"Jeb. Listen to me carefully, Jeb. I am tired of being a parasite. Can you understand that? Do you think I want to go into another body and have this start all over again? Do I have to feel guilty forever for taking someone's life away from them? Do I have to have someone else hate me? I'm barely a soul anymore--I love you brutish humans too much. It's wrong for me to be here, and I hate feeling that...And what if things change? What if you put me in someone else, steal another life, and it goes wrong? What if that body pulls me after some other love, back to the souls? What if you can't trust me anymore? What if I betray you next time? I don't want to hurt you!"
"The first part was the the pure and unadorned truth, but I was lying wildly through the second. I hoped they wouldn't hear that. It would help that the words were barely coherent, my tears turned to sobs. I would never hurt them. What had happended to me here was permanent, a part of the very atoms that made up my small body. But maybe, if I gave them a reason to fear me, they would more easily accept what had to be."
"Just a few more things to do. Three, to be precise. Three last deeds to be completed. First, I ate...Second, I went to see Sunny and Jodi...So I proceeded to my third and final deed: I lied."
"What would it be like for everyone here, meeting Melanie for the first time? Would it seem the same to them, as if there were no difference? Would they really grasp that I was gone, or would Melanie simply fill the role I had? Maybe they would find her utterly different. Maybe they would have to adjust to her all over again. Maybe she would fit in the way I never had."
"Wanda?" Kyle said."I was done, all my tasks accomplished. I only had to wait a bit now and not fall asleep. Tired as I was, I didn't think that would be a problem. My heart was pounding like a fist hitting my ribs from the inside. No more stalling. It had to be tonight, and Mel knew that, too. What had happended today with Ian had shown me that. The longer I stayed, the more tears and agruments and fights I would cause. The better the chance that I or someone else would slip up and Jamie would find out the truth. Let Mel explain it after the fact. It would be better that way."
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry."
"Um...why?"
"For trying to kill you," he said casually. "Guess I was wrong."
Ian gasped. "Please tell me you have some kind of recording device available, Doc."
"Nope. Sorry, Ian."
Ian shook his head. "This moment should be preserved. I never thought I'd live to see the day that Kyle O'Shea would admit to being wrong. C'mon, Jodi. That ought to shock you awake."
"Jodi, baby, don't you want to defend me? Tell Ian I never have been wrong before." He chuckled.
That was nice. It was nice to know that I'd earned Kyle's acceptance before I left. I hadn't expected that much.
Thanks so much, Mel thought; her words flowed fast, in a burst, her fear marring her sarcasm.
Sorry. You don't mind too much?
She sighed. How can I mind? I'd do anything you asked me to, Wanda.
Take care of them for me.
I would have done that anyway.
Ian, too.
If he'll let me. I've got a feeling he might not like me so much.
Even if he won't let you.
I'll do whatever I can for him, Wanda. I promise.
"I truly love you, Ian." It was the only way I could tell him goodbye. The only way he would accept. I knew he would remember later and understand. "With my whole soul, I love you."Chapter 58:
"I truly love you, too, my Wanderer."
"This was my planet, and they wouldn't make me leave. I would stay in the dirt, in the dark grotto with my friends. A human grave for the human I had become."
"Heart and soul. Not the same thing, in my case. I'd been divided too long. It was time to make something whole again, make a whole person. Even if that excluded me."
"You are the noblest, purest creature I've ever met. The universe will be a darker place without you," he whispered.Chapter 59:
"Listen up, Wanda. I know exactly what you don't want to be. But we're human, and we're selfish, and we don't always do the right thing. We aren't going to let you go. Deal with it."
"I held you in my hand, Wanderer. And you were so beautiful.""Happy and sad, elated and miserable, secure and afraid, loved and denied, patient and angry, peaceful and wild, complete and empty...all of it. I would feel anything. It would all be mine."
Epilogue:
"What if those feelings in the hospital, those few perfect moments of certainty right after I'd awoken in this body, had been illusion? What if I remembered them wrong? I knew that nothing had changed for me, but how could I be certain Ian felt the same? The body he'd fallen in love with was still right here!"
"Look like I'm not the only one who's gone native...Burns Living Flowers," he introduced himself.---Amelia
My eyes widened at his name. Fire world--how unexpected. "Wanderer," I told him.
"It's...extraordinary to meet you, Wanderer. And here I thought I was one of a kind."
"Not even close," I said, thinking of Sunny back in the caves. Perhaps we were none of us as rare as we thought.
He raised an eyebrow at my answer, intrigued. "Is that so?" he said. "Well, maybe there's some hope for this planet, after all."
"It's a strange world," I murmured, more to myself than to the other native soul.
"The strangest," he agreed.