An Eventful Breakfast, Part 2

Mona had never quite figured out where she was supposed to stand, in rooms like this. She’d arrived early, not out of excitement but because crowds made her want to vanish, and the window of “not empty, not packed” was so narrow she usually missed it anyway. So she planted herself near the wall, as close as possible to the edge of the Dance Hall’s glass dome—a cup of Boseong Nokcha cooling in both hands, shoulders close enough to a brass plant stand to pass for set dressing if anyone looked too hard. From this partial hiding spot, she could see almost the whole room. She liked seeing it that way, all in one piece.

Across the Hall, near the string quartet, Jenny stood with her back to the room and her mahogany hair loose around her face. Winter was in front of her, hands out, speaking quietly, and beside him, Summer had one hand resting on Jenny’s shoulder blade without moving. Jenny’s cup was tilted at an angle that suggested she’d forgotten it was there.

Mona looked away, into her own tea, and tried to blink until the tightness in her chest passed. If she started in with the tears now, she wouldn’t be able to stop. A bitter thought struck. I mean, I am sure Tyalangan picked my plus ones to minimize the wedding pressure on me, but why can’t I be better for Jenny right now? I need to be worthy of them all, she’s stressed, and here I am hiding in the corner like this is a school dance I couldn’t get out of.

The Hall had filled up fast. All these people. All this awkward joy. Mona tried not to think about how she must look, hugging the wall like a fire alarm.

She wasn’t the only one watching from a distance. At the far end of the Hall, the naked girl with the ankle-length black hair and the huge boobs—Katherine, it had to be—stood out with the clarity of a cut diamond. Her skin was the color of sunlit marble, hair black and shining, and her body, even at rest, seemed to hum with unspent energy. She watched the crowd with a look that was not so much curiosity as calculation, as if she were mapping every social eddy and micro-drama the instant it unfolded. Each time she moved, her breasts bounced, her hips shifted, and Mona’s thoughts…

Mona watched her watching, then looked away again, embarrassed at having been caught by accident in a double reflection.

She tried to fade further into the plant stand, hoping she could coast on the caffeine and nobody would bother her. But when she looked up again, Katherine had peeled away from the edge, and was making her way—unhurried, almost gliding—straight for Mona.

Katherine didn’t so much walk as thread the crowd, moving in a way that left every glance trailing after her. She was, even by the current company’s standards, impossible not to notice: tall for her proportions, hair like a black river behind her, skin flawless and not a shadow or bruise anywhere, and breasts so outsized and gravity-defiant they looked sculpted by committee.

She wore nothing, which was apparently both literal and some kind of metaphysical rule—every time she turned, Mona saw the dark, clean edge where her body met the rest of the world, and nothing intervened. Mona had grown up on Internet, had seen a lifetime of sexy naked girls before she ever saw one in person, but nothing in her years of online exposure prepared her for someone who made it a default state rather than a performance.

She realized too late that she was staring. Worse, she was running mental narration the way she always did—okay they move when she walks, they are literally moving right now with every single step! What would those feel like in both hands? What would it feel like to just bury your face between them, could I actually ask her that, “excuse me, may I motorboat you,” is that a real sentence? No! Bad Mona; extremely bad Mona! Focus! Also the skin, Gawd, how is the skin like that… Focus! She’s still coming, she’s looking right at you; abort!—and then it was too late to stop, because Katherine was standing in front of her and the polite thing would be to look her in the eyes, which Mona tried, but of course she picked the wrong pair of targets at first.

“Hi—!” Mona said, too loud, and splashed tea onto her own knuckles. “Sorry, I’m not—um—sorry, I didn’t mean to—” She flailed for a topic, any topic. “Nice weather for a party?” She immediately wished she could retract her own tongue.

Katherine blinked, slow. She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that had seen a thousand awkward intros before and knew exactly how this went. She raised one hand in a small, open-palmed wave, then pointed at Mona’s cup of tea, then gestured to a table, and pantomimed setting a cup carefully onto it.

“Oh!” Mona said, instantly mortified. “Right. Yes.” She set her mug on the nearest ledge, almost missing, then used her Gust cantrip to quickly dry her hands. “You must think I’m an idiot.” She tried for a laugh, but it came out nervous and wheezy.

Katherine shook her head, bemused. She spread her arms wide, as if to indicate the entire room—maybe the entire history of rooms—and nodded at Mona to continue.

Now that she’d started, Mona couldn’t stop. “I—um—don’t do a lot of parties,” she admitted. “Or, I mean, I do, but not ones where there’s—” She gestured, vaguely, at the airspace between them. “So much, uh, body.”

Katherine grinned, just a little, and waited. There was a kind of patience to her that Mona found simultaneously comforting and a little intimidating, like talking to a school guidance counselor who could also beat you at the swimsuit competition. Not that it would be hard to beat her, she thought.

