pale silver hair. Though they were all lovely, this one seemed particularly graceful to Fords Deep
Waters.
He was not alone in his reaction. He heard Darren's soft sigh, heard the admiring murmurs of
the students.
Gently, Darren placed the small glistening creature inside the opening Fords had made in the
human's neck. The soul slid smoothly into the offered space, weaving herself into the alien
anatomy. Fords admired the skill with which she possessed her new home. Her attachments
wound tightly into place around the nerve centers, some elongating and reaching deeper to
where he couldn't see, under and up into the brain, the optic nerves, the ear canals. She was very
quick, very firm in her movements. Soon, only one small segment of her glistening body was
visible.
“Well done,” he whispered to her, knowing that she could not hear him. The human girl was
the one with ears, and she still slept soundly.
It was a routine matter to finish the job. He cleaned and healed the wound, applied the salve
that sealed the incision closed behind the soul, and then brushed the scar-softening powder
across the line left on her neck.
“Perfect, as usual,” said the assistant, who, for some reason unfathomable to Fords, had never
made a change from his human host's name, Darren.
Fords sighed. “I regret this day's work.”
“You're only doing your duty as a Healer.”
“This is the rare occasion when Healing creates an injury.”
Darren began to clean up the workstation. He didn't seem to know how to answer. Fords was
filling his Calling. That was enough for Darren.
But not enough for Fords Deep Waters, who was a true Healer to the core of his being. He
gazed anxiously at the human female's body, peaceful in slumber, knowing that this peace
would be shattered as soon as she awoke. All the horror of this young woman's end would be
borne by the innocent soul he'd just placed inside her.
As he leaned over the human and whispered in her ear, Fords wished fervently that the soul
inside could hear him now.
“Good luck, little wanderer, good luck. How I wish you didn't need it.”
CHAPTER 1
Remembered
Iknew it would begin with the end, and the end would look like death to these eyes. I had been
warned.
Notthese eyes.My eyes. Mine. This wasme now.
The language I found myself using was odd, but it made sense. Choppy, boxy, blind, and linear.
Impossibly crippled in comparison to many I'd used, yet still it managed to find fluidity and
expression. Sometimes beauty. My language now. My native tongue.
With the truest instinct of my kind, I'd bound myself securely into the body's center of thought,
twined myself inescapably into its every breath and reflex until it was no longer a separate
entity. It was me.
Notthe body,my body.
I felt the sedation wearing off and lucidity taking its place. I braced myself for the onslaught of
the first memory, which would really be the last memory–the last moments this body had
experienced, the memory of the end. I had been warned thoroughly of what would happen now.
These human emotions would be stronger, more vital than the feelings of any other species I had
been. I had tried to prepare myself.
The memory came. And, as I'd been warned, it was not something that could ever be prepared
for.
It seared with sharp color and ringing sound. Cold on her skin, pain gripping her limbs, burning
