Better than ever, in fact.

"How do you feel?" Eric asked, anxiety creasing his face.

How did she feel? Stacy used her thoughts to consider it. He was looking at her, waiting for an answer, and she needed to give it to him.

"I feel... strange," she said slowly. "I feel strange and good. I'm different, but I'm the same." She looked down at herself, wrapped in strange fibers that were clothes. "I'm the same, but I feel different."

"You're not acting the same," Eric said with worry. An unpleasant coldness crept into her warmth and she closed her eyes. It was unhappiness, she thought.

"I am the same, but I don't feel the same. It's odd, now. I don't have a body anymore."

"What?" he asked, eyes wide. There was a bitter root in his sounds. Panic.

"I am a body. I'm not a mind with a body or a body with a mind. I'm one thing now, not a thing-in-a-thing like I was. It's very hard to explain. My self isn't just chemicals and electricity in a brain, it's all of this." She gestured to herself. The bitterness was in Eric's eyes now.

"I... how do I put this? If I cut off your foot, are you still Eric? You are. But my foot is just as much me as as my head. If it's removed, I'm not me."

Eric was staring at her, but the bitter panic wasn't getting worse. Stacy was encouraged and continued. "Everything inside this skin is equally me. I don't have a heart or a brain or a stomach. I'm all clay. If one part of me hurts, all of me hurts. If one part of me is happy, all of me is happy. And that's another thing! The feelings, they're like real feelings now."

"Real feelings?" he prompted.

"Yes. Real feelings. When I look at you I feel hotness, heat. My whole body is actually hot, because I love you, and it's a real feeling. I don't just sense heat in my skin, I taste it and smell it and hear it. I experience heat because love is heat now. When you worry, it tastes and sounds and feels cold. When you're scared, it's bitter like mustard greens."

Eric sat in silence. She knew he was trying to understand. After thinking he spoke again. "Are you still... you?"

Stiffness, rigidity. Certainty. "Yes. I'm still me. I still like Chinese food and I still don't like romantic comedies and I still get really irritated at you when your alarm goes off before mine and you take too long to silence it."

"You never got irritated at that before," he objected.

"I did, but I never told you. Now I can tell you!" A rush of dizzy sweetness inside her. "Now I'm like I was! Oh, Eric, I don't feel the grief anymore! It's not here, it's not inside me!"

The sweetness was overwhelming and Stacy cried laughed cried and was hugging Eric, her tears hot and the sweet joy of not-pain was so much and he was hugging her back. She hugged him and she felt his certainty poking at her from between his legs and she remembered what it was to be a wife. It felt heavy and fast like a cannonball, it was telling her to put herself against his body so she did.

"Oh God, babe, I'm free!" she whispered sweetly into his ear. "I'm done with it all! I need you now, I need you inside!"

The certainty between them was pulsating now and Stacy knew that he needed it too. Without warning, she leapt off the couch. She took his hand and dragged him alongside her into the bedroom to learn about what she was.