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She decided to stay until she could walk without the world tilting about her. But she resolved that the moment she was capable of leaving, she would, whether or not they gave her permission. Her eyes felt heavy, and she submitted to a natural sleep without dreams. She woke to the sound of pretty music, a tinkling of melodic bells, most likely from a music box. And a soft tapping she couldn't identify. She opened her eyes, and there was little Marie, dancing in a golden sunbeam. A pretty little girl, with reddish gold hair, an elven face and laughing eyes. She was playing with a pink satin ribbon, making it spin and twirl in the air. Ah, children. Such innocence and beauty, and so trusting. She had a drop of bitterness for children, though. The aliens never micromanaged. They fixed the earth, and protected nature, but they could not do a thing about humans. They simply could not fathom the essence of being human. So that innocence would one day be destroyed. Marie laughed, just from the sheer joy of being alive. Who will end this dream? Who will shatter your childhood? Why can't you stay this way forever? It only looks like sunshine and roses from your sight. When will you see that it is all a lie? Marie saw that she was awake, and stood still. The ribbon fell, dangling motionless from her hand. "Good morning, Silvia." Such a pretty voice, full of happiness. "Hello, Marie." She would be fit to kill if someone told Marie about the dragon, or how close she came to dying. Children should never be told about death, danger resulting in death, or what mutilations a frightening creature could inflict. It spoils their clean minds, and scares them at night. She remembered what it was like to be afraid and alone at night, when every sound might be a a goblin. Marie snapped her back to the present. "I did your hair." Silvia felt her hair, now clean and brushed into a ponytail. How long was she asleep? She'd interrogate the nearest doctor later. "Thank you, Marie." Marie laughed again. "My name isn't really Marie. My Mamma calls me Maria, Daddy and Michael call me Marie." Silvia tried not to sound so sickly. "Really? Well, what do you say your name is?" "My name is Mariana, because it means 'star of the sea'. Mamma says they named me that because my eyes are blue, like when the stars dance on the water. I like it." "It's a pretty name," Silvia agreed. Mariana pointed at the small table next to the bed. It was a music box, as she'd expected, with tiny fairy dancers that turned in a ring with the music. Centaurs played musical instruments on one corner, and a few trees stood in the opposite corner. Someone had taken a great deal of time and trouble to carve that out of wood, then to paint it. Some very skilled hands had spent many hours perfecting it, and it showed. "Michael and Daddy made that for you. Do you like it?" Silvia was stunned. She had been expecting a doctor to take Mariana away eventually, and she had been planning to send this Michael a one- word message, 'Coward', for not having the courage to look her in the eyes and thank her. She had not expected him to walk in after freezing up in the woods. He would be too ashamed. But this...this was not expected. This gift was his thank-you. It changed things.
Mariana didn't notice. She was too impatient. "Silvia, this one looks just like you!"

Silvia looked at the box again. In the trees, and looking around one at the scenery, was a girl that looked exactly like her. She was smiling, but she was out of sight from the rest, peeking around at them as though she were afraid of ruining the happy time. At least, that was how it looked to Silvia. Mariana waited. "Oh, it really does look like me. Sharp eyesight, Mariana." She smiled, than frowned in childlike puzzlement. "I don't get why he didn't put you in the dance, or with the centaurs. He's a little weird that way. He always does stuff like that when he makes things. Lots of people really like it when he does that, but I don't get it." "Uh..." Before she came up with a reply a doctor invaded her room once again. "Well, hello! I hope your little visitor hasn't been too tiring for you." "Oh, not at all. In fact, she's been very sweet." "Good, good. Come now, Mariana. Your brother is here for you." Mariana pouted as she came. "Do I have to?" The doctor smiled gently, but said firmly, "Quite. You brother is waiting." Silvia interrupted, "If I may, could I speak to her brother?" He considered it for a moment. "Well, I don't see why not. I'll be right back."

