I've met her countless times before, but Cali never had, here in the Adventurer's Guild. The atmosphere is so warm and comfortable so I just sat down and watched Remi do something at the front desk. He's been more emotive when we're together but when we're in public he wears his stone face the entire time. Before he used to fake a smile, at least, and I thought it was weird but now I wish he would but he doesn't. Not anymore. He looks so stiff, with his tight shoulders and straight posture and that stupid robe with all the scribbles and tassels. I don't like it. He doesn't look like the Remi I know. I miss his weird Eastern clothing and his weird, stupid smile, and when it was just us. But now Chloe and her friend are with us too.
Remi walked out the door after signing whatever he was doing and Chloe gave the girl behind the counter a hug. They're so close. I miss her too. Cali would have really liked her. Coming from her, she probably would have liked that stupid nickname Chloe gave her. The three of them would have gotten along well but now that I'm Cali...
"Are you ready to depart, Madam Cali?" Chloe's friend asked me, with a tone of voice I really don't like.
"Don't call me that. Just Tavi is fine," I said, and I wanted a harsher tone, but Cali's voice just isn't capable of it, and maybe she could have been, but she was too sweet for it.
"Umm, yes Madam Tavi. Uh, Fymner by the way," he repeated.
"Okay Fymner. It's Tavi. Just, Tavi."
I watched the three of them sit around in the carriage and it's a fancy carriage. It has suspensions that make it far less loud and bumpy which would make it theoretically easier for the three of them to talk, but they didn't really, not for most of the ride. Remi sat next to me, across from Chloe and Fymner, and I noticed they were seated close together so I shifted a little closer to Remi who barely reacted at all.
"Remi look!" I said, nudging him in the side, "It's where we first met," I continued, pointing to the window behind Chloe and Fymner. The three of them turned around to looked through the window where the same, small rolling hill housed a field of grass and flowers.
"You two met in a grass field?" Chloe asked, with a slight lilt in her voice.
"Yeah!" I said, "Remi fell from the sky and broke every bone in his body, and," I stopped myself because I didn't know if Remi would allow me to say it and everything I did with Remi happened in her body, and I felt a wave of shame come over me. I didn't just steal Cali's life, I stole Chloe's life, and we don't know where her real soul is, the soul that I lost for her, and for the first time during the ride, Remi spoke up.
"She saved my life," was all he said, and I looked at him in his robe with his stone face, and maybe I imagined it, but I thought I noticed a slight smile on the edge of his lips.
"Wait, how did he get-- into the sky, you said?" Fymner asked me, with a sincere and confused look on his face.
"It's a secret," I replied while Remi continued staring off into the distance, "he hasn't even told me yet. But I still want to know, someday."
I noticed Chloe had been looking through me for quite some time and I felt weird in my stomach and fuzzy in my head like she was looking through my soul.
"So, 'Tavi' is it? Where did you get that nickname?" she asked, and I had to think about that for a long, long moment. When I was born, there were others like me, in the dark with the pretty colors, and some were older and some were just born. I was confused. I didn't know what was happening. I felt things. They were in me, or a part of me, or something else. Emotions, I think, before I had a name for them, but they were weird and uncomfortable, and it was then that I first felt that empty feeling in what I would now associate with the chest, but I had no chest, I was like the others, dark and dim and barely visible. But there was one, bright "star" in the middle of the others like me, but I didn't know what a star was, I just knew they were brighter than us; dim, but visible, almost blending into the colorful darkness. There were no words. We didn't have any. I knew I wanted to say something to them, but I couldn't say anything. All I could do was follow them, and swirl around them, and we danced. All of us.
"Tavi?" But we were all silent, with the only noise coming from the low hum of the colorful, shifting shapes, which I saw for the first time, the colors I quickly fell in love with, that kept me grounded to my senses, because without them, I felt like I would fall apart and disappear. But near these loving, colorful shifting shapes were these bright and shining stars that looked just like the bright star that danced with us, but these ones wouldn't, they didn't react to me at all. The other dim stars were curious, too, and we all swirled and wove around all of them. They didn't react to any of us. I didn't know what they were, but I knew they were different from me, and the dim stars, and the bright star.
