(May 14th, 1986)

"Wake up time!"

I had been dreaming, and being woken up out of a dream always leaves me a little disoriented and grumpy. The dream in question had been unusually vivid and had felt more like a memory than anything else…but not one of my memories, and in content had rather resembled a nightmare.

"Wha?" I asked muzzily, blinking to clear my eyes.

In the bed beside mine, Athena was just sitting up as well and looking around in confusion.

Without any kind of warning, the curtains were whipped back from the windows and I went blind. Athena actually hissed in a mixture of surprise and discomfort.

"Come on, lazy-heads!" The voice was aggressively cheerful. "It's a beautiful day and you're wasting it! Hello, there! Aren't you a beautiful kitty!"

I don't mind early mornings, but this was simply far too perky a greeting until I'd at least had a shower. Or something.

Artemis began to purr somewhere nearby. <>

"Grand," I muttered, holding up my left hand to shield my eyes.

"I think I'm blind," Athena grumbled, and I could see her doing the same thing.

"Who the heck…"

"My name Trish, and I'm going to be your physical therapist!" The perky female voice said. “Nice to meet you."

I lowered my hand a little as my eyes began to adjust to the flood of sunlight…and was momentarily struck dumb. She was a few inches taller than me, with burnished golden hair that was tied in a loose braid that fell past her shoulders and seemed to glow in the morning sun. She wore a tight tank top in bright red and black exercise leggings. Her eyes were a brilliant green, and her teeth - I could tell because she was grinning like a maniac - were white, straight and even. My first guess was that she was my age or a few years older.

What had struck me dumb was the fact that her ears were delicately pointed, like my own. Unconsciously, I began estimating her age upwards.

"Are you…?" I began to ask, not sure how to phrase the question delicately and not wanting to unintentionally insult someone who was responsible for my rehabilitation.

Her smile didn't actually get wider, but her eyes started to twinkle with amusement. "Uh huh! Never met another changeling, have you."

I hesitated a little, shook my head. "Just my half-sister. I'm given to understand that there aren't many."

"There aren't," she agreed. "Which is one reason I volunteered to take on your P.T.. I like to get to know every changeling who has P.T. needs in Greater Britannia." She smiled warmly. "I like to think of it as meeting the distant relatives." She came to stand between the two beds and offered me her hand. "So…let's make this a formal greeting. Dr. Patricia Kestrel. Everybody calls me Trish, and you're probably going to hate me before we're done."

I shook her hand warily. "Mage Alys Kinnear. These are my familiars, Athena and Artemis. What're you a doctor of, and why am I going to hate you?”

"Several things," she said airily, ignoring the second part of my question as she undid the sling holding my arm immobile and examined my wrist. "How does this feel?" She bent it carefully.

"Stiff, and just a little sore, but it's not nearly as bad as it was," I reported. "Several things?"

Her eyes met mine for a moment and she smiled. I thought it looked a little sad. "I'm almost two hundred years old. I've had plenty of time to pick up a few doctorates. I like doing physical therapy because it keeps me connected with people." She bent and flexed my wrist gently, nodding a little as she watched it. "We'll start doing some strengthening and flexibility exercises on this today. Have you ever done any upper-body muscle building?"

I shook my head, a little shocked by how badly I'd misjudged her age. And a little bit disturbed by this glimpse into my own future. If she was almost two hundred and still looked to be about thirty…

She caught my eyes again and patted my hand. "It gets easier with time, honest."

I wasn't sure if she meant aging very slowly, or building upper body strength. I didn't ask.

"Athena can help, I think," she said brightly, turning to look over her shoulder. "Don't you?"

Athena nodded slowly. "I think so. I could use a bit of exercise myself."

Trish's lips quirked. "I'll bet." Her attention returned to me. "How's the knee?"

"Sore," I said, "and it doesn't want to bend."

