Coming to her senses with a stiff and aching body was not a new experience for Samantha, but it was unpleasant nonetheless. It felt like there was fire in her veins, though she had no explanation for it, just as she had no recollection of what happened between her amplified panic attack and this very moment. St. Benjamin spoke from close behind her, and she assumed it was his strong arms that were holding her up. "She's waking up," he said, although Samantha had no idea who he was speaking to. Groaning, she opened her eyes and found an extremely handsome stranger leaning over her, his expressive brown eyes full of concern and traces of what, if she didn't know better, could only be described as fear. "Mmm," Samantha cleared her throat and found she was having difficulty controlling her vocal cords, "I'm awake," she managed. The beautiful brown eyes that looked so deeply into hers filled instantly with relief and a touch of guilt. Even though she didn't recognize the handsome face these eyes were part of, she felt a strange sense of familiarity and almost intimacy with this complete stranger.

Feeling reassured by St. Benjamin's warm presence behind her, Samantha leaned back into his arms and blinked at the stranger, trying to get a better picture of him in spite of the dirt marring the lenses of her glasses. His brown hair hung down to frame his face in adorable, wavy tendrils, and she gulped when she saw the pronounced Adam's apple centered in a flawless, wiry neck. He smiled at her, and she felt like her heart was melting right there in her chest; the pain she felt seemed like it hardly mattered anymore as long as she had this amazing eye candy in front of her. Who in the world was this? Before she could say anything to him, his face turned serious again as he moved in closer to her once again. Her subconscious scanning of the features of his body was sadly interrupted, which made her realize she was engaging in an activity that, honestly, seldom interested her.

"Samantha?" he asked, and the light, musical timbre of his voice calling her name was enough for her to wonder if she was being hypnotized. "Samantha?" he repeated, looking concerned, and her eyes looked up at him once again. She suddenly realized she was meant to reply, but her entire vocabulary seemed to have floated away from her addled mind. "Yes?" she asked breathily, although her voice still had a raspy tone to it that she apparently couldn't shake. "Can you swallow?" he asked her, never breaking eye contact with his worried but lovely gaze. Her eyes widened significantly and she gulped automatically, and the man seemed to take this as her answer - although she hadn't meant it as one. "Open your mouth," he requested, and Samantha immediately complied, parting her lips as he continued, "I need you to let this dissolve on your tongue, and then swallow it." The woman was still dazed, and she watched his elegant fingers show her a sparkling green gem the size of a quarter. When he used those fingers to place the spar between her slightly parted lips, her entire body felt the thrill of their touch.

Just as he had said, once the spar was in Samantha's mouth, it began to dissolve into her saliva. As much as it tasted like a regular, albeit clean, stone, it was obviously something entirely different. As soon as it was completely liquified, she swallowed it, and it was as if everything the magical substance came into contact with was completely renewed. Her voice no longer felt strained, for example, and the scratchiness in her throat disappeared as if it had never been there. It made its way down through her esophagus and into her stomach, and the nausea she didn't even realize she was feeling just... resolved itself. The acid that plagued her throat more often than not was nullified instantaneously, and the spar hadn't even made its way into her bloodstream yet. Samantha was already beginning to physically feel like an entirely new person. This was almost too much to believe, and a cure like this hadn't even played a role in her wildest dreams.

Unlike any other substance Samantha had ever ingested, the liquid spar made its way into the network of her veins and arteries with remarkable speed. She could feel it as it moved through her entire venous system, radiating outward from her abdomen along increasingly numerous paths. Her exhausted and hard-worked intestines were renewed, and Samantha couldn't help but think that now, they might actually work. The constant pain in her heart was the most conspicuous of all the changes; it no longer felt as though it might burst at any moment, which was even more painful than it sounded. She hoped with all the hope she still had that her heart would begin to pump enough blood to keep her from feeling as though she might pass out at any time, and that doing so would cause her no further pain. Even that seemed beyond belief, and Samantha had almost forgotten what that felt like.