Micheal entered the room a few minutes later. "Hey, Marie, some of the explorers I told you about are in the visitor's lounge. Why don't you go hang out there for a little while?." Mariana smiled. "Okay, Michael." She skipped out of the room next to the doctor. Silvia stared at him until he started to fidget. She waited for him to say something. He did- eventually. "So, uh, what did you want to talk about?" An introvert. Lovely. "What were you doing in that particular godforsaken area?" He blinked, having obviously expected her to yell at him again. She couldn't really blame him for that, all things considered. "We, uh, got lost." Silvia gestured to the music box. "Your sister said you and your father made that for me." His face colored. "Yeah." Hmmm. "It's an excellent piece of workmanship. You must spend a lot of hours in the shop." Now he just looked confused. "Yes." "I see. How many friends do you have?" She was getting close to a sensitive area, and she knew it. "Why do you care?" She snapped her fingers, as though she had just remembered something. "Because you obviously don't have enough. And that is the answer as too why you find it so hard to do anything outside the workshop." She leaned back on her pillow with a smug, self-satisfied smile. "What?! I never said anything like that!" As she expected, he tried to deny the fact that he had a problem at all. "You don't know what to do outside your comfort zone because you never go outside your comfort zone. Find something to do, like...bowling or something. Volunteer to help fix a playground, do something, until it it a comfort zone to you. Then you can start making friends, talk to people who aren't related to you, be social. Get to know your friends. Once you have a circle of friends, you all as a group start doing things you wouldn't or couldn't have done alone, like laser tag. Being in a little fishbowl is not going to help you at all." Having found his issue, the accident turned out not to be his fault. She gave him the solution on a silver platter, he had thanked her with a gift, there was nothing more to be said, and his sister was waiting. "You should go with your sister. It was nice talking to you, and goodbye." He walked out the door, somewhat dazed. She smiled. She thought pretty quickly, and acted or spoke immediately. It tended to overwhelm some people. "Hey, Mike." He turned. "Sorry for yelling at you. I should've knocked that pixie senseless instead." She waved him goodbye, a silent signal to remain speechless and continue walking. Now, where did that doctor go? And where were her things?

Is anybody actually reading this? I'm not writing a storyline yet, but as a result Silvia is getting very complicated. So, I'm just saying that if you don't jump in now, it might get increasingly difficult to do so.
I still want to know if anyone's reading this, even if they will never want to write anything.

Okay, whatever. I'll just do this by myself. And since for some strange reason everything I post in dies prematurely, I'm also going to ignore everything outside this thread. I will read, but I shall not post. And now, the story continues.

Jason chatted with the hunters, most of whom were unable to leave the hospital because of various injuries. The others just visited as long and as often as possible because they were bored out of their minds with pedestrian life while waiting for the others to heal up. If fact, they had taken to making rounds of the small building, and just saying 'Hi, how's life?' to everyone. Several had befriended patients who had no visitors because they were too far from home, or fair-whether friends had dropped them when they fell ill. It was a sad little hospital, in a small bubble at the center of the area. No one ever came there, except when injured. And since Area 2319 was one of the worst places to be (dragons, quicksand, goblins, massive poisonous bug infestations) no one but mauled, near-dead hunters looking for thrills and adventure and meat in one go, ever landed there. They made up about 76% of those admitted. Who are the others? Suicide attempts. People who had lost hope in general, or been abandoned or manipulated by their friends, who were really just waiting for an opportunity to stab them in the back. And when you ran out of options, hope, and friends, there was always Area 2319. The last suicide had been from its very own head doctor. His will left everything to the hospidal, and said at the bottom, "May you never lose hope, as I have." Everyone began their rounds with a stubbornly upbeat attitude and cheerful face, but always came back sober. Justin had been almost as close to death as Silvia had been, but from blood loss. They saved him with blood donations from all the doctors and hunters who could afford to give. Internal bleeding, fractured bones, 2nd and 3rd degree burns...He was not a pretty sight. But whenever they entered the official visitor's room, all the hunters refrained from doom and gloom. Several doctors had begun this practice, and now with so many people in there at all times, many devoted their lunch breaks and spare time between shifts to go there. Patients got better faster, because they wanted to go there. Doctors often say healing is limited by a lack of will to live. The body begins to mend accordingly. At any rate, this sudden wave of invalids was actually a good thing for the building's occupants, in a roundabout way.

