Over the next few days, I put every minute and every ounce of effort that I could into my rehab and training my magic. I was determined to be ready to get out of this hospital before September when the next semester at Vanguard University was due to begin. My sister was alive so that probably meant that Mom was too, which meant that we could rescue her.

It was still a slim possibility, at best, but one that I held onto with the tenacity of a rabid dog. My special ability, and Kelly’s return, made what was once only a slender and faint thread of hope much more feasible if I could master my new ability and discover its limits and potential. First, though, I needed to be ready, and I needed to help my sister get ready too. I needed to get used to my new body and she needed to deal with the trauma that had broken her this badly.

I was doing my rehab exercises to work on my strength and stamina three times a day; once before breakfast, again at midafternoon, and then before bed as well. I would have pushed it even further if Breeze, Jade, and the other nurses hadn’t placed that limit upon me. I had worked myself to the bone that day after I found out that Kelly was alive and here too, and they didn’t want me overdoing it, hurting myself by pushing too far, and extending my recovery time instead of shortening it.

I was trying to build my strength and stamina and work my wings as much as I could through other means as well. Not only was I flying every chance I could, but I was also exercising my wings whenever I was practicing my water magic as well. It helped me learn to divide my attention to focus on more than one thing at a time, which would be a good skill to develop for when I needed to use magic while flying around. When I was physically exhausted from flying and stamina training, I worked on learning to control my magic with Poppy, and whenever I was feeling mentally exhausted from magic, I would go back to flying.

Flying was going much better than the magical stuff though. While I was starting to get a feel for my element and controlling it, I felt that I still had a long way to go before I would have any finesse with it. There were five times that I managed to put out fires when Poppy set her clothes or other things on fire, but I mostly brute-forced it and got everything around the Fire Sprite soaked in the process.

One thing I was having trouble with though was trying to use my special ability. I just didn’t seem to have enough juice to use it with how much I had been practicing my magic, especially since I was still having trouble figuring out how to consciously absorb mana. I was also kind of terrified that I might teleport into a wall or person or something though, so I was holding off until the power experts were ready to help me figure things out. I had an appointment for that later this afternoon.

My near-constant practice with both magic and flying did help me eventually figure out how to absorb mana before bed last night though. That sensation that I had been feeling when I tried to meditate that made me hyper-aware of my body and wings and made them all tingly (the very same sensation that had me giving up all those times) was actually what it felt like when I was actively absorbing mana. Who knew?

Now I knew what it felt like, and I discovered that by focusing on increasing the intensity of that tingling sensation, I could increase how much mana I was absorbing and how fast. I was feeling just a little bit dense after figuring that out though… after three days of frustration and thinking I still wasn’t getting it at all. Maybe I just hadn’t thought it would come so naturally, that I should have been looking for something that felt alien to me, or at least something that felt ‘magical’. All that time I was missing the forest for the trees when it turned out I was just a natural at mana control, or at least that’s what Jade said.

She figured that my special ability was one of those that was fueled by mana instead of physical or psychic energy, and apparently, it wasn’t that uncommon among Fairy-type Altered. My special ability was also a mana hog, so my body was adapting to be able to naturally gather more mana, and more quickly, than even most other Sprites. Sprites are already better at that than most species since we’re built for using elemental magic. “Ugh… how does that even work? We’re so tiny. How can we possibly hold more mana than a human does?” I asked her when she told me that while watching me do my morning rehab exercises.

“Mana isn’t a type of energy that can be detected in mundane ways, or even humans who couldn’t use magic would have likely discovered it long ago. It doesn’t exist in the physical world, but rather something that I call the Metaphysical Plane. It’s like souls, we may not be able to detect them in any meaningful way, but they’re there, we all have one,” she explained with a patient smile.

“Fairy types, and Sprites in particular, are extremely sensitive to this Metaphysical Plane,” she continued after giving me a moment to process what she was telling me. “Our bodies are designed to tap into the Metaphysical, and while our bodies may act as a conduit to draw that energy into ourselves, mana isn’t stored in the body, it’s stored in the soul. Some souls are merely larger than others or store metaphysical energy more efficiently. Body and soul, every person is a unique individual.”

“This metaphysical stuff makes my head hurt,” I complained. “I’m pretty sure I couldn’t sense magic before I woke up and Sprouted though. So did my soul change as well as my body?”

Jade laughed and shook her head. “No, Lily. I don’t think so. Even if your soul was sensitive to the metaphysical and mana before you became Altered, your human body was not. As I said before though, Sprite bodies are built for this sort of thing and provide a conduit that your soul lacked before. The current theory about Altered is that it’s, at least in part, genetic and mostly determined by what geographic regions their ancestors came from and what genes those ancestors possessed. Even now, there are still some parts of the human genome that are a mystery to us. I prefer to think that our souls play a part in what a person becomes when Altered as well.”

“What, like reincarnation or something? Like we were Sprites in a past life?” I asked in confusion, pausing my wing exercises.

“Perhaps,” she said with a laugh. “Given that most Altered are based on creatures of myth and legend, it is not an idea completely without merit. Maybe there is a reason these creatures showed up in myth and legend, maybe they really did exist once upon a time, and we are their remnant souls seeking to make our new bodies more comfortable for our souls. Breeze would debate that though. I think it is more that both genetics and our souls play a part in the process though. Our special abilities seem to be different though.”

