Cured

(Note: this prose depicts events later in the Hollow's timeline than what is typically considered "present day," and therefore includes developments that are not reflected in the encyclopedia.)
Cenn had come to hate the intervals when his captors briefly gave him a body and spoke to him almost more than the total emptiness they interrupted. In the emptiness, his mind could occasionally escape into hallucinations or memories or dreams, scenarios completely of its own devising. Many of these were unpleasant -- though sometimes even the unpleasant ones were preferable to the usual sensory deprivation of quarantine -- but sometimes he got a nice one. Sometimes he got to pretend for a little while that things were all right.
Of course it was during one of these moments of relief, a dream of his time at university, that his jailers dragged him back to reality, to his corrupted body and inescapable prison. He had just answered a professor's question correctly, just seen the professor open her mouth to praise his insight, and then he was lucid and embodied again, and he immediately began to weep.
"Hey, shhh," said a voice, and a hand stroked Cenn's hair. He flinched away; he couldn't remember the last time someone had touched him, especially with kindness. "It's all right. You're all right. We figured it out. You're cured."
As usual, the lights in the room were low. Still, Cenn recognized the woman sitting on the edge of his bed. He'd never seen her -- or any of his captors -- so close, or with her hood pushed back over her short, spiky silver hair, but he would have known Frip by her white raiment alone. She was his most frequent visitor, always present as others cycled in and out, so he wasn't exactly surprised to see her -- but he was surprised to see her close to him, touching him. And then he processed her words, and realized that the tears he cried were clear and not black, that the oily sensation and rotten taste of The Shade were gone -- his body felt normal, like it was supposed to feel.
And how was he supposed to feel?
This was not the white, featureless room they usually woke him in, but a furnished bedroom. The window over the bed looked out over a charming second- or third-story city view, and the bedclothes felt luxuriously soft -- usually he didn't even get a sheet.
"Let me out," Cenn whispered, and Frip tilted her head in something like surprise, though it was only his usual mantra, the same thing he said every time they gave him a voice. "Please."
After a moment's consideration, Frip nodded. "There's no reason you can't go out now. Where do you want to go?"
Cenn stared at her, doubting the evidence of his own ears, unable to believe that his usual request might actually be met with a yes rather than the perpetual sorry, we can't, there's nothing we can do, which was almost worse than the total lack of response that had met him in life.
"I ... I can go?"
"Wherever you like." But Frip frowned. "We should be careful, though, to avoid overwhelming you, so ... somewhere quiet would be best. The library, perhaps? Or, no, I know; the palace gardens would be perfect."
"Can I get up?"
Frip nodded again and stood to clear the way for Cenn to stand up. He expected his legs to feel rubbery when he stood -- it had been a long time, after all -- but no, that wasn't how bodies worked in The Hollow. Then he noticed that the room had a door, unlike the research chambers they usually placed him in. Able think of nothing but passing through it, escaping, no matter what Frip said, he rushed over and tore at the doorknob.
The door opened, and Cenn was halfway down the hallway beyond before Frip could say, "Hey, wait ..."
The other doors on the hallway were closed, and no one opened them to stop Cenn as he thundered down its length, looking for stairs. Instead he found a foyer whose windows looked out onto street level. Right, Cenn remembered; the Hollow didn't have to follow physical laws. A second-story room could open onto a first-floor hallway. And the doors in this foyer could open onto ...
The street! Cenn let the double doors fall closed behind him as he stood with his arms limp at his sides, looking at the sky for the first time in so, so long.
It was a strange sky; the powers that be in the Hollow -- whatever they were -- had chosen a sparkly purple nebula to hang over the City Sidere today, bright enough see by even though there was no sun. Staring at it, Cenn realized that he would never see the sun again, not a real one; he would never look up at a normal Outside sky again. Tears rose to his eyes again.
"Cenn?" Frip stepped out of the door behind him and went to take his hand, but Cenn flinched away. He saw something flash in her pale eyes, but he couldn't say what it was -- anger, perhaps.
"Please don't put me back," Cenn said, his voice low, not quite daring to look Frip full in the eye -- which was rather challenging anyway, because she was shorter than him, and her hood shadowed her face.
"You never have to go back there," Frip said gently. "You're free and clear. There's no reason to keep you in quarantine now."
Cenn didn't really believe her. Perhaps someday he would learn to. But everything that had happened to him from Shade encounter onward had seemed so senseless, so random and cruel, that simply telling him there was no reason for further suffering did little to convince him it wouldn't happen again.
Perhaps Frip recognized his skepticism. She took both of Cenn's hands and tugged on them until he faced her. "Cenn, no one will ever hold you against your will again. I promise."
Gazing down at her, Cenn realized that he really didn't know anything about her. He'd managed to make deductions about some of his jailers, when he felt lucid enough to contemplate the little clues in how they behaved, how they spoke to each other. He felt fairly certain that Frip was an Architect; she always seemed to manipulate the Hollow's reality with ease, and the others turned to her when they needed something done -- often, when they needed Cenn returned to his incorporeal prison. But he didn't know who she was, beyond the person holding the keys to his metaphorical cell.
Someone bumped into Cenn, jolting him out of his contemplation, and dropped a quick apology before continuing down the street. The contact sent a shock through Cenn and made him realize that he and Frip were not alone here. It wasn't busy, but a few passersby wandered along the narrow thoroughfare, and several of them shot strange looks at Cenn, who stood half-naked and gawping outside what turned out to be an unremarkable house, tall and skinny in the style that Cenn remembered from his days in Hiddenbridge for college.
Feeling suddenly very exposed, even though he couldn't experience cold within the Hollow -- and thus would never experience it again; he was dead -- Cenn wrapped his arms around himself and glanced back at the house, then at Frip. "I'd like to go back inside now."
"Go ahead," Frip says, gesturing at the door. "It'll unlock for you."
The idea of freely choosing when to enter and exit a space felt so foreign to Cenn that he reached for the door handle gingerly, as if he expected it to attack him. More than that, he expected it to stay locked. But the latch clicked as he touched it, and he walked inside.
He couldn't for the life of him retrace his steps to the bedroom where he'd first woken, though he knew the route had been simple.