Ana and the Lunar Knights

I was just a small girl when I first met the explorer. The doctors had called me in to check out my growth, and there he was sitting among them. His head tilted down, hands barely touching his knees.

The adults looked at me with great interest, some even smiling warmly. But not the explorer. He never once lifted his head to look at me, instead choosing to examine his shoes with great focus. So many questions swirled in my head as I sat down across from him, trying to make sense of what I saw. I tried to focus on myself instead of staring at him, pretending to listen to one doctor after another explain how my life would be from this point onward. Each doctor explained the various procedures that would happen to me, some of them quite painful or even dangerous. They talked about the risks of each operation and how best to deal with each possible outcome.

Many of the operations involved removing portions of my body: arms, legs, fingers, toes. Other procedures would remove my bones or organs from inside me and replace them with artificial ones that could help me grow faster.

When all was said and done, I was still just a young girl watching the adults around me as they continued their conversation behind closed doors after the meeting was supposed to be over. The explorer stood up slowly and began walking towards me without making a sound. He stopped right next to my seat so close that I could feel his breath on my skin when he spoke softly into my ear "You can run away."

* * *

I remember the look on his face when he said that to me: pure shock and disbelief as if I had sprouted an extra head right there in front of him. No one ran away from hospitals unless they were terribly sick or injured; they simply waited patiently until they were well again before going home again. We live in a world where sickness is a thing of the past and people are no longer born with defects that prevent them from living normal lives like before; those people usually died long ago during childhood due to poor care or nutrition before medicine became advanced enough for us to extend our lifespans so drastically now. But running away wasn't something anyone did anymore; it simply wasn't necessary anymore because we no longer had anything worth running away from anymore.

I didn't know what else to say other than "Yes," because I knew deep down he was telling the truth about something being terribly wrong with me and this place and these people were not here for good reasons at all- they were here to turn us into tools they could use out in space!

"What do you know?" I asked him as he took me back through the building on that very night after escaping with him without anyone noticing our departure away from the hospital- everyone's eyes were too busy watching their tablets or doing work while we walked by quietly through their midst unnoticed as ghosts disappearing into nothingness against the wall behind them- miraculously escaping capture before we ever left the building at all!

He looked at me in stunned silence as if he couldn't believe what I just asked him; it almost seemed like he wanted to laugh but held himself back somehow so his laughter wouldn't scare me off like it probably should have! He just looked at me for a moment before finally muttering "Everything" under his breath and taking off at a run across an open field behind us leading us further into some woods where we couldn't be seen by any surveillance cameras easily! My heart pounded loudly in my chest like it might explode at any moment but yet I didn't seem afraid but instead felt strangely exhilarated by it all as if every cell in my body suddenly came alive again after being dead for a thousand years or more! All because this man showed up out of nowhere by chance like some guardian angel who had appeared just in time for me when I needed someone most desperately!

So many questions raced through my mind as we ran back through the woods together: who was this man really? And why exactly did he show up out of nowhere like this? What did he mean when he said everything? What did he know about all this? And most importantly...where were we going? Where could we possibly go now that escape was finally within our grasp?!