"Tavi, are you okay?" And the bright star... the bright star floated over, to one of the different stars. They floated up to one of the different stars and they displaced it. The different star became a lost star. It floated away, and the other dim stars followed the bright star and displaced the other different stars too, but I followed the lost stars and tried to dance with them and they kept floating away, they floated away and they didn't dance with me, and that's all I really wanted, I followed them and followed them--
"Tavi, what's wrong?" --and they disappeared, all of them, they just faded away, they faded away and I tried to find them and in the end I was lost, too, I couldn't find the other dim stars and I couldn't find the bright star. All I saw was the dark that terrified me and the shifting, colorful shapes that held me together, and all I felt was a hole, a void in the center of everything I felt. I kept floating and floating, until I saw two more stars, a bright star and a dim star, and I thought they were like me but they wouldn't dance, and I was scared and alone and--
"It's okay, come here, it's okay," I didn't have a choice, right? I had to do it. I didn't want to be alone. I don't want to be alone. I didn't mean to do it. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry--
"I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I--" Chloe has her arm wrapped around my shoulder and Remi's hands around mine and my face is wet, it's all wet, and they both looked at me, concerned, and even Remi broke his stone face to worry for me, and "Chloe, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to, I really,"
"Hey, it's okay," she says in a low and soothing voice, even though her voice is so rough, I remember what it was like, and as I check my pocket for something to calm her down-- Cali-- to calm me down, I realize there's nothing. There's nothing.
"I'm so sorry."
Remi and I sat together, looking out of the penthouse suite window on the top floor of the Church of Protection and Service that overlooked all of Ionia, and it was beautiful in the dark with all the dotted lights covering the distance. Fymner made us some tea before heading to one of the bedrooms, and we sipped while enjoying the sight.
"Remi," I started, "what happened to Tavi?" We locked eyes for only a brief moment until he turned his head away again, revealing the same awkward deamenor that I knew him for.
"There's-- yeah, there's a lot to talk about," he said, choosing instead to look out the window.
"Like...?" I asked.
"I don't, I mean," and he trailed off, making some kind of pained face.
"She apologized to me. What's there to apologize for?" I asked.
"How's your soul?" he interrupted, which irritated me, but he looked me in the eyes with a serious look, one I've never seen before, "It's important. What actually happened to your soul?"
"Healthy, and young apparently," I replied off-handedly, "Bishop said--"
"No, I mean what you actually felt with your soul, not what that bastard said," and he had a look of scorn on his face that I wasn't sure was for me or for her.
"I've had this conversation a dozen times and I'm sick of it. Look, Remi--"
"You were the first person I met when I fell out of the sky," he said.
"Is this really the ideal outcome your magic is telling you? Or are you--"
"I'm being serious. It's the truth," and his face changed again, "and that's not how my magic works. I can't see every single future."
"I just, I really don't understand where you're going with this," and I had a sinking feeling in my gut and I wanted nothing more than to take the elevator downstairs so I could smoke in the cool air.
"I need to know the symptoms you've been having with your soul. I need to know," he said, and he looked serious, and I wondered how much of this was acted or foreseen, and I thought back and wondered if he ever had a plan at all.
"Gods above, okay. I lost my memories and my soul felt different. My mana flow has been inconsistent, but every soul doc says I'm healthy, like there's nothing wrong with my soul. Happy?"
"Hmm," he toned as he looked back at the cityscape, "how far back did you lose your memories?"
"I'm not answering any more of your questions, at least not until you answer mine," I said, and I stopped holding back my emotions like I had to with everyone else at the Church, "Who are you?"
"I'm trying to help you," he said, which really pissed me off.
"I don't need your help!" I said, louder, apparently loud enough for Fymner to check in on us.
"Um, are you two, okay?" he asked, and I was so pissed I wanted to tell him off too, but he didn't do anything wrong.
"I'm okay Fymner, thank you. Sorry for yelling," I said, and he gave me a nod and a concerned look as he went back to his room.
"I just, I, well I didn't want to--" and he paused looking at my teacup, "You need my help, because you can't fix your soul without us," he said, and for once, he gave me a face I didn't think was constructed.
"What do you mean?" I asked, not wanting to hear the answer, but asking anyways.
"Tavi has a different kind of magic. It's what I call 'Soulshift Magic' but I think people call it shapeshifting, but that's inaccurate because it has to do with the soul, not the body,'" he said, still with that face.
"She's a demon?" I asked, stunned.
"Don't call her that," he said as he stood up, "don't ever call her that," and, for a moment I was shocked, but he looked at me, sat down, and said, "I'm sorry. Please, don't call her that. Especially to her face, but not to others either."
We sat in silence for a moment while I tried to put together what he said, but he interrupted my chain of thought, and said, "You really were the first person I met here. My name is Remi. I'm from a planet called Earth, and a city called Palo Alto. One day I..." and he paused for a moment, "I fell off of a tall building and fell through the floor. I found myself in the sky. When I hit the floor, I died. I felt everything. The femur was the worst to break. But I found myself back in the sky. I died often enough to stop counting, because I couldn't remember. But only once, I hit the floor at the right angle to just barely survive, and your body was the first I met here on Aeolia. You healed me. But it wasn't you in your body. It was Tavi."
