#bitty!sara

And so, three weeks and many cities later, she was still no closer to getting home than she’d been before. But at least she’d been learning. Her perceptions and memory deteriorated quickly if she let herself float about on the wind, but if she possessed someone, she found herself clear-minded and well-grounded. Possession was like pushing the reset button on her small, ghostly existence, and she wondered why she’d ever been against it. It was good for her.

So she traveled, hopping from one person to the next, careful not to take any one of them too far lest she find herself caught in a missing-persons hunt. It was getting easier and easier to simply push aside the person already residing in each head.

But of course, she hadn’t taken possession of someone who already had company. Not until just this moment, that is.

Instead of the easy transition as she settled into the young man waiting for his bus, she felt extremely crowded. She allowed herself only the briefest moment of confusion before confronting the other presence in his head--one which was all too familiar.

‘You.’

Sara stayed in the child until they arrived at the family’s home. She couldn’t risk more than that; it could mean exposure, and she was no longer confident that being incorporeal would protect her. So the moment they were through the weathered front door of the battered white farmhouse, she extracted herself from the kid and drifted away.

The boy took that moment to start shrieking. Sara winced out of habit, then realized some of the static had gone from her hearing. As she looked around, the world around her had more definition: ink-smudges had definite, recognizable shapes, even if the details still evaded her.

That was very interesting.

She waited until night fell. As the sun sank below the horizon, she was relieved to discover that the customary boost of strength came to her. Nighttime was the time for ghosts, after all.

The parents put their child to bed, then followed soon after. Sara lurked in their room, making the husband uncomfortable, until they were both asleep. Then she waited some more, just to be sure. Only when they’d both taken up some rather obnoxious snoring did she dare lower herself into the woman and take control.

‘Who are you?! What are you doing to me?!’ Her fear was strong, and nearly pushed Sara out. It took everything Sara had to hang on.

‘Hush now, dearie. I’m only borrowing you a while. There’s someplace I need to be.’

For hours and hours she searched with no luck, until a sound caught her attention. It was a warbling within the static that surrounded her, something almost bubbly. Water? She drifted in that direction, and soon another sound broke through: the sharp, grating shrieks that could only be a child’s laughter.

A person-shape broke off from the rest of the smudge around her, small and unsteady. It wobbled towards her, said something she couldn’t make out. But one thing was clear: the child could see her.

“I need help,” she said, reaching out towards the child. “Please, can you help me?”

The child came towards her, reached out to touch her hand, and then--something strange happened. Everything turned upside down. The ink-blotch world before Sara turned red and warm, and the static was abruptly replaced with sharp, clear sounds: worried voices, feet crunching on gravel, the sound of a stream nearby.

She opened her eyes and saw blue, cloud-specked sky. The ground was hard and cold beneath her. She sat up just as two people, a man and a woman both much taller than her, reached the place where she’d fallen.

“Sweetie, are you okay?” the woman asked, stooping down to lift Sara into her arms.

“You’ve gotta watch that ice,” the man said anxiously. “It’ll get you every time.”

All at once, Sara realized what must have happened. She looked down at an unfamiliar green coat and blue-mittened hands, then back up at the woman--presumably the child’s mother.

“I’m okay,” she said carefully. Just those two words, nothing more.

The man broke into a broad grin and laughed. “That’s my tough boy.”

A gust of wind blew, carrying this speck of condensed energy along on its currents. She tried to peer down at the scenery, if only to get a sense of direction, but her vision was failing. Indistinct blotches, elongated by her motion as she tumbled past, dark greys on an even darker black. Some brighter, nearly white lines which she assumed were roads broke up the monotony, but the farther she went, the fewer there were.

She was getting farther from civilization.

If she’d even been there to begin with.

The first spark of fear was smothered almost instantly by fury.

Those bastards had done this to her. How dare they. She’d get home, figure out what they were planning, and end them, if it was the last thing she did.

With renewed resolve, she strained toward the ground. If she could get close to people, there might be someone who could see or hear her. Or, more importantly, there might be a computer or a smartphone she could take advantage of to get directions back to Night Vale.