“Is it, uh, a transformation thing?” Mona tried, then instantly regretted the phrasing. “Not the nakedness—well, that too, but—I mean, the, um, the not talking. Is it—are you not allowed? Uh, can you make sounds when Mr. Cooper, uh… ?”

Katherine made a face: half-smile, half-pity, all too familiar. She pointed at her own throat, then shook her head. She shrugged, a little apologetic, then rolled her eyes skyward. Her hand drew a lazy circle in the air and let it drop.

“Oh, right,” Mona said, color blooming all the way up her neck now. “Sorry, again. I’m… I do this a lot. Ask too many questions, I mean.”

She cut herself off. Then, because she couldn’t quite help it, she got an idea and held up one finger. She cast the Message cantrip—just a little curl of intent, and the whisper would land in Katherine’s ear alone: ”Okay, but—can you use this? Like, whisper back through the spell?”

Katherine went still. Her eyes moved, tracking the arrival of it, and for just a second her expression opened up into something unguarded—the look of someone who had not expected to be surprised. She drew a slow breath. Her lips parted. Then nothing came out, and the look closed again, quiet and practiced, and she shook her head once.

“Ah,” Mona said. “Yeah. Okay. That was—” She winced. “Sorry. That probably wasn’t fun to try.” She tried to stop, failed, and added, “You probably get that a lot. The questions, I mean. About your—um—”

Katherine tilted her head and gave her a look that was almost fond. She let her laugh show, soundless but wide, then pointed at Mona, then at her own chest, then gave a thumbs up. It took Mona a second to process, then she nearly laughed, too.

“Okay, but they are impressive,” Mona said, still blushing but now too far in to pretend otherwise. “Do they ever get in the way, or is that, like, part of the design?”

Katherine considered, then mimed: arms out, hands flat in front of her, moving through a narrow door, then looking surprised as her chest caught and bounced. She pantomimed a slow, exasperated sigh, then pointed at Mona and raised both eyebrows.

Now Mona did laugh. “Wow. That’s—yeah. I don’t know if I’d survive with those.” She looked down at her own chest, then back at Katherine, who was watching her with something like gratitude. She got the feeling Katherine did not get a lot of actual jokes from people; more gaping, less conversation.

For a moment, the two just stood in their little bubble of wall and sunlight, neither in a hurry to make it awkward again.

Then Mona, feeling braver, said, “Can I ask another weird one?”

Katherine shrugged.

“What’s it like,” Mona said, “having everyone look at you all the time? Not just at the party, but, like… forever.”

Katherine didn’t answer right away. She thought, actually thought about it, looking out over the crowded floor as if trying to find a single word for what it meant. Then she lifted her hand, traced a slow line down from her throat to her belly, and then to her groin (Mona, stop staring there!), then held her palm flat. She let the hand hang there for a second, then waggled it in the air. Then she hooked her thumb at Mona.

Mona blinked, startled. “Oh. I mean, I… it’s the opposite, I guess? I spent most of high school trying not to be seen at all.” She made herself meet Katherine’s eyes this time.

Katherine’s expression softened. She stepped a half-step closer, inside Mona’s personal bubble, then nodded once, serious. She raised her pinkie in the air and, after a pause, Mona realized: a promise.

Mona didn’t know what to do with that. She reached up and, with her own shaky pinkie, met Katherine’s.

Their hands bumped, and Mona was acutely aware of how small her hand was compared to Katherine’s, the way her own skin looked pale and untried next to Katherine’s sculpted, art-perfect finish. She felt like a doll, or a kid who’d wandered into the wrong room. But the moment of connection felt real, not fake, and that was enough to make her stop stammering.

A second later, someone else joined their orbit. A tall, severe-looking blonde in a white sheath dress, hair pulled back into a single glossy braid and a confidence that radiated like perfume. She carried a glass of something that might have been juice but looked more expensive than any drink Mona had ever bought for herself. She had breasts nearly as big as Katherine’s, her nipples tenting the dress, her cleavage deep enought that Mona could… no, bad Mona! The woman smiled at both of them, then nodded to Katherine and turned to Mona.

“Hi,” she said. “Marissa.” She said it in a way that made it sound like a signature.

Mona nearly spilled her tea again, even though she wasn’t holding it anymore. “Ah, hi, Ms. Marissa. I’m—Mona. Mona Cummings.”

“Pleasure,” said Marissa, and it didn’t sound fake at all. “And please, just Marissa. Is this your first cross-season event?”

“Yeah,” Mona said, and then, on reflex, “Ah, if you don’t count a visit we had from another set. Is it that obvious?”

Marissa’s mouth quirked. “Not at all. But you and Katherine have the same look right now. Like you’re both trying to decide if it’s safer to run for the door or hide in the punch bowl.”

