Five years before Alex met Shepherd...

Jamie awoke with a splitting headache. It had something to do with her dream. Her headaches, and subsequently her mood for the day, always had to do with dreams.

But try as she might she could not recall her dream. The effort did little more than to aggravate the little trolls that were no doubt pounding around inside her skull.

"Balls," Jamie cursed as she sat up. A much fouler word escaped her lips when the action made her dizzy and the feeling, compounded with the unforgivable pain in her head, sent her running to the conjoined bathroom.

After spending a few minutes hunched over her sink Jamie collapsed around it's base, embracing it like a lover.

"Don't make me work today," Jamie moaned to no one particular.

When no one answered she pulled herself off of the floor with slow, exaggerated motions. When she was on her feet she reached out for the string of the ceiling light. Jamie grunted in mild aggravation when her hand missed it the first few times.

"I know you're up there," she growled, her eyes shut tight in preparation, "Don't make me put in effort, light bulb. You won't like me when I put in effort."

As if it was actually threatened by her words the string fell into her hand almost as soon as she finished her threat.

Hah, fooled you. She thought to herself with a triumphant smile.

Jamie kept her eyes closed as she pulled the switch. The darkness behind her eyelids brightened, telling her the light still worked.

With a few steadying breaths she slowly forced her eyes open. Her vision swam at first, the bright light above her head threatened to send her into another sick fit. She blinked a few times to try and clear her vision as she held her breath in an attempt to keep the remaining bile in her stomach at bay.

Slowly a face began to appear. Wrinkled, flabby, and swirled around like someone had taken a mixer to it. Two beady little black eyes peered out from folds of loose skin, blinking when Jamie blinked. The face grimacing when she grimaced.

Well, it certainly wasn't a face you brought home to mom. But Jamie had seen worse, far worse. Whatever unremembered nightmare was that gave her such a headache hadn't made her face into anything particularly monstrous.

No, the face that stared at her in the mirror wasn't frightening. Jamie couldn't right away place the feeling her reflection gave her. But it wasn't fear. Unease, maybe?

Her head rang something terrible in that moment and Jamie let out an audible groan.

"Alright, I get it. No more thinking."

She turned away from the mirror and stepped into the nearby shower. Without a moment's hesitation Jamie turned the knob for the cold water and stifled a short scream when the frigid liquid hit her body. She forced herself to remain under the shower head and soon her body grew accustomed to the cold. Almost at once her headache began to subside.

Sleeping in the nude wasn't something that had come easy for her. Spending most of your sleep time wrapped in layers of gritty rags and blankets had been at first abhorrent to her. Until it was necessary. And after it was necessary it became all she knew. And when it was all you knew you had no choice but to grow accustomed to it.

Going from that to nude was like starting over from square one. But it was necessary, just as the rags and blankets had been. Pajamas and underwear weren't something you could wear in confidence when you didn't know what sort of body type you would have in the morning.

No, Jamie thought with a touch of humor as she examined her body, If I had been wearing any of the clothes they gave me I would have exploded right out of them.

The body matched the face, as it tended to do. Large and wrinkled with flaps of more loose skin dangling from her arms and legs. It made her daily routine of washing much harder but it was easier to mold it when it was wet. And, if Jamie was being honest with herself, she was fascinated by it.

It was the only hint to what she had been dreaming about, after all. Each mark, each indentation or blemish, it represented something. Even after nearly eleven years dealing with her 'knowledge' Jamie did not fully understand it, but she liked to pretend that she did.

"Maybe skipping dinner wasn't the best idea," she said, smiling ruefully as she rubbed her swollen stomach.

Once the shower was done Jamie stepped back in front of the mirror, still dripping wet. She gave her reflection one last look. Her time in the shower hadn't done much to help her remember her nightmare, even with the headache gone. She stared into the little dot eyes until she could almost believe she was staring at someone else. Someone not her.

"Well, it was nice meeting you," she said, and then got to work.

