Colin began to work while Mimi was asleep. He very quickly dripped six different medications into Mimi and watched that they came as fast as Mimi could tolerate them. Bran had taken Adam to dinner and now gave Colin a working peace for the time being. Colin watched all the time, adjusting the drip rates and strengths of the drugs. Always adding small amounts as much as he could. He did the strap work. He had got Mimi's straps to last now 20. As soon as he had put Mimi to sleep, the straps started to drip. But they were now firmly at 20. Colin knew that this was going to take time and patience from him and everyone else.

He hoped Damon would see this. Feel this. Just because Damon's switch had supposedly been off was no excuse. And next time, if Mimi needed to get her adrenaline pumping, some other way. He wanted very badly to tell Damon about Mimi's straps. because he knew Mimi had already died once and gone into hibernation a second time. Colin knew that Mimi's body was too weak to hibernate. It's been drained of too much strap energy. In fact, Mimi has full straps when she's hibernating. She's just in economy mode. but now it was starting to be a bit of the same thing with the incubus damage. He does have to congratulate Damon. Damn well done. To his own loved one. Oh, yeah.

Damon didn't want to go to medbay. He remembered everything. He'd imagined he'd be strong enough to get himself back under control once the fucking drug was gone from Mimi, but no, it had been way too much fun, for some dark part of him. Something that liked to hurt. To stalk, to ambush. His rage. What lived at the core of him, what he fought against so often, and yet every now and then it would surface and do these terrible things. To Mimi. Mimi will never trust him again. He doesn't trust himself anymore.

Bran said to Damon. "You go and fix that girl because I know you can do it. You want to and you need to get it done. Now go on and put your fucking teeth, even on Mimi's neck for six months if you have to." Damon sighed. Bran was right. He had a deep, burning desire to go fix Mimi completely.

To fix everything she broke. He could easily help with the physical damage, but the psychological. The disgust that had gone through Mimi when he'd brushed the hair from her forehead. How would he ever have any contact with Mimi again? Damon went to medbay and Colin was there. So was Mimi. Colin sat next to Mimi in a chair, watching to see how she was. Watching her like a hawk. Apparently, Mimi wasn't feeling very well. "Colin, let me come and see what I can do. It's the least I can do. I know Mimi's in a bad way. Let me at least fucking try.!"

Colin stood up and looked at Damon for a while. Then he walked to the other end of the medbay and said " Do what you can, that's what I've done and it's been very little. How on earth did you get Mimi in that condition?" Damon himself didn't know where the equipment had even come from, or how he knew how to use it. It was like he had no control over himself at all. But that's often the case when the switch isn't in place.

Damon walked over to Mimi, she was asleep or in a very deep coma. Damon barely even felt Mimi. Her strength was gone and Damon feared the worst. He stripped himself naked. He lay down on the edge of the bed. He moved Mimi to her side and walked over to her. First, he let another strand of energy, one by one, grow from his heart to Mimi's heart. Then when it was in place, he bit his teeth into Mimi's neck and let them take root.

Instead of immediately pouring in the dental materials, he began to suck all the bacteria into himself. He released a substance into Mimi's blood that attracted the bacteria, and then he took them all in. The bacteria was strong, easily infected, and slowly began to affect Damon, but at no point did he let the fever show, even though he had a cold he didn't shiver, didn't show any sign of being sick, much sicker than Mimi was after a week. When Colin then came to see, he started swearing very talentedly and got Samuel in the same mood. They untied Damon and started treating him. Mimi was stable and was moved upstairs to a bedroom to recover and slowly wake up.

I woke up in the bedroom and was grateful. The experience had been absolutely horrible, terrible, awful. I would never have believed that anyone could make such a hellish device. Oh, when I woke up in that bed, I was reinvigorated to go after the pharmaceutical companies because those devices were from some institution. Sure enough and now I made it my life's work to start investigating. But from Australia. Alone. When Adam came to bring breakfast and explain to me how Damon had sacrificed himself for me and was now in a more or less critical condition downstairs, I felt nothing. No pity, no anger. I just thought, fine. It was his doing, his choice. His own punishment, but it gave me a really good window to leave.