Katherine laughed, soundless, and raised both hands halfway, palms out.

Mona grinned, feeling her shoulders relax for the first time since arriving. “I was thinking the plant stand, actually, but the punch bowl is a close second.”

Marissa sipped her drink. She leaned in, not quite conspiratorial, but as if including both Mona and Katherine in on a secret. “It gets easier, after the first ten minutes. Then harder, around minute fifty, and then you just live here forever. That’s the arc.”

Mona said, “Is it weird if I believe you?”

“Not at all,” Marissa said, “I tell people the truth as a service.” She looked at Mona, then followed her gaze towards Winter and Jenny across the room, then back. “Are those your people?”

Mona’s gaze followed Marissa’s. She watched as Jenny, shoulders tight and eyes scanning the exits, let Winter pull her close by the waist. Summer stood at her other side, a steadying hand on the small of her back, murmuring something that made Jenny’s tense shoulders drop half an inch. They were laughing, but Jenny’s was breathless, edged with relief. It was a kind of ease Mona could never manage in public, but had to be fought for. She felt a familiar flush, embarrassment for Jenny warring with a fierce, protective pride she would never say out loud. “Yeah,” she said, voice softer. “That’s them.”

Marissa said, “They look fun.” She looked over at Katherine. “Have you made Mona’s life awkward yet?”

Katherine pointed at Mona, then at herself, then did a quick “so-so” gesture.

Marissa laughed, warm and easy, like it was the best joke she’d heard in hours. “You’ll get used to her. And if you don’t, she’ll grow on you anyway.”

Mona found herself grinning, for real. “Does she always talk this much?” she asked, nodding at Marissa.

Katherine nodded, hard, with an extra flourish, and Mona and Marissa both burst out laughing.

Somewhere in the laughter, Mona forgot to be embarrassed. She just let herself enjoy it, the warmth of the moment, the unselfconscious way Marissa and Katherine both kept looking at her like she belonged there. By the time the moment passed, Mona’s tea was stone cold, but she didn’t care. She could reheat it whenever anyways.

---

Dawn and Emi had carved out a spot at one of the side tables, near the window where the light came in gold and low enough to actually warm your skin. Emi was recounting something from the early days—a story about Norah trying to win an eating contest by mainlining cold breakfast sausage—and even with Dawn having witnessed the whole thing back then, Emi made it sound like the best story ever told. Dawn was halfway through a laugh when she felt the atmosphere shift, the way you do when a teacher walks into a classroom mid-joke. She turned and there was a Mildred, Service badge gleaming, standing so still she seemed to exist on a slightly different tick of the clock.

The Mildred’s eyes flicked from Dawn to Emi, then back. “The Host requests your presence,” she said, voice flat as a dial tone.

Dawn said, “Is something wrong?”

“No,” said the Mildred, with zero inflection. Her eyes glimmered with the death of stars. “She would like to see you both. In the main corridor. Now, please.”

Emi wilted a little, her six hands fidgeting with the napkin, her bracelet, her own hair. Dawn shot her a “probably nothing, let’s go,” and Emi followed, all arms folded behind her back in a kind of prisoner’s shuffle.

The corridor outside the Dance Hall was quieter, sound-muffled and empty except for Arabella, who stood alone at the juncture, waiting. She wore an indigo tea dress that shimmered with each turn of her body, and her hair was pinned up, showing off the hard line of her jaw and a pair of antique gold earrings that might have cost more than Dawn’s car.

A few paces from her, standing at parade rest, was the strangest woman Dawn had ever seen—at least in this Hotel, which was saying something. She was shorter than Emi and Dawn, with four arms, two folded tight against her sides and two resting light on the haft of an odd weapon resembling the blade of a short katana attached to the black-lacquered haft of a shortspear, or close enough, at least seven feet tall. Black hair fell straight to her waist, but it parted neatly around the swept-back golden horns rising from above her ears. There was a tail too, thick at the base and sharpening to a straight tip at the end, and scaled, curling in a nervous figure-eight by one ankle. The golden wings—Dawn had to look twice—were real, and they hovered, folded neatly the woman’s back as if she could will them invisible if she tried hard enough.

Dawn recognized, somehow, that this was the source of the unease she’d felt coming down the hall: not danger, just a presence that was so different, so out of place, that the air still hadn’t learned how to move around her.

Arabella smiled at both Dawn and Emi, but there was an extra softness in it. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “I wanted you to meet someone before the party gets fully underway.”

Dawn’s instincts kicked in: she reached a hand out, said, “Hi, I’m Dawn, and this is Emi,” and waited, not sure whether to offer the handshake to an upper or lower hand.

The woman seemed to consider, then hesitantly offered the upper right. Her grip was light, but her skin was surprisingly warm. She clearly had no idea what the handshake meant.

