Gabriella slowly awoke though she didn't want to. She had been having the most blissful dream. She couldn't remember anything about it but, it had made her feel more happy and safe than she ever had in the last four years. She wanted to escape back into that dream and never wake up.
But she soon realized she was not about to fall back asleep. The sun was very bright, it shone through her eyelids. Gabriella stiffened when she realized she was laying on a soft mattress. She had not slept on a mattress since she was eight and could not fathom how she ended up in one now. She struggled to remember what happened before she fell asleep.
Gabriella remembered she had been in the woods... it had been snowing and it had been so cold. She also remembered that despite the fact she had eaten nothing but some bark, and raw fish several days ago she had not been hungry. Her stomach had then given up begging Gabriella for food, it realized it wasn't going to get any. She had been so tired; she wanted to lay down in the snow which though cold was at least soft, but Jojo had forced her to keep moving. Jojo would whine, bark, and bite Gabriella's sleeve to keep her walking, and then eventually crawling. Gabriella didn't remember falling asleep though. She struggled for a long time to recollect something else.
Eventually she gasped. Mama! Gabriella panicked; she had let go of her mother's hand. Her right hand, the one that held her mother's hand, moved around the bed and as far as it could reach trying to find her mother. Though her hand searched Gabriella, for no particular reason, didn't open her eyes. Eventually she gave up. Tears rolled down her check when she comprehended that she must have simply dreamed about her mother.
Gabriella sat there for a minute simply crying, when she heard a group of people murmuring. Finally she opened her eyes. A bright light blinded her and she quickly closed her eyes. The light had been so bright Gabriella would have presumed that she had died if she had not seen the yellow color in the light. Slowly she opened her eyes again, allowing them to adjust. The lights were florescent which meant... she was in a building! The Seekers must have found me! Gabriella thought. But that didn't make sense. If the Seekers had found her she would be dead and a parasite would be living in her body.
Gabriella turned her head to the side. She recognized the room. She knew she had never been in this room but a similar one. When she was four years old she had broken her arm. She had to have surgery. The room she had stayed in had looked exactly like this one. They both had guard rails on the bed, a nightstand with a lamp, crisp sheets, pale white walls, and paintings of landscapes or abstract themes. She was in a hospital.
The murmurings where coming from the other side and Gabriella looked over. A group of about seven doctors in scrubs standing just outside the doorway abruptly stopped talking when they noticed her watching them. They looked at with wide frightened eyes.
"Are you afraid of me?" Gabriella asked incredulously. She laughed once humorously as she turned her head to the other wall. Her brothers had always said centipedes where harmless, and pathetically weak (unless a Seeker) but that was an understatement if a group of parasites in adult's bodies where afraid of a starved twelve year old girl.
Gabriella throat began to burn with thirst. She considered asking the group of doctors. Would they give it to? She had never came across a soul that wasn't a seeker, her brother's had stolen all of their necessities (which Gabriella understood was a grave mistake when they were gone) but they told her parasites were extremely kind... at least to their own kind anyway. Humans on the other hand... But Gabriella couldn't imagine anyone, even a parasite, denying someone water.
Gabriella turned back to the doctors who were simply standing there awkwardly unsure of what to do now. "Excuse me," she said in a quite voice. The doctors all jumped. "May I please have a glass of water. I'm very thirsty."
The doctors looked at her shocked for a moment as if she was an animal that suddenly started talking. "Of course," a female doctor finally said.
She was about to walk down the hall when a doctor called out to her. "You should find Healer Harness Light and tell him that she has woken up." The parasite nodded before walking out of sight down the hall.
"Why..." Gabriella started but hesitated. The parasites all turned to look at her. She toke a deep breath. "Why use the word healer instead of doctor?" she asked.
"To show the improvement in medicine," one centipede replied. His host was young, in his thirties, with golden brown hair.
Gabriella's face most have shown her confusement because the centipede elaborated. "Our medicine doesn't just temporarily relieve the symptoms like human medicine. It heals what's wrong with the body, and so the term healers becomes appropriate."
Gabriella frowned. She would have been insulted since she read about medicine before the the occupation and had always been impressed with what doctors had been able to do. But she could tell that the parasite wasn't trying to be insulting so she simply nodded. She felt awkward just just laying there so she started to moved herself up into a sitting position. She looked down at her arms she was not surprised at their skeletal appearance. Why would they? She was the one who watched them waste away till there nothing left but skin and bone. Her arms shoke as she struggled to sit up.
"Don't over exert yourself," one of the parasites said hastily. She hurried over and placed a strong hand on Gabriella's back to steady her. At the same time she pressed a petal that raised the head of the bed so Gabriella could lean back on it. "Thank you," she murmured. That little bit of exertion had drained all of Gabriella's energy. She was tired, deep down to the bone and could have went back to sleep even though she had only been up for a few minutes. But she didn't want to go back to sleep.
The parasites had already said enough to make her curious about several different things. Gabriella had always been eager to learn and absorbed information like a sponge. She decided to ask the simplest question first. "Harness Light is a bear name isn't it?" It certainly fit the description of what she knew about the place. The parasites gasped shocked.
"How do you know about the Mists Planet?" One of them asked.
"Oh, I would always ask my brothers to bring back books, any books, when they went on a raid. One of them was all about the different world's parasites occupy," Gabriella said nonchalantly.
The healers glanced at each other. "What did you call us?" One of them asked slowly.
Opps, Gabriella thought.
"I'm sorry," she said but as the words were coming out of her mouth she was wondering why she was apologizing for such a little thing when they had wronged her so much. "I wasn't trying to be insulting that's just what we, humans, always call you."
"We're not parasites," a female said indignantly.
Gabriella blinked, slightly shocked. How could they be denying such a concrete fact. Were they really that self-righteous. "Um... yeah you are. An organism that lives off another species, that fits you perfectly- What do you call yourselves?"
"Souls, the unseen force that guides the body." the female replied.
Gabriella guessed that make sense. It was certainly a more positive way to describe what they did.
At that moment the healer returned with the glass of water. She came with two other individuals. The first one Gabriella noticed was also a healer, most likely Harness Light. She looked away from him to examine the third. When she realized what he was she could have sworn that her heart stopped beating.