Alive Again: Awakening (Book 1)

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I was sore all over. It hurt to even open my eyes, but when I did, I knew that I was laying with my head in someone's lap.

To my right, the little girl was stirring something in a small bowl with a wooden spoon and the little boy seemed to be stuffing leaves with a goopy substance I couldn't discern. Once the little stuffed leaf was finished, it glided toward me or whoever was holding my head, all by itself.

The other boy held my palm, as he stuck his free hand firmly into the ground.

I registered the snake-girl's voice coming from behind me. "...injuries. She's fine. How're those weights coming, B?" They were her fingers, I realized. Her skin felt strange through my hair. They felt slick, but her fingers were dry. Their movements were fluid and gentle.

The little boy smiled. "They're coming," he said. 

"Good," she acknowledged him. "Medicine check, Maple? You got all the measurements perfect, right?"

The little girl nodded, not taking her eyes off of the mixture in her bowl.

"How're you holding up, Sting?"

The other boy looked up. "She only needs a few more nutrients and a decent meal and she'll be back at one-hundred percent," he reported.

"Where did Brandon go?" she continued.

Sting, as she'd called him, stared off to the left of me. "He said he was going to scope out the area, but he's probably sulking about accidentally shocking her. You know how he gets."

Her hands paused a moment at my scalp. "Serves him right."

"Delilah, what are we going to do about him? I thought he was getting better lately since you-know-who disappeared... but he's out of control," Sting murmured.

There was silence. The sounds of everyone working ceased.

"He's going to get over it one way or another. We can't force him to forget or move on. The best thing we can do at this point is show him that we have his back no matter what. G will take care of this whole AWOL fiasco," Delilah replied. "We can talk about this later. She's awake."

After a moment, the little girl set her bowl down and crawled over to me. She had big leaf green eyes and a sun-kissed complexion a bit lighter than mine. Her hair was odd. It was dirty blond with green flecks in it. I later realized that those green flecks were leaves, not I-Slept-In-A-Bush leaves, leaves that grew out of her head as naturally as her hair.

"Hi," she said simply, waving at me, even though her face was a foot from mine. The little boy scuttled over as well. "Hewwo," he said, following suit. It sounded like he had a lisp that turned his Ls to Ws. His hair was jet black hair, his complexion a smooth tan. His big brown eyes peered at me with curiosity.

"Guys, stop smothering her. She's still in recovery," Sting said to them. I looked over at Sting. He stared down at me. He had deep sea blue eyes, a rough ivory complexion and pale blond hair that stuck to his face, and (I noticed belatedly) a tail with a triangular tip at the end. There were strange slits on either side of his neck that registered in my brain as gills.

More items for the Weirdo Checklist.

"How are you feeling?" The snake girl, Delilah, leaned over me. I started to sit up. She braced me, gently lowering me back down. "You don't want to get up just yet." She smiled. "The treatment's not quite finished. Maple, is the medicine ready?"

The little girl, Maple, waved her hand above her head. The sound of splitting wood filled my ears, as a branch stretched down. From its tip, a leaf sprouted. Then another grew and another, until there was a cluster of leaves hanging there, twisting and weaving themselves together into what appeared to be a cup, which fell from the branch and into Maple's palm as soon as it was finished. Maple poured the mixture from the bowl into the cup and then held it out to Sting, who added a stream of clean sparkling water from his hand. Delilah adjusted beneath me. "It's definitely not going to taste good. Sting—"

"Open wide," he addressed me.

Groggily, I followed his direction. His hand motioned above the cup. The liquid inside followed, flowing up through the air, into my mouth and down my throat. It was over in seconds.

Delilah sat me upright. "Nice and easy," she coaxed, Sting holding my arm. She let me go gradually and moved around to sit in front of me. The little boy, Maple, and Sting joined us. We were seated in a small circle. "Do you remember your name?" she asked me.

"Savannah," I mumbled, trying to get myself to focus.

"Good," she said, continuing. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"I was... at school, and then running, darkness... arguing, snake, pain," I rubbed my eyes, still fuzzy. "Brandon..." I remembered everything in a rush. "Brandon! We were escaping, and then—" My eyes watered in shock. "There was a missile..." I whispered.

"Missile?" Delilah echoed.

"The area is—" Brandon appeared at the edge of the clearing where we were.

"Brandon, what's she saying about a missile? What missile?" Delilah questioned him.

My tears brimmed over, as Brandon urged, "I can explain. The Suits had more weapons than I planned for. They launched a missile at her school—"

Delilah's expression took on disbelief. "You let her school explode?"