“Sumiku,” she said. Her voice was higher than Dawn expected, without any accent, but every syllable came out with the practiced care of someone who had only recently learned the language. “This one is Sumiku.”

Emi stepped forward, four of her hands fluttering, and she said, “It’s beautiful! Your arms—are they new, or…?” Emi trailed off, realizing at the last second that it might be rude.

Sumiku smiled, a flash of small fangs, and answered, “This one has received them as part of a transformation, during her season. But they were not always this useful.” She flexed one of the lower arms, as if to demonstrate.

Dawn looked at Emi, then at Sumiku, then at Arabella. “Are you… joining us?” She didn’t mean it to sound like a test, but she needed to know.

Arabella said, “Sumiku-ono is newly returned to us. She’s been… away, for a very long time.” Her gaze didn’t break from Sumiku, and Dawn realized there was a kind of reverence in the look—like she was introducing not a guest, but a mentee, or a honored daughter.

Sumiku bowed, low, the naginata held perfectly vertical so it didn’t tip or catch on anything. “This one thanks you, Amaterasu-no-Ōkami, for your mercy,” she said, not lifting her head until Arabella gently said, “There’s no need for that here.”

Dawn felt Emi relax beside her, the tension draining from her six hands as they unclenched and settled into a more natural, open posture. “I’m Emi,” she said, leaning forward with sudden enthusiasm. “I’ve had these for three months now—can I ask—how long did it take you to get used to it? At first I kept knocking things over, but now it’s like… I can hold a book, stir a pot, and braid my hair all at once. Do yours feel like they’re really yours?”

Sumiku considered, then said, “This one was trained in stillness. These arms were taught to remain at rest, except when summoned. But when they move, it is very… satisfying.” She flexed one of the lower limbs thoughtfully. “It is difficult to hide them in a kimono, however.”

Emi beamed. “Oh, I know! Tailoring is a nightmare. But isn’t it amazing when you find something you can do with all of them? Like… carrying six cups at once without spilling? Or giving three hugs?” She demonstrated by wrapping two sets of arms loosely around herself, radiating pure delight.

Sumiku made a soft, almost soundless laugh. “This one has done that. It is not unpleasant.” She glanced at Dawn, then at Emi, then back at Arabella, like she was waiting for instructions.

Arabella’s expression softened. “Sumiku is part of Andy’s harem now. There are reasons for it—reasons he will no doubt explain in due time.” She turned her gaze to Dawn and Emi. “I was hoping you two might help her find her way, at least for today. She’s still adjusting.”

“The Master freed this one,” Sumiku said quietly, her voice carrying a fragile awe. “When he saw her on the shelf—a pink mug with… form. He knew her name but did not know her past, only that she suffered. He freed this one simply because he could not bear the thought of anyone trapped like that.” Her right hands tightened slightly around the naginata’s shaft.

Dawn’s mind flashed to the kitchen, that first chaotic night—the pink ceramic mug shaped like a woman’s torso, resting among the others. She had seen it nearly every day since, never thinking twice. Now, looking at Sumiku—the horns, the wings, the four arms—she felt a sudden, vertiginous sense of connection. “Of course,” Dawn said, her voice softer than she intended. She stepped closer, forming a protective bracket around Sumiku, with Emi. “We’ll take good care of her.”

Sumiku dipped her head, the horns catching the light. “Thank you, Dawn-san. Thank you, Emi-san.”

Arabella’s smile softened. “I have some business to attend to, but I’ll see you all inside soon. Please—enjoy the party, and introduce yourselves to whoever you wish. There are a great many new faces today.”

Sumiku bowed again, this time only from the neck. As Arabella swept away down the corridor, wings of her gown trailing behind, Sumiku visibly relaxed, her shoulders dropping by a full inch.

Dawn said, “Do you want to go in? Or… is it too much right away?”

Sumiku hesitated, then said, “This one would like to sit, if that is allowed.” The words came out small, almost apologetic.

“Of course,” Dawn said. She pointed at a little alcove bench, out of the direct flow of traffic. “We can take five, then we’ll go in when you’re ready.”

Sumiku nodded, moving with careful, silent steps. She sat on the bench, wings pressed flat, and set the naginata against the wall, though her lower right hand hovered nearby, like it was a security blanket.

Emi sat next to her, folding her legs underneath herself. She watched Sumiku’s face for a long moment, then asked, “If you don’t mind me asking… were you really gone for a long time?”

Sumiku’s four hands closed together in her lap, fingers lacing tight. She spoke, not to Emi but the floor: “This one was a vessel, for many centuries. She held tea for many Masters and their guests. She watched, but could not move or speak. Often, Amaterasu-no-Ōkami would grant this one the mercy of sleep. When this one woke this morning, everything was changed.”