"Not really surprising, considering the damage done." She transferred her attention to my knee, throwing back the blanket to reveal the bandaged and braced joint. They’d finally removed the cast just the day before. ”Hmm. We'll start by trying to restore flexibility and worry about strengthening it later." She looked up at me and smiled. "How's that sound?"

"You're the doctor…"

Her grin became a little bit manic for a moment, then turned gentle and kind again. "So I am. All right then, let me go get a few things. We'll start in here today, and in a couple of days…assuming the forecast is correct and it stays sunny and warm…we'll go outside to work. Probably about the time you'll have started to hate me, and being out in public will keep you from swearing at me too much." She winked, and before I could say anything was out the door again.

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Two hours later I flopped bonelessly back onto the mat I was sitting on on the floor. I slapped it with my left hand and gasped out, "I yield!"

Trish laughed delightedly. "Oh no you don't. This isn't a martial arts match. Come on, one more and we'll call it a day."

"This is some kind of torture," I groaned. "You were right, I hate you."

She laughed, evidently able to tell I didn't mean it and delighted by the comment. "Good! Come on, one more!" She slapped my right hip lightly. "Up!"

"Come on, Alys, you can do it!" Athena added encouragingly from where she had just finished a set of slow crunches. From the way she was holding her stomach, she was probably pretty uncomfortable too.

I turned my head to look at Artemis, who was sprawled by the door. She yawned ostentatiously, pretending she didn't care one way or the other, but I saw a challenging gleam in her eyes.

With a grimace, I raised my right leg and slowly began to bend my knee, pulling it in towards my chest. I got it about halfway there before it sent a spike of pain up into my hip and back that made me grit my teeth and grunt. It was so sharp that I lost my breath and couldn't quite take another. The muscles in my leg spasmed and I lost control of it…but Trish was right there, catching my lower leg in her hands and tucking it lightly under her arm.

"Okay, easy now," she said soothingly. "That's pretty good for your first day." She ran her fingers lightly over my swollen knee, and I felt her gathering and moving Anima. After a moment, the pain faded, and I was able to breathe again. I gasped and relaxed, letting my body go limp as she massaged my knee and the muscles and tendons around it. "Better?"

I nodded weakly. "Ow." Tears came to my eyes and slid down my cheeks as I was overwhelmed by a mixture of frustration and sadness. "I'm never going to be able to walk normally again, am I?"

Trish frowned a little and looked at me closely, then nodded. "Morgana told me about your mood swings. Alys, I won't lie to you…you're probably going to have a bit of a limp when we're done here. But I'm confident that you're going to recover at least 90% of your knee's mobility. More than that, if you work at it. After a while, you won't know you ever had a problem at all. But it's going to take time."

"How much time?" I asked quietly, wiping the tears from my face as the emotions faded.

"Oh…I think we'll have you back on your feet and walking under your own power - probably with a cane - by the middle of June. Call it three weeks, maybe four. And by the end of the year, you'll hardly notice it most of the time. By this time next year, it'll be like it never happened."

I let that sink in for a few moments, and decided it was best not to dwell on it. "What was that spell you used on my knee?"

She smiled. "Caught that in spite of the pain, did you? I should've expected as much from a Wizard-in-training. It was a healing spell, a combination anti-inflammatory to ease the pressure on the nerves, and a pain-killer to help it the rest of the way along. Pain is a valuable tool for knowing when something is wrong, but once you know something's wrong it can get in the way of proper healing."

"That doesn't sound like a simple spell," I observed.

"It's not," Trish said, glancing over her shoulder at Athena. "One more set, Athena."

Athena groaned and started doing slow crunches again. "Alys was right, this is some kind of torture."

Trish smiled and turned back to me, resuming her massage of my knee and the surrounding areas. "Anyway, it's not a simple spell, but it's a very useful one. I could teach it to you, as long as you promise not to over-use it."

"How would I know?" I asked curiously.

She tapped my kneecap. It twinged a little. "Feel that?"

I nodded.