To recover, to put myself back together. To be a fearless flea again, for whom nothing feels right. Now I'd buy horses and try to ride. And other animals, too. I didn't say anything to Adam, no. I ate and got going. I was 41 kilos. It's good to go from there. I worked around the house that day. And when night came, I picked up my phone, the one with Damon's number on it. And my wallet with our pictures in it. I quietly snuck into medbay. Damon was anesthetized, pale, breathing badly, that would be the recovery. He was dreaming something, even though he was probably well-medicated. He was hot. But still. I left my phone and wallet on the nightstand. And a note. It said. "Thanks for saving me. I went to get better. I'll be back. Mimi."

Well, you have to at least say thank you. I touched Damon's hand and he gently squeezed my hand as if he knew I was there. I watched him for a moment longer and then walked out of there, straight to my car, and drove to the airport. One of the fleas was on a pilot and I boarded the plane. It wasn't until we were airborne that I saluted myself for my feelings back. But only for the flight. The ranch would be for recovery and getting myself together. No reflection on what was left of our relationship if such antics continued. I allowed myself only that time to reflect on what was a flight always with a star.

When the plane landed, I was ready to begin the next phase of my recovery. I would get an incubator and some eggs. One dream I had actually had as a human. Now I would have time. It would be a wonderful project, getting to raise birds myself. I had already bought a couple of horses online, I knew that wasn't necessarily the best way to go about it, but I tried to find reliable, calm horses, and saddles. I sighed when I realized how much I had to learn again. Learning all sorts of new things, including the fact that Damon can do terrible things to me for four weeks and then enjoy the results. It doesn't help matters no matter how much he has to switch off. Or any other reason. The fact was, now I had a head full of memories, emotions, and feelings and I didn't need to sleep. I didn't want to close my eyes lest I be in that dark shuttle, in one of the three that hurt and haunted. ยจ

I could have stayed in America and waited for Damon to get better and then let him use his telepathy again and dispel or remove, but he was in bad shape and I just didn't want to sit and wait. Maybe one day he would then do something about that awfulness in my head but in the meantime, I wanted to live and try new things. Mimosa was eager to take me to chase kangaroos because somehow Mimosa didn't want to be untethered all the time now either. But we were one, we had a very strong bond, and although Mimosa was thankfully asleep for the whole four weeks, I had no doubt that she had found the information in my head that I was going through.

I just started to feel so fucking unfair about fucking life again. when I was having wonderful times with Damon. Yeah, we'd been in the nest and everything, but this everyday life, or our wild fucking marathons. It was a long time ago. And there would be. Because I didn't think Damon would be so terribly eager to come on to me right away either, if he once and for all sucked all the inflammation out of me, gave an energy boost straight from his heart, and sacrificed his own health for me. I had gotten another new car to drive to the ranch, for the first time by myself. The drive took another four hours, but that didn't bother me at all.

I got there and for some reason, I remembered the heat. I started cleaning the house because I wanted to get rid of the wet dog smell, although I didn't even smell it anywhere, but the memory of how greasy Damon's skin had been. How the smell stayed on the sheets and I couldn't smell passionfruit at all .it's interesting by the way because I smell like strawberries even in fight clubs or tortured in the pharmacy. But Damon is a very old creature and maybe it's partly to do with that too.

Or the fact is that I'm the unique case, I'm always the different one, I'm not the same as everyone else and why on earth should I even assume that others should do or act the same as me? Besides, I am chaos. Chaos always has its own rules, its own ways of doing things. chaos is not a disorder it is just surprise, and unpredictability. So I have to start remembering some of these things so there's not always so much to think about.

I cleaned up and put the ranch in order. It was actually good therapy, having something to do all the time. I got horses in the stable and they were big. I tried to pet them but for some reason, they started to neigh and kick and fuss, so I left them alone for now. I'd been at the ranch for a month and the incubator had been put back on the shelf for later use. Let's just say I didn't get the chicks to live terribly long. For some reason, I decided one night to change form and take a walk as a wolf. Mimosa though mimosa was not in charge. I had hatched chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, peacocks. They were a couple of weeks old and out in the pen, each one had a name and I enjoyed feeding them and watching them go about their business. That's why I don't understand why I did what I did. I went into the enclosure at night in wolf form and ate them all. Every single bird I had hatched. That was me.