Dawn tried to imagine what that would feel like, but her brain rebelled. “You remember all of it?” she said, voice gentle.

Sumiku considered. “Every day this one was awake.” There was a pause, and her voice grew thinner. “This one fears she will dream of it, still.”

Emi, who had once spent years inside her own head to avoid being hurt, said, “That must be really hard.”

Sumiku nodded again. Then, in a voice so quiet Dawn almost missed it, she said: “This one misses her Master. She knows he must be dead by now.”

Dawn felt a surge of empathy so strong she nearly cried on the spot. She put her arm around Sumiku’s shoulder and squeezed, not hard, just enough to say, “You’re not alone, not here.”

Sumiku startled at first—physical touch clearly a novelty—but then, after a second, she let herself lean into it. Her body softened, just a fraction, as if the hug filled in a missing piece she didn’t know she had.

Emi reached out, took one of the lower hands, and gave it a gentle squeeze as well. “We’re really glad you’re here,” she said.

For a while, none of them spoke. The silence was dense, but it wasn’t empty.

When Sumiku finally raised her eyes, there was a new steadiness there—a glow, like embers burning inside the depths of her black irises, a brightness that had not been there before.

“This one would like to see the party now,” she said. The words were tentative, but they held.

Dawn smiled. “You got it. We’ll go at your pace.”

Emi, who never liked to leave a hug unfinished, kept one arm linked with Sumiku’s as they stood. The three of them walked back down the corridor, Dawn at the lead, Emi at Sumiku’s side, and Sumiku’s four hands occupied with the naginata, Emi’s hand, and the unfamiliar sensation of being welcome.

Arabella watched them go, but didn’t follow.

---

Claire Mercer had faced weirder rooms, but none that outpaced her expectations quite this fast.

It wasn’t the weirdness, exactly. On her season, transformations had been functional, almost clinical—better spatial sense via telekinesis, Evelyn’s tougher body, Cassie’s control over her plasma blasts. They had not had visible side effects—except perhaps for grabby hair—physical, yes, but invisibly so. Nothing you’d clock across a room. Here, every woman she looked at was a separate argument against the version of reality she’d grown up in: a woman with a cat’s tail coiled around her chair leg, another with enough arms to qualify for a group cooking competition, a third whose skin was the deep grain of polished driftwood. She’d been in rooms full of athletes, full of performers, full of people who’d done extraordinary things to their bodies on purpose. She had never been in a room where the bodies themselves were the extraordinary thing.

She made a quick scan of the perimeter: she had lost count of how many different women had tails, she had seen one with very long prehensile hair she used to corral dropped silverware (she had made a note to speak with her later), a cyborg catgirl in garments so skimpy they couldn’t quite be classified as clothing, another with six arms who managed to make it look graceful and not crowded. She clocked, at a glance, the girls with ears on top of their heads, the woman dressed in vines, a drow with a rope-bra and absolutely nothing else, the dragon-woman with golden wings and a tail, and the naked girl with the impossible figure and a mane of black hair that flowed down her back and reached her ankles.

It was this last one that almost tripped Claire as she tried to take her seat. She moved with the unhurried confidence of someone who never had to think about walking, each stride calculated not to reveal but to exist. The effect was so perfectly curated that it had to be magical.

It was the best piece of visual sleight-of-hand Claire had ever seen. She wanted to ask how it was done.

Claire had to hunt for an open seat. By the time she’d circled the room twice—first doing a speed-run survey of every face and body, then a much slower recon to rule out any tables with ongoing feuds—most of the obvious spots were claimed. The only seat left in her preferred zone was at a table three deep in strangers, the nearest of whom was a girl she’d never seen in her life.

She was a little shorter than average, full-chested. The most striking thing, other than the hair, was that she wore literally nothing. Just shoes. She seemed to be at complete peace with this, buttering toast and sipping coffee like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Every inch of her skin was smooth and pinkly pale, like she’d been peeled and buffed and reset to some platonic state of health, and her hair wasn’t only long, it was thick. The color—honey blonde, almost platinum at the crown, then wild, saturated pink through the ends—wasn’t a dye job Claire had ever seen before, but it worked. More impressive, the curtain of it hung so perfectly that not a strand fell out of place, arranged so it covered the indecent bits. It was the most elaborate natural privacy screen Claire had ever seen, and she immediately wanted to know how it worked.

She eased herself into her seat, and caught Emily’s eye as she set her plate down. The girl smiled at her: open, bright, nothing of the usual “am I in your way?” calculations, just pure and practiced friendliness. Claire was about to nod and look away, but Emily’s gaze lingered a microbeat past polite, then flicked to the side, as if daring Claire to notice.

“That color,” Claire said, pointing at the hair, then at Emily. “It’s… kind of incredible. The gradient? The pink is almost perfect at the ends.”