The hunter's medic, Avery, spent most of his time there, refusing to stay in his room. He had caused quite a ruckus, demanding to be released. He had a broken arm an a lacerated shoulder, but he protested that he could get up and walk while it healed. The doctors had agreed to let him stay in the visitor's lounge instead of his room, after one of them threw up his hands and said, "To hell with it. A doctor is his own worst patient." This was also a good thing, because Avery never ran out of stories to tell. He was finishing one when Michael left, and was telling another to Jason and some others. "...So then the families with kids under 6 or anyone over 60 were given permission to board, and I saw one man who was clearly over 60 waiting by the doors. When the rest of us were finally moving towards the entrance, he was still standing there. When I asked him why he wasn't already on board, he pointed to the doors of the waiting room and said, 'Well, my wife won't admit she's over sixty, and she has the boarding passes.' " The listeners laughed. A hunter was about to pick up on it when Mariana skipped into the room, "Hey, Jason! Look!" She held a clear, teardrop- shaped, semi- reflective stone by a silver chain. It sparkled with refracted light. "That's really pretty, Marie. Where did you get it?" Jason asked. "From Silvia," She answered, then ran across the room to a window. "She showed me how to make the rainbows laugh. Watch this!" Mariana climbed onto a chair and held the stone to the light. Anything that was not in shadow suddenly had sparkling rainbows dancing on it. Everywhere. And unless you were in a ballet studio, or some other place with huge mirrors everywhere, that should not have been possible. In the stunned silence, faint laughter seemed to come from the colorful light. Mariana's giggles mingled with it, a sweet, clean, perfect sound.

Jason watched Micheal walk in. He stopped, staring. "Mariana...what did you do?" She laughed. "Your face looks funny!" Jason grinned. Micheal did look rather silly, with his eyes bugging out and his limp posture. Mariana hopped down, and the colors instantly vanished.
"Silvia gave me a present! See?" She held up the deceivingly ordinary-looking stone.
"Here, you can hold it." She took his hand and placed the prism in in it. He looked at it closely. It looked and felt like glass, or solidified water. Then it suddenly evaporated in his hand, and appeared on its chain around Mariana's neck. Magic, Jason thought. "Oh, I forgot. She said that unless I gave it away, it would always come back to me." Avery asked if he could hold it, just for a second. He held it up to the direct sunlight again, but nothing happened. Mariana smiled wryly. "She said only the pure of heart can make the rainbow laugh, and that means only kids like me can do it right. Usually." It disappeared and reappeared around her neck. She turned to Micheal imploringly.
"Can we go home now, so I can show Mama the laughing rainbows?"

