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Chapter 8 by fantaghiro fantaghiro

What's next?

inside Nia's mind

Sarah is still there, inside Nia. She remembers their entire life together—the falling in love, the wedding vows she cried through, the comfortable intimacy, the quiet struggles of their middle-aged life. All of those feelings and experiences are present.

Nia is dominant though. When Tom made the wish for her to "know everything about this life," he essentially downloaded a fully-formed persona with its own history, ambitions, and worldview directly into her brain. Nia's personality—driven, pragmatic, independent, and physically powerful—is much stronger and more assertive than Sarah's was.

Her feelings for Tom are divided:

Sarah's consciousness feels the deep, abiding love for Tom. She sees his touch as affection.

Nia's consciousness views that same touch as a cloying, unprofessional gesture from a man with whom she has a marriage of convenience.

Sarah remembers their love story. Nia remembers their practical arrangement for a green card.

Right now, the thrill and power of being Nia is overwhelming the softer, more insecure voice of Sarah. Nia is re-interpreting all of Sarah's memories through her own cynical, pragmatic lens. The love Sarah felt is being re-framed as naivete. The life they built is being re-framed as a stepping stone.

So, while she has access to all of Sarah's memories, she's experiencing them as if she's watching a movie about a different, weaker person. The emotional attachment to those memories is fading, being replaced by Nia's much colder logic. The "Sarah" part of her is horrified, fighting to hold on, but she's losing ground with every moment she spends embracing Nia's strength and ambition.

What's next?

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