Emily brightened even more, as if the compliment had been a cocktail she’d never had before but liked immediately. “Thank you,” she said. Her voice was light, not girlish but just shy of it. “I haven’t colored it in years, really. The pink just keeps growing out. It’s a transformation thing.”

“You shouldn’t dye it over,” Claire said, before she’d finished thinking the sentence. The line came out in the bossy, bullet-pointed cadence that always slipped in when she was nervous or on autopilot, and she caught herself halfway through, but couldn’t stop. “Like, ever. It’s better than anything you could get from a box.”

Emily just grinned. She didn’t take it as a command, or if she did, she liked it. “I won’t,” she said, as if it were the easiest promise in the world.

There was a pause. Claire set her fork down, looked at the hair again, and then at the pattern of pink slashes that ran through the mass of it, not even trying to hide their source.

“How long did it take to grow it that far?” she asked. “It looks like a decade’s worth, at least.”

Emily shrugged. “The length isn’t really a style choice. It’s, uh—” She glanced down, sweeping her hands along her thighs and then the length of the hair in her lap. “It’s the only thing between me and being completely naked. So, you know, not a lot of incentive to keep it short.”

Claire looked at the hair again, then down at Emily’s bare shoulders, the flush pinker than her actual hair, and realized it wasn’t a shy flush. She didn’t seem to care at all about the nudity. She was just a little hot, probably. Claire tried to fit that fact into her own frame of reference and couldn’t. She thought, for a second, of the other women in the Hall who had made nudity into a performance or a joke or a silent fuck-you to the rules, and then looked at Emily again and couldn’t see any of that. It was like she just didn’t notice her own body at all.

Claire smiled, in her small, close-mouthed way. She was quiet a little too long, trying to re-run the exchange and parse what she’d missed.

Emily saw the gap and, for a second, looked like she was about to ask if she’d said something wrong. Then she changed gears, as if remembering that sometimes silences weren’t for her to fix.

Claire picked up her mug and took a sip, burning her tongue a little, then asked, “Does it ever get in the way? The hair, I mean. It must be a full-time job just keeping it untangled.”

Emily laughed, a little surprised by the question. “That’s the weird thing—it doesn’t, really. It just sort of—” She lifted a handful and released it, and it fell back into perfect arrangement without a single strand out of place. She watched it settle the way you’d watch a card trick you’d seen a hundred times but still couldn’t explain. “It always covers what it’s supposed to cover. Even when I roll over in my sleep, or go swimming, or—” She shrugged. “It just handles it. The transformation did something to it. It’s like it has its own agenda, and its agenda is me.”

Claire wanted to ask more, but was momentarily distracted by the precision with which Emily gathered her hair, the way it always fell exactly where it was supposed to, like it had choreography instead of physics.

They ate in companionable silence for a few bites, and Claire watched the room, keeping half an eye on Emily to see if the conversation would start up again or if they’d entered the “just eat” phase. She didn’t mind either way.

But then Emily put her toast down, butter knife perched on the rim of her plate, and said, “You’re new, right? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

Claire nodded. “Claire Mercer.” She extended her hand—awkward, since she was on the left and Emily was on the right, but they managed it with a bit of a lean. Emily’s grip was soft and warm and totally unselfconscious.

“Emily,” she said, then giggled. “Or Em, or whatever, really. I’m kind of used to both.” She didn’t look away when she said it, and Claire found herself genuinely charmed by the lack of performance. She tried to imagine being like that in public, and it gave her a little electric zing down the length of her spine.

She said, “Doesn’t that get awkward? Like, isn’t it kind of—” She hesitated, searching for the right word.

Emily grinned. “It did, for a while. I hated it. But, uh, over time, I got used to it. My hair always covers me unless I move a certain way or, you know, tie it back. So as long as I don’t try to flash anyone, it’s just sort of there.” She lifted a strand, let it fall, and for the briefest second Claire caught a flash of pink nipple, instantly covered again as the hair resettled.

“It’s kind of… neat,” Emily added, softer, “how the world adapts to you, instead of the other way around. At least, that’s what my friend Rachel always said.”

Claire smiled, the kind of real one that reached her eyes. “I’m kind of jealous,” she admitted, then caught herself. “Not of the nudity, I mean, but the fact you don’t care. I always thought if I could just stop giving a shit, everything would be easier.”

Emily’s face softened. “I used to care,” she said, “but after a while, you run out of energy for it. Or, I guess, I had more important things to be worried about. Like getting home.” She shrugged, a tiny movement that dislodged a strand of hair, which she immediately tucked behind her ear.

“I still think about it,” Emily said, “but it’s not the end of the world anymore.”

“That’s cool,” Claire said, and meant it.

