She opened her eyes, and blinked in the dark. She looked around her sparse room, feeling a little stronger. Each day that passed left her a little more in control of her body, able to move more. She'd been able to sit up, and eat a thin soup that he had made for her.
She'd been able to keep it down. He explained that the venom was being purged from her body, that her immune system was recovering.
That she would live.
He told her that he had been helping her, healing her, and how he had been afraid that she would not make it for a long time. He told her that he was glad when he thought that she would live after all.
She peered into the darkness, her eyes getting used to the dim light.
She saw him sitting there, at the only chair in the domicile, at the only table. He was sitting straight upright, motionless. His eyes were only slate black orbs in his thin skull, revealing nothing. It did not look as if he was looking at her, though. Or anything else, for that matter.
It seemed as if he had grown taller, or rather stretched higher. If she had to guess, she'd put him at about nine feet tall at the moment.
She sat up, with some effort. Next to her bed- well, more a mattress on a shelf- was a simple wooden table. She found her glass of water next to it, filled and somehow cold.
She drank it down in long gulps, keeping an eye on him the entire time. But he never moved, even slightly.
She laid back down, and went to sleep.
*****************************
She woke up, partially anyway, some time later. How long she couldn't say.
She was laying flat on her back, on her thin mattress. Her covers were next to her, she was a little chilly. Perhaps that's what woke her up, she was only wearing a simple pair of white underwear.
His long, distended fingers were on either side of her head, pressing lightly into her skull. The touch was gentle and somehow not foreign, not unpleasant. She blinked her eyes a few times, and looked up at him, at his black eyes. Those eyes were not looking down at her, from what she could tell.
"What are you doing to me?" she whispered in the dark.
"I'm healing you."
"How can you do that?"
"I can...
change
things here. You may notice that I myself am changed, if I don't keep track of my body it can stretch and alter itself until I force it back into shape. But I can also change things here in this place also. Things that seem solid here are somewhat...
fluid,
is the word I use, but that's not quite accurate."
Her head began to throb lightly where his fingers were pressing into her skull.
"
Why
are you healing me? Why didn't you just let me die?"
His long shoulders pulled upwards into a shrug.
"I may have use for you," he replied in the dark, his black eyes still looking at nothing in particular. "I may not. But I decided that it was best to let you live either way. I wasn't sure you would. The only other person I've ever brought to this place did not do as well as you. Your super powers seem to protect you in some ways here."
"How long are you going to keep me?"
He shook his head.
"Time doesn't quite mean as much here as it does other places. It'll be best for you to quit thinking in terms of time, and just to accept the moment. Trying to apply the framework of time as you understand it in a place that doesn't work that way will drive you insane after a point."
"I don't understand."
"I'll try to help you... I'll try to protect you from your own mind turning against you. But it will be easiest if you accept the moment, and only the moment, is what I need you to do."
