§
While my nightshift chambermaids were drying me and reading a gown for me, my sisters were in the midst of helping the two fairies not using raiments get dressed. Neither of them needed help, but I had been around fairies enough to recognize another fairy excuse for skinship.
I noticed belatedly while they dried me that nobody cared about how the bath was still wide open to the night air. The remaining wall, once the ceiling and the windows with their privacy-ensuring blinds slid aside, was only perhaps twenty five inches tall. We were probably visible to anyone on the ramparts who happened to look in the right direction.
I tried not to think too hard about it.
Naturally, the fairies didn’t plan to stay at the Castle, but to my surprise, they would remain my guests. Just as I learned for the first time that the bath could open up, I learned about a secret spot up in the nearby mountains which Mother created for her fairy children on ducal land.
They naturally wanted to drag me along, but I had my promise to Rod to stay within the castle defenses. That drew Velerè’s disapproval, because I was obviously not wearing my actual body, but Serera was the one to correct her.
“The mortals need assurance that their duchess is safe, after all. Why do you suppose she stays in this stone shell in the first place? Your Mother also would have rather stayed up at the Pond, yet she remained here or in her Atian estate most of the time.”
Velerè frowned as she pulled the mage robe down over Amana’s head. “It’s not even her real body.”
“The mortals don’t know that, Salne,” Mitozin corrected while helping tie Serera’s so-called ‘hauberk’, actually a thin fairy mail scarf she wears around her bust. “So for them it’s as good as her in the flesh.”
Velerè twisted her mouth as Amana helped Serera with her sword belt, then added, “I suppose being present for her people was why Mother had Inda pretend to be her when she ran after her mortal.”
The words were true, but kinda killed the mood.
“Um…” Lhan raised her hand gingerly. “Perhaps I can come with you? It’s not the same as your sister, but…”
“Yes it is,” answered both Mitozin and Serera. Amana giggled.
“Please come along,” Velerè nodded and stated, “Can you keep up with us?”
She pursed her lips, then replied, “I can keep up with Amana, anyhow.”
“Hey!” Amana protested, but I laughed.
“If she uses her immaterial form, she can keep up with almost anyone, Amana. But she was planning to keep her normal body, which means she has a new trick. I’m eager to see it.”
It seems that, just like Fan Li helped her acquire her adult body, she also helped her acquire the fae magic she would have learned as an adult but never had a chance to discover. Her new tricks included a more advanced means to move through the air.
“Alright then,” Mitozin stated. “I haven’t had enough of a soak yet, so I’m eager to get up there. You’ll come with us sometime else, Your Grace. Come along, Child.”
Her last words were to Lhan. As she spoke, a swirling mass of Water mana, manifesting as an incredibly dense fog, which wrapped her body, sweeping her into the air and out over the castle grounds.
Lhan’s new trick seemed somehow similar. She wafted upward, like a leaf caught in an updraft, the updraft being a similar mass of intensely thick Wind mana carrying her along, while somehow not so much as moving our hair. I watched in amazement as she blew along as weighing no more than cottonwood fluff, easily following my older sister on her way toward the mountains.
Lhan’s ‘aspect’ is Water, her father having been a fairy of the water, but being fae gave her the ‘Air’ aspect as well. It seems that Wind was the closest in this world to the Air aspect in Lhan’s native world, the difference being that Air includes Wind, Light and Pneuma somehow.
Their system works nothing like the system of Huade, you see. It seems Fire for her includes Fire and Aether, while Dark is simply not a thing. Mortal magicians could have Water, Fire, Earth and Life, which also included Pneuma, while Air belonged to any magic creature, in addition to their aspect, while being strictly inaccessible to mortals, as Air in her world is the realm of ‘pure’ magic..
I made myself stop thinking about it. It was a whole rule book alien to Huade, where the interconnection between elements were completely different, and didn’t depend on mana but directly on the ‘aspect’ of the substances of the world. Every bit of the rules of reality for her clashed with the ones I knew. Fan Li had been able to work it out and recreate it for her in this world, but I simply couldn’t imagine how she did it.
“Well, then, I suppose I shall go as well,” Velerè declared. “I will contact you when the others arrive, Your Grace.”
With those words, she simply… blinked out of existence.
“Showing off again,” Serera complained. “Shall we go, Your Highness?”
“Sure,” Amana agreed. She moved close to me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I suppose we’ll have to return to listen to the message here, since you can’t leave. I’ll keep you updated. The rest ought to arrive by the day after tomorrow.”
“Alright,” I agreed, and the two went to the edge of the room, grew their wings and rose into the air.
“Shall I close the cover, Your Grace?” the senior chambermaid, Lerin, asked.
‘”Please,” I said, and watched as she opened the panel where the secret lever resided and moved the lever to the ‘close’ position, causing the ceiling and upper wall, containing the windows, to come sliding back into position. It was while they did that I realized,I should have guessed Mother would have a way to access the outside air and starlight while she bathed.
I was also a little amazed at the cheek of these maids.
“Lerin?” I asked as she shut the panel covering the lever.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“Are the three of you angling for some fun time with me?” I wondered. “I can’t think of another explanation for why you’re still naked.”
All three chambermaids suppressed guilty giggles as I sighed.
Shaking my head, I told them, “Get dressed, already. It isn’t your turn in the rotation.”
Lerin pouted while saying, “I heard that Syl went out of order.”
“That’s my prerogative, not yours,” I informed her. “Now I have something to do, girls. I’m going to my study. Make sure no one disturbs me.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” came the triple reply as the maids began retrieving their uniforms.
