I took another deep breath, wiping more tears away from my face. Wishing they'd go away, but also glad for them. As a general rule, I felt better after crying. It was a release. I could move forward after getting it all out. Of course, that had been before getting infested. I'd done more than my fair share of screaming and crying at the Yeerk Pool in my almost year as a Controller. The knowledge that Nillet would be back, stealing my body, able to probe my mind, would fill me with dread that just crying couldn't take away.

He hadn't been cruel to me beyond that. Not that I was one of those hosts who felt grateful that things weren't worse--they were closer to Voluntary Controllers than not. If you were going to defend your Yeerk, you might as well take the plunge and become voluntary.

Was that Tarash's game? Play nice, even give me some control, to get me not to resist her? To be a nice little host, quiet in my head, trying not to think at all? I knew those types of Yeerks existed, too. They'd punish their hosts just for thinking, if it distracted them.

I cautiously began to walk, glad the path was empty of people. Sure, there were squirrels all over the place, but they only looked at you if you were offering them food.

My legs moved easily enough, to my relief. I hadn't had much opportunity to move on my own since Nillet wormed himself inside of my head. Sometimes, people lost the ability to move on their own after mere months. But everything seemed to be working okay.

I tried to pretend no one else was in my head. It was just me. The last year hadn't happened, and I was a couple of months into my freshman year of college. Of course, this meant sharing a tiny triple instead of having my own room that was almost as big as a standard double, but my roommates had been decent. Too bad I hadn't been able to be myself around them since before last Christmas.

My classes, ironically, had been more interesting then. Or so it had seemed. Maybe, it had been the newness of everything.

I began to think about the time before the Yeerks took me, specifically, my senior year of high school. I'd applied to a handful of schools, all within two hours from my house. I'd gone to overnight camp since I was eight years old, then been a junior counselor there after aging out, so I'd been used to being away from home. Still, I hadn't wanted to go out of state, much less out of the country. After getting into my first choice with a full scholarship, the choice seemed obvious.

Everyone said that college was an adjustment. You get more freedom and have to schedule your time accordingly. You don't spend nearly as much time in class, but there's a ton of work outside of it. I'd been managing fine with that, and then Nillet...

No. I wasn't going to think about him. I walked more quickly, then broke into a run. I told myself that Yeerks weren't real. Wasn't I in control of my body? No. I was free, I'd just experienced something traumatic and my brain had tricked me into thinking I'd lost control of my body. Maybe I'd been drugged and raped, and this was my brain's way of coping. Wasn't that disassociating? I vaguely remembered something about this from my Psychology class.

I kept running until I thought my lungs would explode, then slowed to a walk. As the path was a circle, I noted I was almost where I started.

How ironic.

Note: Tarash is being quiet out of respect to her host. She'll talk again soon enough!

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