bird tell us where to go. Save Jara Hammee, but I caught. Later, bird fight Visser Three and I escape. Bird is Tobias, Tobias morph me so Yeerks chase him and Jara Hammee and Ket Halpak escape. Jara's father named for Andalite hero, so Jara Hammee say 'Ket Halpak, we name kwatnoj for human-bird hero who save her mother.'"

It was a little silly, but I was so proud. Tobias had saved both these…people. Even though I didn't raise him, it still felt good to hear all of this. "And then he brought you here? To the other Hork-Bajir?"

"No. We first. Save others who head-voice free. Later Jara Hammee and others go take back more Hork-Bajir from Yeerks. When Toby grow big, she make plans to free more, protect home. All because Tobias save us."

"So where are Toby and Jara Hammee now? Are they all right?" I asked hesitantly. The Yeerks had already attacked the Hork-Bajir once, and forced them to leave their last home. I'd hate to think their rescue had come to nothing.

"Jara Hammee, Toby lead Hork-Bajir fighters. Jara Hammee is Elder, Toby Hammee is Seer. They go to help Animorph friends. Save Earth from Yeerks and hruthin – Andalites."

So we were in the same boat… we each had a child in the fight. This was getting depressing, it seemed like I couldn't escape conversations like this. Something about Ket Halpak's little story nagged at my thoughts, like a memory I couldn't quite bring back, so I probed a little more.

"What's this 'head-voice' you keep talking about?" I wondered out loud before I could stop myself. It was probably some primitive alien religious thing…

"Head voice tells Jara Hammee and Ket Halpak when to run to escape Yeerks. Head-voice tells Tobias how to save us. Tobias says head voice not nice. Head voice only cares about plans, not Hork-Bajir. Head voice say he help Tobias, but trick him instead."

"So this voice just talks to people to tell them what to do?"

"Maybe. Jara Hammee only hear head voice to escape, not hear since. Tobias say he care about own plan, not care about Hork-Bajir or human friends."

"That's interesting. Do you know who belongs to the 'head voice'? Where it comes from?"

"Tobias say his name is 'Ellimist'. Ellimist trick Animorphs to help him sometimes. He change things so different things happen-"

If Ket Halpak said anything after that, I didn't hear it. My head was filled with a dizzying feeling, and suddenly I-I knew! I remembered thought-speak voices talking about time travel and Ellimists, and a glowing sphere and then a larger voice than any being I could imagine speaking half to me and half to itself, a memory more than sixteen years old.

I AM SORRY, LOREN, BUT THIS WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE. YOU WILL ONLY REMEMBER WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

Author's Note: This is not open-ended like my other fic, I am just working through the battle scene in the middle, which I am not so good at writing. I should have the rest of it fairly soon. Thanks for reading.