"What?"
"I asked how far back you lost your memories, because I need to know when she shifted into you."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"I need to know when she shifted into you, because I think there's a different soul inside you. A soul that isn't Chloe's."
The conversation ended soon after while we were both deep in thought. He stood up to leave but stopped and asked, "You can hate me. That's okay. But pease don't-- don't hate her. She really didn't know." I stayed for a minute longer to look out of the window, over the city of thousands below us before I caught my reflection in the window and left before I could think about it.
"Hey, um, Chloe," Fymner asked from the doorway, while I laid facedown in bed, "are you okay? I heard yelling."
With my face still buried in my pillow, I said, "I don't know."
"I can't hear you," he asked, "Can I come in?" and I waved him in with my hands at my side, and he sat at the edge of my bed.
I shifted my head to the side of my pillow and asked, "Hypothetically, what would you do if your soul wasn't yours?"
"What do you mean by that?" he asked with some slight concern in his voice, gently stroking my back.
"Like," and I tried to find the right words, "Okay, imagine your soul got swapped with someone else. What would you do?"
"It's hard to imagine what it would actually feel like," he said staring off, thinking, "but I don't think I would mind."
"Even if your magic became unstable?" I countered.
"That's tougher," he said, as he stopped his hand around my shoulder, "but Chloe, what is this actually about? Something the Archmagus said?"
"Please, just answer my questions," I said, and this time, I couldn't hide my annoyance, and I felt bad but I couldn't help it.
"Oh, um, yes okay," Fymner started, "if there's a way to get my soul back, I would probably try to do that. But if there's not, I don't think I would be all that upset."
"Why not?" I asked flatly.
"Because, I guess I would still be me, still Fymner, still working with the Church, still talking to-- to you," he stuttered.
"How is that 'you' if 'you' are the observer through the soul?" I asked sincerely.
"Well, who 'you' are is more subjective than it seems. 'Soul encoding' I think is the term? You would know more from Heart and Soul," he paused waiting for me, but continued, "if the observer is stored in the soul, but the memories are stored in the brain, then which one is actually 'Fymner'?"
"I don't know," I replied curtly.
"Well, from your body's perspective, any instant soul-switching would probably appear pretty seemless. The observer changed but the body remembers only the continuity. The only thing that would feel immediately different is the way the soul processes mana," he pondered.
"It's not seemless, you lose memories, and your mana's different," and I didn't realize I had tears in my eyes until Fymner offered me a handkerchief and started stroking my hair. When I didn't take it, he wiped my tears for me.
"This isn't hypothetical, is it?"
When I was growing up and I was asked the question, "What superpower would you want?" my answer was always "telepathy". Friends took this as "the ability to read minds" but that's inadequate to describe what I really wanted: to effortlessly communicate exactly what I'm feeling and thinking to others, and to recieve back exactly what they're feeling and thinking, with no possible room for misinterpretation. I spent hours in class fantasizing about it. I would draw little comics where every character understood what every other character meant to say, but I suppose the issue with this power in a narrative is that there would be no conflict, no misunderstandings. Characters would just understand each other and feel the weight of their thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and come to a compromise somewhere in the middle. There would be no stakes. But even then, my ideal telepathy wouldn't work, because it exists here, I tried it, and I still failed. Over, and over, and over again.
So if I was asked right now, in this moment, what superpower I would want? It would probably be shapeshifting. Not like Tavi, who can displace soul, but closer to Rimiru Tempest, who can shift the literal form of their body. Except, I wouldn't choose to build an entourage of colorful characters or build my own society, or fight for justice and equality or fight evil-doers in a play for power. I would shift into a bird and fly away, somewhere below the clouds, and look at the world as it is through the eyes of a bird, and never talk to another person ever again. Except, I guess now, I would probably miss talking to Tavi.
It was an impossible conversation to have. I had failed at every single point and I couldn't communicate anything I actually wanted to say. The more I spoke, the angrier she got, and I didn't know why. I still don't. She knows her soul is abnormal and all I want, and I know all Tavi wants, is to help her, to put Chloe's original soul back where it belongs, but the words just don't come out the way they do when I talk to Tavi. Why is that? Because we have a secret to keep about each other? I guess I ruined that one, both of them. Because we helped each other? I'm not sure I've helped her as much as she's helped me. Maybe because we're both anomalies, like we don't belong where we are.
I passed by Tavi's room on my way to my own and saw her door cracked open just a tad with the lights dimmed. I knocked a couple times and said, "Hey Tavi, are you feeling alright?"
And I heard her voice come back, "Who is Tavi?"