Startled awake by shouts outside, Vanessa leapt from bed and rushed out the door barefoot. It was the dead of night and Knives was riding in, yelling, "Help me with her!"

Noting the shock she registered when she saw in the cart, Knives and she gripped the handles on the sides of the gurney and lifted Callisto to rush her inside.

"The garden!" he instructed. They dropped Callisto's groaning form gingerly upon the soft grasses. Vanessa ran for her med supplies, Knives for candles. The examination began.

Striking matches and lighting every little candle he could find, Knives set them around Callisto, waiting for Vanessa to offer wisdom. He winced when a needle dove into Callisto's core.

She deposited a bit of the material in the syringe onto a little round bit of new technology. It whirred to life and a magnified projection of the sample filled the air above the device.

"Cancer."

"Cancer?" he repeated, staring at the projection.

"What'd you think it was?" she asked, pulling out a dose of tranquillizer.

"I…I had no clue," he admitted, honestly. Catching his breath, he went for blankets.

Vanessa ran her fingers along the surface of Callisto's core, past little cherub legs and feathers. She was lying on her belly on the gurney, the core mass protruding a full 2 feet out from between her shoulder blades. Evidently her core was in the same area as Vanessa's. Breathing deeply and occasionally emitting a little groan, Callisto was evidently unaware of her surroundings. Her eyes were shut tight and watering, face buried down into the gurney fabric.

Knives had fashioned a makeshift blindfold around Callisto's eyes. They were probably as unused to white light as her own had been, when she'd been extracted from the bulb as a child.

Knives returned with blankets and began wrapping Callisto's nude, thin body, and cushioned her head.

Vanessa assisted. "She's stable. I'll operate come sunrise."

"Will she…"

"It's contained in the mass here. Unless it's spread further, she has a good chance. Either way, she's losing the mass, and inevitably, part of her core." She spoke from experience. "She won't be able to return to the bulb after this."

Knives nodded. "But she'll live."

"It's her choice, not ours," she corrected, hugging him. "I'm glad you're back."

He stood stoic, glancing over her shoulder at the shivering mass he'd brought.

O

O

Nudged awake, Vanessa lifted her head from the grass she'd been sleeping upon and let her eyes adjust to morning's first light. Knives was sitting beside her, poking her with an impatience that was almost childlike. He nodded at Callisto, who seemed to be waking up.

Moving towards her moaning form, Vanessa leaned in close. "If we don't remove your plant mass you're going to die of cancer," she explained in a hushed voice.

Callisto's groans and sobs of pain continued.

"Can you hear me? Do you remember how to talk?"

Mouth opening, Callisto's tongue moved as if to do so. "Ow," she shuddered.

"Now, with your permission-"

"OW!" she called out.

"Can I remove your cancer?" Vanessa asked, slowly.

"Don't kill me!" the girl shrieked.

Wincing, Vanessa tried again. "Can I take away your pain? Can I remove-"

"Please?" Callisto cried, sobbing, shaking.

Wasting no time, Vanessa plunged a needle of anesthetic into her shoulder and asked Knives to help her begin.

O

O

For fear that the cats might dig it back up, Knives buried the huge, cancerous mass deep in the sand outside the garden. But he hadn't yet covered it before the shrieking began again.

Rushing to Callisto, Knives knelt beside Vanessa.

"I was trying to put in a feeding tube!" Vanessa tried to explain over the noise. "Hold her down, her bandage!"

Knives pinned Callisto's arms to her sides, keeping her from clawing anymore at the bandage at her back.

"Where is it?" she was yelling out between sobs and throes.

The screaming continued, and Knives looked over to Vanessa for instruction. In response, she sat back on her heels, frowning, feeding tube laying still in her lap.

A hissing sound escaped Callisto's throat and she cried out desperately. "Don't! Knives! No!"

Snapping his head back to her, he saw that the blindfold had wriggled away from her eyes and she was squinting up at him, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Callisto?" he asked, dumbfounded.

"He's not hurting you," Vanessa soothed, touching the girl's bony cheek tenderly. "Keep still, you're going to be fine."

"Murder! Psycho! Rape!" she yelled out, sobbing as she tried to wring her wrists from Knives' grasp.

Aghast, Knives let go and scrambled away.

"Ow, ow, ow." Callisto balled herself up as best she could and glanced about, crying. She met eyes with Vanessa at her left, and shrieked again. "I'm not you, I'm not, I'm somebody else! Not her, not her. Ow. Give it back. Ow!"

"I can't, it's dead now," Vanessa attempted to explain. "It was cancer, you were dying."

"I was, I was, dying, angel dying, but they were lifting me," Callisto garbled, speech still quite slurred from decades of silence. "I can't hear them anymore, I can't…" She became suddenly very silent, still. "I can't…"

Vanessa heard Knives' footsteps slowly approach. "Callisto, I'm sorry, I-"

"He wants to, he wants it, get him away, no glass, the air, he can touch me now, RAPE!"

"You're safe, it's okay," Vanessa cooed, caressing her cheek. "Get some rest, eat some food, okay? Nobody's touching you unless you ask, okay?"

Nodding through sobs, Callisto closed her eyes and sunk her head to the ground.

Knives could be heard leaving the area, slinking back to the shack.

Vanessa stayed with the frail girl until she calmed enough to eat, and passed out into a troubled sleep. Finally she could leave her side, and, hesitantly, she made her way to the shack as well.