Starting on the face was the most natural thing to do. It was normally what people saw first, depending on if she decided to give herself other 'eye catching' features at least, and it was easier to work on the rest of her when comparing it to the face.

Normally Jamie started with the eyes but with all of the wrinkles and folds she hardly had any eyes at all. So, she set to work on those first.

Placing her hands against her cheeks, Jamie spread them across her face, as if she was wiping away a smear of dirt. As she did the flaps of loose skin where her hands ran over were, all at once, smoothed down. She repeated the motion a few more times across her forehead, below her skin, around her neck, and the thick skin shrank away like the wrinkles in a shirt.

What was left behind was a big round head with smooth skin and beady eyes. She looked like a cartoon character and the thought made her chuckle dryly before continuing.

She decided to keep the basic shape of the skull. The prolonged shower was making her late as it was so she did not have the needed time to get too detail oriented.

Besides, Jamie thought, tapping her chin with a forefinger mostly in contemplation, but leaving a cleft in its wake. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to look like today.

Getting back to work Jamie reached for the little eyes which had become more attainable. Closing one eye, she placed the tips of her fingers against her eyelid and slowly spread them out. As she did, the eye grew larger. When she removed her hand she had the one enlarged eye and the dwarf eye that appeared even smaller in comparison.

"Okay," Jamie said to her unfinished reflection, "Let's not get too perfectionist about this."

It still took her at least a dozen attempts before the eyes were close enough in size that it didn't look off at first glance. She decided to keep the dark color of the irises. Color changing still took a little too long for her liking.

Jamie kept the squashed nose and thick eyebrows. She thinned the lips with the tips of two fingers. She prodded the bridge of her nose several times to add freckles to the sun-starved skin.

The hair from her nightmare was short and white. There wasn't much she could do about the color in the given time but she tousled it a good bit with her hands until it was a long, untamed mane down to almost the small of her back.

Now for the finishing touch.

Jamie stared hard at her reflection. Finding the spot to start, she pressed her middle finger firmly against the middle of her eyebrow. Keeping the pressure, she slowly dragged her finger down her face, closing her left eye as it trailed over.

A jagged, pale scar appeared in the wake of her finger trail. As if she had long ago been slashed across the face by a blade. The dull ache started to return as she released her finger from her face with a low breath. She clenched her teeth until the feeling went away before giving her new flair a once over.

"Not too shabby, if I do say so myself," she finally said with an approving nod.

The rest of the body had to be rushed. Jamie ran her hands through all the heavy folds of skin, smoothing them down. She slimmed down the body, keeping it bulky, but small enough to fit into some of her larger options of clothing.

She wanted desperately to add to the smooth, unblemished skin. Hairs, freckles, moles, pimples. Maybe even another scar or two. But she was out of time.

There weren't any clocks in her room but she didn't need to see the time to know she was running late. After a year of the same routine she could feel it in her bones. A nagging anxiety pushed her to race from the bathroom, across her bedroom, and into her closet.

Her closest had to be the biggest room. Even larger than her bedroom. It had to be, in order to accommodate for all the various sizes of clothing her body required.

On better days Jamie would sometimes take the time to admire all the variety and take her time to pick a style that fit her look of the day just right. But today she raced to the back of the closest, where all the largest of her clothing could be found.

She slapped together an outfit consisting of a white, sleeveless t-shirt, camo cargo pants, and matching camo boots. It was dreadfully boring but it still managed to fit her look at the same time. Which was much more important.

Without taking the routine moment to give herself a last look in the mirror, Jamie headed straight to her bedroom door and threw it open.

"Sorry I'm-"

"Late," a voice finished for her.

A small figure was leaned up against the tunnel wall, directly opposite Jamie's bedroom door. There wasn't much Jamie could make out, aside from the familiar, raggedy green cloak and hood combo with literal spider webs dangling from various places. Everything else, including the figure's face, was cloaked in shadows from the surrounding torch lights.