I have a few additional rooms in the Ducal Apartment, including a small office, which I find a little weird, since at the end of the hall, which is directly next door, I have an actual office. But this is a more personal space. No ducal business inhabits the bookshelves here. They contain more the sort of collection of odds and ends that a reading person’s personal bookshelves tend to accumulate. I never knew Mother was such a voracious reader.
But I wasn’t here to read. My lovely lover and our mutual man were sleeping in my bedchamber, and this was the next best private space for what I planned to do.
Mother’s study in Atius was a similar room with an Atian desk and chair, but this room had a tatami floor (except with hardwood ledges lining the walls to support the shelves) and a low writing desk, just like you would see in Asian period dramas. I didn’t need the desk, so I knelt on one of the kneeling mats that lay ready for visitors.
<You’re ready to give it a try?> came Fan Li’s internal voice, the moment I was settled in.
<You wanted me to do it immediately, right?>
<Lydia is standing by. She’s been taking a swim while she waited.>
I nodded rather than replying– the meaning gets through, in this most personal of all communications– and closed my eyes.
The goal was simple. To become Lydia while remaining myself. That’s not as weird as it sounds, for a creature as bizarre as I.
I needed to acquire her mind, her thoughts, and let them run alongside my own, becoming one as both Lydia and Tiana. It needed to be as seamless as when Robert and Tiana became one. For at least an hour, I meditated while seeking the key to managing it in this spiritually thin space. It was far harder than where Lydia managed it.
After quite a while, I stood and shed the sleeping yukata the maids had put me in. Kneeling again, I began the process anew, this time accessing Lydia’s awareness while shifting my effigy to her form.
I cast [Water Mirror] and looked at myself, in Lydia’s form, trying to convince myself to become her. Wearing her face, her hairdo, her clothing, I tried to equally wear her mind. Her memories, both ancient, from Athens, and recent, from Sky Ocean while caring for my body, became clearer. But I was doing nothing more than what I had been avoiding, simply accessing her memories rather than acquiring her awareness.
After another hour of patient thought, I sighed and dropped the spell. This was, simply put, not it.
<Perhaps you should consider that, right now, I am in your body,> came her thoughts. <I may have been closer when you were shaped like you.>
<Can you leave the water and get her legs back?> Fan Li asked.
<I can,> she said, and we waited a minute or so for her to reach the shore and revert to my default bipedal form.
<Now, you as well, Your Grace,> Fan Li directed. <She is kneeling. Take your own form and kneel once again.>
I did so, reverting to my pregnant, nude self, then knelt and closed my eyes once more. Again, I tried to reach her, through her recent thoughts and memories. I could easily recall her swim from the middle of the lake to the shore, where she pulled herself up on the grassy shore, far away from the warm pool that was our usual haunt. She was closer to that spot where Grandmother gave me that dress and a scabbard for Durandal. She was now facing the lake, kneeling the same as I.
Her thoughts… no I didn’t need to follow her thoughts there. I needed to have her thoughts happening in my head. I tried to allow Lydia to appear within me, as part of me, and she was quite willing to do so. I could feel her trying to do the same, both where she was at and within me.
<You aren’t trying to drive both bodies, young ones. You are both trying to be both of you, as two separate streams of awareness in two separate bodies.>
It wasn’t Fan Li’s advice, but instead, Kwelabi’s. Fan Li had requested Curator to bring the compression rate down to 1:1 so they could assist. We felt the minds of our peers all around us, supporting us as we melded together. My mind arose in Sky Ocean as Lydia’s mind arose with me, here on Huade. Yet we remained somehow apart as we became the same.
I opened my eyes, wearing a broad smile as I stabilized and grew confident. I was really Lydia, while I was still Tiana, just like we managed to do within the simulation amidst that stronger spiritual environment. I felt Tiana’s body, our body, our swollen tummy, less far along than we were in Sky Ocean, our arms and legs. I stood and cast [Water Mirror] again, this time large enough for a full body view.
To be honest, I had been looking forward to this. The Lydia side of me wanted so much for the Tiana side of me to see myself through more honest eyes. The lovely girl in the mirror, her onyx tresses, her eyes glittering like obsidian, her alabaster breasts just beginning to prepare themselves for her babies, the perfect vision of young motherhood, the very image of Leto carrying Apollo and Artemis.
From Tiana’s side, I felt embarrassed at these silly thoughts, but I made myself look and burn the positive image into my mind. With any luck, Lydia would remain part of me from now on, just as she wanted. For the sake of my confidence, I needed to maintain Lydia’s positive view of me, not juvenile Tiana’s misgivings. Those, I needed to leave behind, with her childhood. I needed, from now on, the confidence of a fairy, of a vampire, of an Elder.
After dropping the [Water Mirror], I retrieved the sleeping clothes and slipped into them. Fan Li appeared beside me in effigy and began helping me to arrange the garment and tie the obi.
“Well done, Your Grace,” she said when she finished, kissed me on the cheek, and vanished.
Heading out into the ‘Day Room’, the main room from which one accesses most of the other rooms in the suite, I encountered Rod, just up and headed out for his morning exercises.
“There you are,” he declared as he saw me. “Good Morning, Your Grace.”
“Good Morning, Your Royal Highness,” I stated, walking toward him.
The titles didn’t mean any sort of distance forming between us. It was a silly tradition we had begun recently.
He looked a little uncertain as I arrived, because I was coming much closer than I usually approached. His eyebrow went up when I put my hands on his shoulders. Tiptoeing, I gave him a brief kiss on the lips, feeling Lydia’s satisfaction that I was finally doing something she considers wife-like.
The look on his face was a little bit amazing. I nearly giggled.