They sat for a while, just eating. The sounds of the room grew louder, conversations overlapping and weaving through each other. The naked girl with the black hair and the gigantic boobs drifted by. At another table, a catgirl with a bob of blonde hair had her tail curled around the leg of her chair, unconsciously stroking it. Claire was amazed at how normal all of it felt. She didn’t even notice she was staring until Emily spoke again.

“Can I ask you a weird question?” Emily said. She leaned in, conspiratorial, like a kid about to ask the teacher if the class can be held outside.

“Sure,” Claire said, bracing for something embarrassing.

Emily glanced at Claire’s fiery hair, then at her face. “Is yours alive, too?” she asked. “Or is it just, like, really well-behaved? It seemed to twitch and lift on its own, earlier.”

Claire almost choked on her juice, then laughed. She looked down, blushing, then ran a hand through her hair. “It’s not alive, exactly,” she said, “but it does have kind of a mind of its own. I can control it, a little. If I’m not careful, it’ll drift.” She shrugged.

Emily’s face was rapt. “Does it do that now?” she asked, grinning. She reached out, then hesitated, as if waiting for permission.

Claire thought about it, then nodded. “Go ahead. It won’t bite.”

Emily reached over with two fingers and brushed them along a strand of Claire’s hair, just above her ear. The strand curled, slow and lazy, toward her hand, wrapping around her knuckle with perfect precision. Emily laughed, delighted, and did it again, this time getting a whole lock to spiral into her palm.

“It’s so cool,” Emily said. “I wish mine did that. It just sort of falls.” She let go, the hair resettling in place, then tucked her own behind her ear again.

Claire felt her cheeks go a little pink, but she didn’t pull away. She liked the feeling of this conversation, just for a second, like someone was paying attention in a way that wasn’t about power or evaluation. She let herself enjoy it.

Emily let her hand linger a beat longer than strictly necessary, then smiled, real and warm. “Thanks,” she said, then laughed at herself. “Sorry, I get excited about little stuff like that.”

Claire smiled, too. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s kind of nice.”

They ate the rest of their meal in silence, but it was a comfortable one. At one point, Emily leaned over and whispered, “You’re very pretty, by the way,” and Claire Mercer had to fight not to let it go straight to her head. She pretended not to care, but she couldn’t stop the smile that crept up the side of her face.

After a while, the room’s noise reached a fever pitch, and Emily gestured at the buffet. “Do you want more coffee?” she asked. “I can get it. Or you can come with.”

“Let’s both go,” Claire said, and together they rose, moving through the crowd with the kind of coordination that made it look easy, even though neither of them had planned it out.

---

At the back edge of the Dance Hall, where the volume of the morning settled into the bass line of clinking glasses and the low, granular hum of women in their dozens, Mildred sat with her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold, though she had made no move to warm it, or drink it, or acknowledge that either option existed for her. She could have been a statue, a shadow, the aftermath of an event rather than its witness.

If anyone looked directly at her, they might see a line of tension running from the tip of her jaw down to her fist, but nobody looked for long. The room had learned, the way rooms eventually do, to let its attention slide past her without quite noticing it had happened.

Across the room, the core of the party vibrated with life: twins that glided as one organism, bodies adorned with paint or sequins or just the naked self, a pink-haired sprite with a laugh that could rattle glass. In all of it, Mildred kept her gaze off to the side, fixed not on the parade but on Chloe, a table over, who bounced a sleeping baby against her shoulder, humming as if the whole world had shrunk to the span of that small bundle.

It was the baby’s hair that caught Mildred first—darker than Riley’s, and fuzzy, the way Riley’s must have been when she herself was new. Chloe was the one holding him, though, and she looked happy, exhausted, half-wrecked in that way young mothers always were. But she was not a mother yet, not by the accounting flesh-beings used. She had not spawned her non-self, that small furious thing still drawing on her vital fluids as if it had forgotten it was meant to become its own creature by now.

Mildred had never understood this part of them, in any house, under any name. When she made more of herself, the making settled the question before it could be asked: it was her, all the way down, wanting what she wanted, because it had nothing else to want with. These small pink things came out already wanting things of their own, already someone else, as if the mother’s flesh had simply misplaced the recipe partway through. She found it, on reflection, a little obscene. The song Chloe hummed was tuneless but so dense with meaning that Mildred could feel the weight of it from here, the way she might feel the weight of something she was about to pick up. She didn’t know why it held her; she just watched, and let the silence settle over her the way silt settles at the bottom of very old water. The spawn was a pure, mindless hunger, all want and no malice yet, and Mildred found it… not pleasant. Not the opposite, either.

She stared just a little too long.

A shadow displaced itself into the seat across from her. One of Sassafras’s bodies—Mildred could never tell which, not that it mattered—slipped into the chair with the same noncommittal grace she brought to every setting, hands folded, posture immaculate. Sassafras made no small talk. She looked down at the table, then at the mug, then at Mildred.

