Chapter 33: Chapter 34: The Lady’s End

"Are you sure about this?" Words of a small figure with a slow-drifting tail of white, dappled in blue scales, hidden under cobalt silks. Handmaiden. The worst of all my... all the Lady's handmaidens.

Across from her, a woman. A woman with emerald hair and emerald eyes and a gown of emerald silk and alabaster skin with a rosy flush. But, the hair notwithstanding, human.

It already feels like I was never anything more than that.

"I am," I say. "It's time. I want to dwell in Machrae Diir because I love the dimension and its denizens, because it feels like home. I want to be a demon, I want to be a succubus, and Carag, because being these things makes me happier than anything else ever could. If I remain in Machrae Diir because I'm too afraid to journey beyond, if I remain what I am because I'm too afraid to try becoming something else, my fear will poison my love. I'll spread that poison to all the loves around me. I'm ready enough, and this is the way."

The silence stretches, and stretches, and stretches. A slow breeze stirs the dust around my feet. The Gate remains. Open, lambent blue pouring from its inward faces. A window of obsidian crumbling into dust igniting into blue fire that darkens back to obsidian.

"I don't think you'll make a very good human, personally," handmaiden says. "You never have."

"I agree," I answer. "But my heart tells me I must try. Just this once, not as a ruse to get Seurchraig's guard down, not as an accident of birth, a nascent demon-soul too young to know her parents were calling her to inhabit flesh that would only ever be a prison. I must try to be human simply for the sake of being human. I feel a mystery that I overlooked."

"So, that's why the journey," she says, nodding to herself. "You'll know why you need to when you find the answer. Can't find what you don't seek."

"Unless it's already within me," I agree, "and this answer isn't. It's almost novel these days--not knowing the answer already."

Another breeze. The sun shines. Wind stirs the trees. The Gate is an old tunnel with graffiti on the walls. Handmaiden's tail has disappeared.

"Guess I better go back," she says. “I didn’t realize Earth’s mundanity was this potent after all these centuries. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is Earth's power. Eldritch force manifested as what humans call physics, science, the unraveling of the otherworldly. Magic that expresses itself as intensified versions of things that exist where there’s no magic at all…” She clenches her fists. "It's bullshit. We worked so hard. We fought to make our own way." A sigh. A settling. "You sure you'll be able to find your own way back?"

"I'm not sure at all," I admit. "Machrae Diir was an accident. Something strange and wondrous I began to make so, so many years ago. In my flesh-vessel. When I walked my waking life like a dreamer, thinking like a myth incarnate. To return consciously..."

My best handmaiden bows. "I believe in you," she says softly. "You will find your way home when you're ready."

Goodbye is spoken by our slow shifting, by the somber mood, by the echo of her booted feet in the old tunnel. Words would only make it feel less... Real.

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There's no tunnel in the slope trailing down to the swamp just north of the family house. There never has been.  And there never will be, unless a day comes when it's always been there. And I don't have emerald robes or eyes, and my hair is the same dark brown as ever. A figure of equal disinterest--or annoyance--to humans, fey, gods, demons, and at this point I'll spare myself the shame and assume that goes for everyone and everything else.

I consider. Stretch. Another day, another defeat.

I remember full well how hard I tried, all those years and years ago, to make my form shift to my will. I knew that shapeshifting was my birthright. I hurled my will against reality, and reality won. Over, and over, and over again. What's the use in trying now?

Sunlight catches my eyes. Calling them to the rays. Unthinking, I stare right into its burning depths, drinking the joy of radiance. I glance away, and only them remember that human eyes should burn out when they stare at the sun. Yet, my sight remains.

Do I dare...?

Perhaps I should just accept the inevitable rather than give this planet a chance to break my heart again. Then I think of handmaiden, standing before me after she and her sisters cast Vella. She's right. Even now, after all I've been through, I think of myself as the delusional human girl stuck on Earth. If I just accept that, mute and submissive, then I'm failing again anyway, right? No horns, no tail, nothing demonic. And I'll have to accept the consequences the next time I look at the sun. I must live as a human, at least for now.

But just a little something, perhaps? Something that calls to me like the green on the leaves, the grasses, the ferns strewn around me. Something that means growth.

I fill myself with the weight of everything I am become. Pushing against the lightness in the air around me, concentrating, straining my psyche until my head aches, and my senses become hazy, and I sway where I stand. Straining as hard as ever I did in the past. And still, after all these centuries, I feel nothing. Tears brim. Is it all a lie, then?

I slump down, heavily, making my emerald robes wrinkle against my knees--oh.

Silly girl. Of course it wouldn't feel different. This, too, was within me all along. I'm simply bringing something else to the surface. Rearranging layers, like a change of wardrobe, playing with makeup. Folding some things away so I can try others on.

I rise. This one thing. This tiny proof that I am that I am... this is all I needed. I pause to admire the lovely heart-shaped face reflected in a nearby pond, emerald eyes and emerald-lips and silken emerald hair blowing in the breezes that kiss my skin with a rosy flush.

Yes, this will do. A little beats nothing, yes? Time to look for the start of the story.

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