"Late, Jamie," the figure repeated, shaking it's hooded head from side to side with a little 'tut tut' noise. "And on your one year anniversary too. Only you would be this dramatic about it."

Jamie knew she was just messing with her. She could hear it in the little cloaked one's tone. But she bucked up to the jibe nonetheless. "You lookin' for trouble, little girl?" Jamie huffed, wising right away she had had the time to change her voice. This one was far too high pitched.

That wish triplified when, in response, the little cloaked one doubled over in a sudden fit of laughter. Although she couldn't see, Jamie knew her acquaintance had her hands wrapped around her stomach and tears were brimming from her eyes.

"Please, mercy. It's far too early in the morning for your shenanigans," the little one breathed, straightening up. Jamie straightened up as well when she felt unseen eyes examining her. "You look like someone out of an anime."

"Oh shut up," Jamie said, giving up her tough voice with a defeated sigh. "I was given more than I could handle this morning."

"I can see that," the cloaked figure said and Jamie bristled at the thought of her hidden smile in the shadows. Her companion then nodded her head down the tunnel to her left. "C'mon, if we don't hurry we won't get any food."

With that she turned and proceeded on her way. Jamie followed with a huff. They walked a long stretch of the torch-lit tunnel in silence before Jamie cleared her throat.

"Sorry, for making you wait," she said, scratching a spot behind her ear. Crap, I forgot about the ears! Dammit. They better look alright.

"That's alright," her companion said with a careless shrug. Jamie stiffened when she felt the presence of those unseen eyes return to her. "Besides, if we miss out on food it looks like you'll be suffering for it more than me. You skip out on eating last night or something?"

"No, that's not it," Jamie said, feeling across her enlarged stomach. Though she wouldn't admit the thought had first crossed her mind too. "I've gone without eating before. It doesn't usually turn me fat the next morning."

"I thought Ms. Abigail said your dreams stemmed from your desires."

"She said they might stem from them. She said with dreams you can't be too sure of anything."

"Mmm," the smaller girl grunted before suddenly bounding a few steps ahead and turning to face Jamie in a flourish of smelly cloth and dangling webs. "Hey, hey, I wanted to show you something real quick!"

Jamie stopped in her tracks. In the new angle she could just make out a wide smile stretched from ear to ear. She shivered inwardly as she tried her first smile of the day. "What about breakfast?"

"It'll be real quick!" her companion repeated in a tone Jamie knew there was no arguing against. "You'll love it, trust me!"

Oh, I seriously doubt that.

But Jamie said nothing further. She planted her feet more into the dirt floor and kept her arms stiff at her sides as movement started up within the smaller girl's cloak. She flinched when a tiny hand, wrapped tightly in dirty bandages, emerged from within the cloak.

"Watch close," her companion breathed. Jamie took a step closer, leaned her head forward.

And she regretted it immediately.

There were little black things squirming in the palm of the little hand. Some sort of insect, Jamie could only assume, in the dark shadows. But on closer inspection she did not see the insects any longer. Just the bleeding hole they were crawling out of.

"Oh my god!" Jamie shrieked before turning her head away in disgust. "Ovidia, what the hell?!"

"No, no, see, look! I'm teaching them to go into my body, that way I can still have the element of surprise even when stripped to my bare skin! What do you think, Jamie? Pretty clever, huh?"

"What the hell," Jamie said again, under her breath, before turning back to the little girl. She pointedly focused on her face. "That's great. Really. So, how about that food?"

The cloaked little girl, Ovidia, hesitated. Jamie held her breath when she saw the hand clench into a fist. She let it back out when Ovidia's hand disappeared back inside her tattered robe.

"Okay, yeah. Let's go eat."

Jamie and Ovidia walked the rest of the tunnel in silence. Ovidia silently forcing more dime sized insects into other holes in her body. And Jamie wondering already when this day would end.