Abigail Hobbs awoke to find herself alone.
Her head was fogged, her limbs heavy.
Her daemon lay dizzily across her shoulders, draped across her neck, too weak to move.
Pain clouded her thoughts, and her daemon's fingers trembled as they traced the scars on her neck.
They were healing slowly, and her breathing hitched as her daemon pressed his body closer against her skin. She could still feel the searing agony that had torn her throat open with the slash of her father's hunting knife.
Her heart began to race, and she trembled, her arms lifting weakly to pull her daemon closer to her chest, her ears ringing with the screams that had shrieked from his throat.
"S-S-Se—" Her voice refused to work, and stuck in her throat, refusing to pass her lips as her trembling turned to uncontrollable shaking as horror overcame her.
But her daemon understood, and shifted to press his face into hers, his voice a raspy whisper, too low for words.
Hugging him to her chest, her head bowed to his, she wasn't sure how long they stayed that way, her tears staining his fur, his warmth the only thing keeping her together.
Eventually, she found the strength to lift her head, and fearfully looked around at their surroundings.
It was a hospital room, with blank walls, and a dull sofa opposite the bed they lay in.
A door a few feet away was closed, and fear filled her at the sight.
Silence hung in the air, and pressed against her ears, distracting her with its deafening noise. Unnerving, unfaltering, the sound seemed to fill her head with nothingness, and she wanted nothing more than to bury her head in her arms to block it out.
Footsteps from the hallway, and her breath caught in her throat with sudden panic.
She buried herself back into the darkness of unconsciousness before the person could open the door.
…
The second time she awoke, she kept her eyes closed, and this time, the silence didn't beat so loudly against her ears.
Someone was in the room with her, and their presence hummed against her skin as though a shadow lay across her.
But they didn't notice that she was awake, and she was able to drift off once more, clutching her daemon tight to her chest.
…
It wasn't until several days—or, at least, what she assumed to be days—later that she finally found the courage to open her eyes again.
A man sat with head lowered on the sofa at the end of her bed, his daemon a large leopard that watched her with golden eyes that held nothing but worry.
Abigail clutched her daemon closer to her chest, though, as the leopard spoke. "Abigail." The word was soft, the voice wrapping around her name like a soothing whisper. The man looked up, and his face couldn't seem to decide whether or not he was glad or concerned.
His glasses reflected the light from the ceiling, and her heart skittered as she remembered those same glasses—that same face—flecked with blood.
Her blood. Her mother's blood. Her father's blood. It didn't matter.
This was the man that had killed her father. This was the leopard whose jaws had closed around her father's daemon and crushed the life out of her. Izora was dead because of the leopard sitting before her. Her father was dead because of the man sitting before her.
She would be dead if not for the man sitting before her.
The thoughts swirled and converged in the silence that filled the room after her name was spoken, each struggling for dominance.
Her daemon crawled from her side to her shoulder, and his weight was enough to settle her on one emotion. Fear. "M—" Her voice choked, and her hands spasmed as she remembered the flash of the knife across her throat. Slashing at her, into her, and spilling her blood across the floor.
She shuddered, and wished that she was still unconscious. But she had to know.
Her mouth opened, and closed, tears stinging her eyes and blurring her vision as she struggled to speak. But the effort hurt too much, and brought too many memories to the fore, so she stopped abruptly, struggling not to gasp for air.
She painted the words she wanted to speak with the furrow in her brow, and the tears in her eyes, hoping that it would be enough to get her meaning across without words.
She had to know.
Is my mother okay?
As though she understood perfectly, the leopard's gaze dropped, and the man whispered softly, "I—I couldn't save her."
Her breath caught in her lungs, and tears blurred her eyes and horror gripped her lungs, forcing her into a state that was oblivious to the world around her as more people came into the room.
…
It was a day after that that Abigail was told by a doctor whose name she couldn't remember that she might never speak again. Her vocals cords had been severely damaged, and it would take months for them to recover, if at all.
It wasn't as upsetting as it could have been. Neither Abigail nor her daemon felt much like talking.
Every time they closed their eyes, they saw again the pool of blood around them, and it was everything they could do to stop themselves from screaming. She worried that if she tried to speak, nothing would come out but an endless scream of horror that would never end.
…
A woman with a butterfly daemon came into her room the next day, and told her that she was going to be moved into a home for girls like her in a few days. She couldn't understand Abigail's voiceless words the way the man with the leopard could, but she was nice, and just having her sit there next to her helped calm Abigail's fears. She was slowly getting stronger with every day that passed, but she had lost a lot of blood, and she fell asleep again not long after that.
But the woman held her hand as she slept, and her dreams were quiet and soft, free, for once, of the nightmares that had plagued her since her family's death.
…
She wasn't sure if it was because she had been taken off her pain medication, or if it was simply because she was getting better, but a week after the first day she awoke, her head felt clearer than it had been in a long time. Her throat ached, but she was able to shove the pain to the back of her mind, simply enjoying the return of her full senses. Senteron found the strength to move beyond her shoulder, and tested his balance on the bars that sided the bed, his movements slow and shaky, but able to keep his balance without falling.
She could finally focus on something more than the fear that had clouded her thoughts, and the tray of food that was brought to her was enough to distract her for several minutes as she poked at the blue jello with her spoon, watching the way the room wavered and twisted when she held it up and looked through it.
The strange milk-shake thing she had to drink until she could handle solid food again tasted like chocolate, and she and her daemon took turns drinking from the straw until it was gone, and nothing but the jello and water bottle remained.
She gave her daemon the jello, wishing it were green instead of blue, and drank some of the water as she stared around her at the silent room.
There was a TV on the ceiling, but she didn't know where the remote was, and a vase of yellow flowers by her bedside that she hadn't noticed before.
She didn't know what type they were, but they added a welcome splash of color the room, and their soft scent reminded her of days spent gardening with her mother.
With nothing but her thoughts to entertain her, it didn't take long before she was bored, and, sighing to herself, curled up on her side as her daemon placed the now-empty tray on the chair next to her bed, before snuggling himself against her chest. She wrapped her arms around him and rested her chin on the top of his head, and closed her eyes, her thoughts chasing one another in circles.
Tomorrow she would be moving out of the hospital room, and back into the real world. No more peaceful silence she wasn't really sure she liked. No more quiet visits from people she barely knew, but was quickly starting to look forward to nonetheless. Tomorrow everything was going to change, and she couldn't decide whether or not she was ready for it.
She fell asleep curled around her daemon, and dreamed dreams she couldn't remember upon waking, as a shadow she tried her best to ignore watched her silently from the corner of the room.