They sat like that for at least half a minute, neither feeling the need to explain themselves. It was a stalemate of negative space, and it would have lasted until the end of the universe, but Sassafras was less invested in winning than in progressing. She nodded, once, toward the center of the room. “You’re watching the child,” she said, softly enough to leave room for denial.

Mildred considered lying, then shrugged instead. “He reminds me of a thsuodakia I secreted, once. Small. No fur. Had to be xas’arn-fed.” She let the words hang, then added, “It was not a success.”

Sassafras did not smile. She rarely did. “Was it your pet, or did you belong to the pet?”

“Does it matter?” Mildred asked. She never raised her voice. She had a gift, instead, for stripping a conversation down to bone, one polite question at a time, until only the true shape of the thing was left standing on the table between them.

Sassafras considered. “Not in the way you mean.” She turned her head, just slightly, as if calibrating the angle at which the world looked least threatening. “You don’t eat, but you like to watch.”

“Compulsion, not choice,” Mildred said, though there was no heat to it. “When you are built to serve, the menu does not change. Only the seating.”

Sassafras’s gaze tracked back to the coffee. She did not comment on it. Instead, she asked, “If you don’t enjoy it, why did you come?”

Mildred’s answer arrived before the question had quite finished landing. “Curiosity,” she said. “I wanted to see.” She meant more than just the room, but didn’t specify. “Is this the part where you offer comfort?” Mildred asked, the line dry and barely shaded by irony.

Sassafras shook her head. “It’s not that kind of day.” She looked at the centerpiece—a tight cluster of tropical blooms, white and lurid orange and something that looked like a spray of green sequins—and plucked a single white flower from it with a motion so deft it barely disturbed the rest. She set it on the table, looked at it, then at Mildred, and said, “If you want it, it’s yours.”

Mildred didn’t move, at first. Then she reached out and took the flower, slow, the way she took most things she intended to keep, tucking it into her breast pocket so the petals just peeked over the rim, already knowing, in the old and settled way she knew most things, that it would not survive her keeping of it. “Why?” she asked. It wasn’t about the flower.

Sassafras considered, then said, “Because I think it will last longer there.” She meant it, too.

The conversation creaked to a halt. In the silence, the party’s noise wrapped around the edges of the table, doing its best to intrude but never quite making it in. Mildred looked down at the mug again, then up at Sassafras, and for the first time in the encounter, let the question show on her face.

Sassafras saw it, weighed her answer, and said, “If you’d like to be left alone, I can go.”

Mildred looked back at Chloe, who was now patting the spawn’s back, eyes soft and far away. The spawn made a faint burble, appendage clenching, then stilled again.

“Not yet,” Mildred said.

Sassafras nodded and let herself be present again, as if the outside world no longer needed her at all.

Mildred watched her do it, watched the economy of the gesture, and felt something small and unfamiliar move through her, a distant cousin to admiration. “You are limited in where you can be, but less so than other flesh-beings,” she said.

Sassafras answered, “It is usually more than enough.”

Mildred considered that for a moment, weighing something with the patience of a creature that had never once, in its existence, been in a hurry. “You could refuse the parts you do not enjoy,” she said. “Nobody built you to serve.” It wasn’t quite a question. It rarely was, with her.

Sassafras considered this with the same unhurried care she gave everything. “I could,” she said. “I don’t.” She let that sit for a moment, as if deciding whether the rest was worth saying. Then: “There’s a difference between what compels you and what you’d choose anyway, even with no compulsion weighing on you. I found mine a long time ago.” A pause. “You haven’t, yet.”

Something in Mildred’s jaw set, the closest thing to a flinch she allowed the muscles of this borrowed face. “When it stops mattering, there will be nothing left of me to do the choosing. I will simply be gone. Home.” She said it like a fact recited so many times it had worn smooth as a river stone, all the original edges gone. “There is no version of me that outlives the task. Only the thing underneath. And the thing underneath does not want. It only is.”

“Will you.” Sassafras didn’t make it a challenge. She let the two words sit on the table next to the flower and the cold coffee, and didn’t pick them back up.

Mildred didn’t answer. She looked at Chloe again, at the small, unfinished hunger asleep against her shoulder, and something crossed her face that wasn’t quite anger and wasn’t quite grief, gone before it could be named, or eaten, or kept.

They sat in silence, the flower resting half-in, half-out of Mildred’s apron. The party raged on. Someone—probably Chloe—laughed, the sound bouncing off the dome and breaking against the back wall, but neither woman reacted.

Eventually, Sassafras stood. “If you need me,” she said, “I’ll be around.”

Mildred nodded. She waited until Sassafras was gone, then reached for the mug and finally took a sip of the coffee. It was cold, bitter, perfect.

She watched the room until the light changed.