Jason watched the two siblings leave. In the moment of quiet after they left, someone said "That's weird." "Why?" A doctor asked. Jason provided the answer. "She doesn't seen like the type of person to give something special away to a complete stranger." In fact, she seems to despise people in general, he thought. The hunter who seemed to know the most about her added, "Are you joking? She has never done such a thing, as far as anyone knows." "And how much do you know?" Avery asked, shifting his weight as if getting ready to hear a long story. The hunter, Dylan, did not look comfortable. "Don't look so worried. You're not gossiping. I'm asking." "But I'd be the one telling." He said with a grimace. "Or," Avery prepared to rise, "I could just ask her, but I don't think she'd like that." Jason rolled his eyes. "I don't think she cares." Dylan shrugged. "Fine. I'll tell you what I know. We came from the same city, before I joined this crew. She was a little spitfire, and believe it or not, she is about my age. And you can ask her yourself. Anyway, she had opinions and was no diplomat. She started arguing with the most respected Elder of the city, and she ended up kicking him in his soft spot. She stayed for several weeks under house arrest as punishment. Word spread, though she was careful not to reveal her name, and a crowd gathered to see her when the appointed day of her release came around. Once she was released, she announced that she was going to let us destroy ourselves, and that she would watch and laugh when our society went up in flames- metaphorically speaking."
"...I wasn't being metaphorical."
Jason started, or flinched, at her sudden appearance. Apparently, she had the same mind-set as Avery, and was using her IV to keep herself from falling, and to help her walk. She didn't notice the horrified looks the doctors were giving her, or she was just ignoring them. "I was going to look for my stuff, but then I heard your misconceptions and I just have to fix them. You want to know what happened? I had concerns about several things (that still need fixing, by the way) but nobody would listen to me. So I went to the Elder, but he didn't listen either. Not that I expected him to, you see, but I wanted other people to listen. Maybe, just maybe, someone intelligent with sufficient influence would 'take up the banner', so to speak. But I had not expected the Elder to begin assuring everyone that we were fine, there were no problems whatsoever, that I was just a child who didn't know anything, that I didn't know what I was talking about, et cetera. I tried to be calm, I tried to speak intelligently to persuade him that I did indeed know exactly what I was talking about, but he drowned me out. He would not let me get a word in edgewise, so I said, 'When I repeat this for the fifth time, I will kick you in the...groin.' He still didn't listen for all five repeats, so I said 'Okay, don't say I didn't warn you,' and kicked him." She smiled. "He fell to the ground, writhing in pain. But my strategy failed. Nobody was interested in why I kicked him. I was just 'the-brat-who-kicked-the-Elder'. So, by the flames I was referring to Ancient Rome, whose morally corrupt and probably insane emperor was rumored to have started the fire that destroyed most of the city. Well, when society gets to that point, I'm going to laugh and say 'I told you so.' Does that make sense now?"

Silvia didn't wait for an answer. She turned and continued walking- okay, staggering -down the hall, past the room. Jason appeared at her elbow. He was the closest to the door. Her bad luck was holding. "Whoa, where do you think you're going?" She stopped and sighed exasperatedly. "I'm obviously walking away from you. Now release my arm before I elbow you in the face." "You obviously need to get back to bed before I do so." he said quietly. She scoffed. "You are on crutches. I am not. You could not walk holding my arm if you tried. I am not in the habit of letting cripples hit the floor, but there is a first time for everything. Now let go of my arm." He reasserted his grip on her arm with one hand and grasped the doorpost with the other. "I don't understand why you have to be so..." He cast about for the right word. Silvia maintained her expression of annoyance. "Critical? Cynical? Patronizing? Apathetic? Robotic? Cruel? Brutally honest? I have heard all of it before. It is irrelevant. My perception of you is falling rapidly. Let go." He tightened his grip. "No." In the blink of an eye, she let go of the IV and poked him in the eye, "OW!" then seized the IV again before she lost her balance. He let go of her arm to massage his watering eye. She staggered as fast as she could, which was almost as fast as power-walking, down the hall. "Nobody ever listens to me, but they always regret it!" She yelled as she escaped.

Silvia could hear them coming after her, doubtlessly to drag her back to her room. She shook her head. All the symptoms that had attacked and subsided were coming back with a vengeance. She kept her fingers on the wall, using it to keep her bearings. She banged into a dead end before she thought she would. Stupid depth perception. Ah, here we are. She had bumped into a wall of metal lockers, used for storing personal belongings. She located hers by date. It wasn't locked. She supposed that the hospital didn't have many thieves to worry about. She reacquired her cloak and belt, with the knife, whistle and pouch. The rest of her apparel was, presumably, in the laundry after her trip to the bottom of the mud hole. She turned to go back the way she had come, but at this point she couldn't see much beyond ten feet. Spots danced in her vision. Okay, so maybe it was stupid to leave her room, but she was bored. She wanted to listen to her music, or sharpen her knife, or play a tune on her whistle. She could have asked, but she was dying to leave the room, and she had already caused so much trouble for the doctors, albeit unintentionally, and she thought that she was strong enough to do it herself.


Jason rubbed his irritated eye indignantly. "What the heck?!" A couple of doctors rushed out after Silvia, a nurse told Jason to open his eyes. She took a small flashlight out and peered into his eyeball. "Oh, wow. She really did a fine job on your eye. It's very red, very irritated, but nothing is really damaged. Wait right there, and I'll get you some eye drops."