I raised an eyebrow at that last part and inquired, “What do you mean?”

The Earth Sprite looked me over for a moment before replying. “Special abilities don’t seem to be connected to our Altered physical forms in any way. There is seldom any reiteration in displayed abilities of Altered of the same species, to the point that many people thought that special abilities were random at first. They’re not though. The reigning theory right now is that our special abilities are suited to powerful wants and needs once our bodies are fully matured. What was going through your mind when you first teleported, Lily?”

I thought about it for a moment, trying to recall what was going through my head at that moment. “I guess I was ashamed, and I was having an anxiety attack because I felt guilty and terrible because I thought I embarrassed Poppy, and she wouldn’t want to talk to me again. I wanted to be anywhere but here… I guess I might have longed for someplace I thought was safe and familiar too, because I was feeling vulnerable.”

“A powerful need and desire,” she pointed out with a faint smile and a nod. “Poppy was realizing just how difficult life can be for people as small as us and she wanted to be able to have proper clothes and other familiar things that she thought no longer possible for her. As for me, I manifested my special ability not long after Sprouting. I was terrified because I was so small that most people barely noticed me, and I couldn’t move or speak. I was desperate for some way to communicate with others.”

She made a good point, but there was one glaring exception to that potential rule. “What about Kelly? Why did she become invulnerable then? She was trying to…” I couldn’t finish that sentence.

“Your sister thought she lost everything, Lily, and came back to a strange place and a changing body. You of all people should understand how that feels,” Jade pointed out with a sigh. She had a point. If I didn’t have Moonlight and wasn’t hanging on to the slim thread of hope that I could find and rescue Kelly and Mom, I might have very well been in a similar state. Especially after my traumatic and gory Sprouting.

“Yeah, but that still doesn’t explain…”

Jade places a gentle hand on my shoulder. “She may have thought she had nothing to live for but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she wanted to die. Perhaps, on some level, she was afraid that she would succeed in her attempts, and what she truly needed and wanted was to hold on to life, to find some reason for living. The subconscious mind can be a powerful thing when you’re confused, lonely, and hurting.”

“I guess you’re right,” I said as my thoughts drifted once more to my sister.

Every evening since finding out she was here, I had been spending several hours after dinner visiting Kelly, followed by snuggling and snogging with Poppy while getting to know her better. When I visited my sister, Moonlight would always come with me for mental and emotional support, but she was still reluctant to show herself to anyone but me yet, not even my sister, who she technically already knew. It made me wonder again if she only existed in my imagination.

I think that those visits were hard on both me and Kelly. It was hard seeing my sister look so… broken. Bit by bit, I was slowly getting Kelly to open up to me, and I thought that I could see some life returning to those amber eyes, but progress seemed slow, and my mind was haunted by how distant and lifeless she had seemed that first night that I had seen her. What had happened to her beyond the breach?

It turns out that even Kelly didn’t know the answer to that question, and that was part of the problem. She clearly remembered being captured, trying to break free of the iron grip that held her, and then being taken through the Breach, but after that, nothing. The next thing she could consciously remember was waking up alone and buck naked in a small, dark room with a slight baby bump as she started to change into something not human.

The only reason she could even see in the room was because her Altered form possessed very good dark vision, and her eyes were likely one of the first changes. Nurse Janet told me that Kelly was something called a Huli Jing, something in Chinese mythology that bears a lot of similarities to the more well-known Japanese Kitsune. They have some shapeshifting and illusion-based abilities and can feed on life essence as easily as regular food.

She didn’t know whether she was in that room for days or weeks and then she woke again in the middle of the desert, still buck naked and four months pregnant with a baby that she couldn’t remember conceiving, a baby that she lost not long after as a result of either her rapidly changing body or being taken through the Breach. Between that, thinking she was becoming a monster, the Incursion being the last thing that she could remember clearly, and then not being able to contact me through my implant when the Vanguard found her and the other discarded victims and brought them here, it was no wonder that she was such a mental mess.

Last night she admitted that she sometimes got flashes in her dreams. Bits and pieces of strange lives she hadn’t led, things that she wasn’t sure whether they were forgotten memories being dredged up or just her subconscious mind at work coming up with the worst possible scenarios for her lost time. In these flashes, it was like she was a passenger in her body, unable to control it herself.

Sometimes, she was some sort of gladiator in an arena. Other times, she was on a stage, speaking words in a language she didn’t know and couldn’t understand, or she was a slave, or even some kind of trophy. Then there were the times when she would dream that she was being bred like some farm animal or a rare breed of pet. Those scared her the worst, given the state she was in when she awoke in that dark room.

I worried that there was nothing that I could do for her. Telling her that everything would be okay seemed so hollow after what we had both been through, and neither of us had any sort of prescience to make that anything more than empty words. Telling her that they were just dreams would be just as empty because I had no more idea what she went through on the other side than she did.

All that I could truly do for my sister was to be here for her now. I could hold her and make her feel loved as best as I could with my tiny body, I could be a listening ear and a steady presence at her side, I could reassure her that I would never let us be separated again, and I could promise her that together we would find and rescue Mom and make the beings who had done this to her suffer in kind. I hoped that would be enough to help her heal, to help her find a sliver of the confidence and passion for life that she once had.