"If you couldn't feel that, it's too much. Numbing of the flesh, deadening of nerve endings, loss of motor control." She smiled. "In other words, you can't overuse it and still function."

I nodded again, understanding. "And you cast it without a verbal component?"

Her smile grew a little. "Yes I did."

"How?" I really wanted to know. "It sounds like a complex, multi-layered spell."

"Oh, it is," she assured me. "At first, I couldn't cast it without a verbal component. But I'm half-Sidhe, like you. We might not be quite as attuned to magic as our Sidhe relatives, but we're more attuned to it than our mortal ones." She patted my leg gently. "I'm sure you'll figure it out soon enough. It's something that comes to all of us, sooner or later."

She gently eased my leg down onto the mat. "I'm going to go get a hot wrap for your knee. Don't move until I get back." She checked on Athena, who was now lying flat on the other mat and rubbing the thin scar across her stomach gingerly, then left.

"I like her," Athena said finally.

<> Artemis yawned again, but was watching us both very closely.

I lay there, staring at the ceiling, and tried to sort through the messy jumble of emotions floating around inside me. Which ones were really mine? It was so hard to tell sometimes, so I took stock. It was something Dr. MacMoran had started to teach me before I'd hurled my custard at the wall - and had worked on with me a little since.

I felt anger, and sorted through that quickly: Anger at Brenna for having hurt me, anger at my knee for causing me pain (wow, that was spectacularly irrational of me), anger at Ben for having gone back to work when I needed him (that was pretty irrational too), and finally fresh anger at Trish for having hurt me and at Athena and Artemis for standing by and letting it happen.

Those last three bothered me. It was a fierce, burning, bloodthirsty anger that made me want to lash out at them, and I was pretty sure it wasn't natural. I'd have to watch that. I really didn't want to piss my new doctor off on her first day, and Athena and Artemis didn't deserve…

"Stop that and move on," Athena said quietly. "We understand, and we'll help you keep control."

I grimaced and sighed. "You're monitoring me."

"I am." Her hand found mine and squeezed gently. "So's Artemis. Keep going, you're doing a good job."

With a little sigh, I turned my attention inward again, knowing it was futile to argue with her. Frankly, I didn't want to…as guilty as I felt about needing their help, it made me feel warm inside to know that they were there for me, no matter what.

Back to my emotional typhoon, then. I felt something close to despair over how long it was going to take the damage to my knee to heal and for me to get back to normal. That seemed natural enough. It was a difficult thing to accept that I would have a handicap for a while…but everyone was assuring me I could work through it, so I had to be strong and keep working at it. Besides, I could be plenty stubborn when I needed to be, and I was not going to let the damage Brenna had done to me keep me off my feet.

"Stubborn is good," Athena murmured, twining her fingers with mine.

That made me smile. "I think that's enough inner reflection for now. Stubborn and digging my heels in is probably a good enough place to stop."

She shrugged a little - I felt the motion in her arm - and I could hear the smile in her voice when she said, "That sounds reasonable."

Trish swept back into the room, carrying a steaming towel wrapped around something. "It may be reasonable, but is it rational?" She flashed a smile, knelt down beside me and draped the heated towel and pad over my aching knee.

The relief was immediate. The heat soaked straight into my knee, loosening the sore muscles and tendons. I may have actually groaned a little as the lingering pain immediately faded away. "I don't know if it's rational or not, and right now I don't care, either."

Trish laughed and lifted my right leg a little, wrapping the towel around it. "There we go. Ten minutes with that and you'll be feeling a lot better."

"Do I get one of those?" Athena asked hopefully.

"For stretching the skin around that scar?" Trish smiled. "Nope, sorry. Hang in there though, that'll ease up before you know it, especially if you stick with those crunches. We'll get you both started on some free weights tomorrow, too. It'll be good for you to build some upper body strength."

Athena and I both groaned together. From her spot sprawled by the door, Artemis made a sound suspiciously like a chuckle.

Trish clapped her hands and laughed again. "That's what I like. Happy patients."