Aside from her various organs, the muscles and joints in Samantha's body that were a source of constant agony began, one by one, to stop screaming in pain via their connection to Samantha's long-suffering brain. Her back, which she sometimes imagined would crack open down the middle and give way to some hideous foreign organism that was the source of her immense pain along her spine and shoulders, began to relax in much-needed relief. Samantha couldn't stop herself from letting out a sigh of exhaustion whose existence she had long suppressed just to make it from one day to the next. Her head lolled back onto St. Benjamin's shoulder as the muscles that supported it almost felt like they no longer existed once they were no longer excruciatingly painful. The tightness in her chest finally gave way as well, and she felt as if she was truly breathing entire breaths for the first time in her life.

The healing sensations given off by the spar finally reached her mouth and jaw, and this was nearly the most unbelievable sensation Samantha had felt yet. The pain in her jaw unworked itself much like her former back pain, but the teeth she had damaged from years of uncontrollable vomiting were palpably repairing themselves. New enamel began to cover the spots that were wearing thin, and the dentin exposed from all the grinding of her teeth during the worst of her nightmares was once again covered safely by her gums. Her teeth even straightened themselves ever so slightly, like they'd all agreed at that moment that they'd like to get along better. At the same time, similar miracles were occurring in Samantha's lower body. The pain she felt from her period disappeared as if by command, and she could almost feel her uterus stop bleeding as the second cycle she was experiencing this month suddenly ended. The comparatively minor aches and pains throughout the muscles in her legs and the joints of her hips, knees, and ankles vanished just as quickly, and although her muscles there were already plenty strong, she had a strange inkling that her legs would fail her less often now, as if they had suddenly become aware both of each other and of their actual purpose.

Samantha continued to marvel as the spar kept changing and healing her body. She felt her arms strengthen themselves much as her legs had, and the weakness in her fingers that caused them to tremble was suddenly gone without a trace. Even the ridges on her fingernails and toenails miraculously smoothed themselves out. She looked at the tattoo on her wrist in concern, but as if this transformative gem could tell its importance to her, she found that it didn't disappear at all - only the lines she had meant to get touched up reassembled themselves as she watched. Unexpectedly, she felt a heat rising at the nape of her neck and begin to cover her scalp while a tingling sensation that was somewhat pleasant covered her head from hairline to hairline. Reaching up, she found the few gray hairs she had accumulated from sheer stress came away effortlessly between the fingers she combed through her hair. To say she was amazed would be an understatement.

Her face began to tingle in much the same way, and she felt it concentrate over her eyes. She imagined the wrinkles she had acquired from sleepless nights spent sick were smoothing themselves out, and she closed her eyes again from an instinctive fear of the delicate orbs getting damaged. This was the only part of what she was beginning to think of as her transformation that was at all uncomfortable, and when the sensation faded, she opened her eyes to find the world a blurry mess. Although she was frightened, if this was the one price she had to pay for the immense healing that had occurred in the rest of her body, she would gladly pay it and plenty more. Her eyes, unable to focus, began to cross slightly, and it was at this point that the handsome stranger's concern returned.

"Are you okay, Samantha?" he asked, "Did something go wrong? Please tell me; I can give you another spar if you need it." "Spar?" she asked him in confusion. "Right," he said, guessing correctly that she had never heard the word before, much less seen one of these valuable objects in person, "The gem I gave you is called an emerald spar, and it can be used for multiple different purposes; this one was to heal you - I couldn't bear it if you died," he added truthfully. Samantha suddenly understood why her depression and anxiety had been eased - her body was no longer addicted to the medicines she had been given to treat those ailments. She would need to find another solution to medication in this world, and that would be difficult, but at least she wouldn't need to worry about a possibly fatal untapered withdrawal. "Thank you," she said, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. "I can't tell you how grateful I am to you for saving me, even though we've never even met before. I can't see you very well anymore, but I can live with low vision if it means the rest of me has been healed," she admitted.

The now-blurry figure leaned in, gently removing Samantha's glasses from her face, now glistening with tears. He carefully placed the glasses his spar had rendered unnecessary into the bag with the rest of the treasure King Patch had given him, looking as though he treasured them more than anything else in that bag. Samantha's surroundings became clear at once, and she found her water-filled eyes staring once again into those kind eyes that conveyed more concern for her than anyone had shown her in her life. "Of course we know each other," he replied, beaming at her in light of the news she had given him. "We agreed that I would come back to you, to find you no matter what," he said with an amused smile on his face, "My name is Spencer, but you always called me 'Ao-ao'."