Six months later.
Christine survived. Through sheer will.
To spite the sentinel maybe,but mostly to avoid punishment from dying before her soul mate.
Granted, one could ask;" what more can they do,the worst has already been done?"
She had watched too many movies and read enough stories that the worst that could be done was yet to be done.
Living and remembering every waking moment of every lifetime was not the worst,or it wouldn't have been the first punishment, she reasoned.
So she pulled herself together and like in the before, she "cultivated" the pain into something she could live with,she forced the little body to adjust to the agony and she too adapted to the mortal need of her infant body.
The integration had been hell,worse than anything she had yet suffered.
There was a silver lining though,now she could sleep. She dreamt and rested and that helped with keeping the core of painfrom dissolving and overwhelming her again.
Though she was still to aware in her waking moments, not seeing awake all the time eased her.
Forming the core of pain in this living body had changed the flesh,so to speak. Her appetite was that of a grown person, her body grew proportional to the nutrition received ,the bigger her body,the easier she she became.
She was in and out of the hospital, multiple blood tests and scans were done,but they could not find what was wrong.
They all agreed that something was wrong.
This mysterious sickness she had was a point of contention in the home she was being raised in for about five of the last six months,until the mother decided since she was clearly not about drop dead no further investigation was necessary.
The father, a tall man,handsome to the point of looking effeminate, with large black doe eyes,and full lips was mostly always angry.
It was he of the voice that had upset the mother during her pregnancy so often,it was he of the voice that had upset Christine so often in her newborn months.
He argued of the cost her treatment,the cost of food and clothes due to her abnormal needs. He called her a demon to her face.
Considering that he'd been vile since she was in utero, Christine didn't take his hate of her personally.
The mother was always upset though,which Christine hated and even though she could not speak, she vocalized her displeasure at his arguments loudly, which only provoked him to trashing whatever room their in. Her mother soon insisted no arguing infant of the baby,and when he persisted she would simply get up,take Christine and leave the house. Sometimes they stayed with friends of her mother,most who apparently, had told her to not marry the man she was forever at odds with and encouraged her to leave him,or more often,in a hotel.
At first Christine had thought she wanted to get away from their advice until an unguarded conversation made her realize that like her father,that they thought her abnormal and some thought her an out right demon. They even quote a "prophecy" (something from the book of pillars about a demon that would break the ...)accept before the woman could finish speaking her mother stopped her. Christine's mother was sure she could understand and made a point of not allowing heavy conversations around her,and since all topics were taboo in front of her,she would be left alone in a closed room so the adults could adult conversate to their hearts content. She guessed her mother didn't like leaving her alone so much so,they would spend the most times in hotels together,in companiable silence.
After her discharge from the hospital, Christine hardly cried, as soon as she had control of her bodily functions, she stopped pooping in her diapers, indicating with vigorous body gestures and unintelligible vocalization that she wanted to be held over the toilet. (This was also a talking point amongst the adults,who found this another proof of her freakish nature.)
She never cried when she was hungry, so her mother became proactive. She would prepare baby food every three hours and a bottle in between, accept it soon proved nor to be enough as Christine would vocalize displeasure until she was given more food.
Soon the mother just gave her the same food she ate,in the same serving size,only difference was that it was pureed,at first,that changed as her teeth came in,quicker than they should have. By the time she was eleven months old, she was eating by herself, food mad for an adult,and she was as big as a two years and could walk unaided.
She couldn't talk though. She could say "mama" or "dada". Christine herself thought she had a stutter because whenever she tried to talk she would repeat the same noise repeatedly very fast.
Soon she vocalized less and less as her mother took steps to insure that she wanted for nothing, she was on a strict toilet schedule which never varied no matter where they were,which Christine found comforting. She was always removed from the space her father was in when he started on her mother so they could not provoke each other. Since this was almost always,she started seeing less of him until the sixth month after her near death experience passed without her seeing him even once.
The mirror was always on the edge of her vision. No matter how she moved she could never get in front of it. She thought it was only in her head as no else seemed to see it,and if anyone moved to where the mirror was it would shift.
It never moved out of her sight.
Talking of mirrors,she couldn't see her own reflection in mundane mirrors or reflective surface,she could see others but she couldn't see herself. Her mother would put her in front of the mirror and tell her she was beautiful, asked her if she saw the pretty baby,Christine would just stare impassively until she stopped.
She didn't understand what this meant.
Was it a side effect of the changes she had wrought in this body during mind-soul-body-pain integration?
Or was she a demon?