The next morning I put the hatchery on the shelf and left that project alone. But I had a good outdoor fence, and I thought the next thing I'd do was get some chickens to lay my own eggs and watch the chickens do their thing. A full-grown chicken might not be quite as good a catch as all my birds had been. And I'm not going to tell anyone about this ever. I asked one of the horse trainers to come and see the horses but for some reason, these horses got all nervous when I was there. and it wasn't because of the mimosa, because the mimosa was loose and sniffing the horses. It was me. and I didn't understand why at all.

The trainer just said that the horses see me as a beast, a predator. Oh. This perfect ranch life didn't go quite as I imagined, but what can you expect from chaos? Magnum messaged me to ask where I was, Adam had been asking, and I just said I was safe. But Magnum knew where I was and a day after the message, I saw his car pull up. Magnum and Colin got out of the car and walked around the yard. I went to meet them as I came back from feeding my chickens that had arrived the day before. Magnum said, " You look great, Colin forced himself into the car, sorry I couldn't help it." I smiled and hugged them both. First I showed them my chicken. And my weird horses. Colin watched the horses' reaction for a moment with a smug smile on his lips, as if he knew exactly what it was. If I knew him at all, he'd tell me somewhere along the line. We walked around the yard and I showed him how I had cut down tall trees with a chainsaw. There was another nice hobby. And landscaping.

We went in and Colin said "Where's the medbay? I've got to have a look and see where everything is. My young lady, you are going to have a very thorough health check, while we eat and I get everything ready." Oh, I was smug. This was my ranch. Now I was a doctor and I had put this medbay all by myself. I'd gotten some nice fucking equipment, lovely, comfortable beds that now, unfortunately, didn't have barbed shackles, comfortable armchairs, and the latest supernatural blood analyzers. The operating theatre was top-notch, everything was top of the line and this was mine. I took Colin and Magnum to medbay. They started going round and Colin was walking around frowning as he examined all my equipment. There was an instant scanner, CT scan, MRI, X-ray machine, ultrasound conventional and 3D, and gamma cameras. There was even a dental X-ray. All the latest models that I could get, and it didn't even make a terrible dent in my money.

Colin said quietly "I wonder what Salvatore will say about this" I hadn't even thought about it and didn't care. Magnum said "Or Samuel? I would imagine they would try to move the equipment to America. Miss has been busy, but did you see how big the trees she has cut down are, has every felling been on target? And what else?" Colin looked at Magnum and said " Why do you think the lady has a health check coming up? She's got something in her blood that shouldn't be there, but I'm not Salvatore, I don't catch on that easily." Magnum sighed, of course, Mimi always had something small. They left the medbay to wander around the house. Mimi had gone somewhere and left them to work in the medbay.

I left the men to stare at the medbay and went to set out the offerings, savory and sweet. I knew both boys could eat very well and luckily I had baked from time to time. I watched the men go into the summer kitchen and again I saw another snake. They always seemed to be around somewhere. Fine. I went over to the men and said " Excuse me, Magnum stay where you are for a moment. " I reached under the rattan sofa and felt the snake bite again. It's not working. I got a good grip on the snake and twisted its neck. I dropped the snake in the bucket or container where I had the previous ones. Looks like I'll have to go back and empty that one too.

I went back to the kitchen annoyed, now my arm would be burning and aching again for a couple of weeks maybe. I had been bitten quite talentedly by various snakes over this month or so, some not really feeling anything and then others making me pissed off. I set the table and went to get the men. Oh, I had no idea Colin and Magnum were such passionate snake scientists. They had emptied the container and were now photographing every snake that was in there. I coughed and Colin looked up. He was looking rather quizzical and obviously overreacting a little. I was fine. No problem. I dispersed the snake venom quickly and efficiently Mirella always helped and took some good molecules from there to the molecular store.