We were being Serenikha with both bodies at the moment.

The Other Half of My Soul

Part 10 of 11

by Trismegistus Shandy

My latest novel, The Bailiff and the Mermaid, is available in EPUB format from Smashwords and Kindle format from Amazon. You can read the opening chapter here.

Two days later, Taylor came into the parlor where we were playing the riddle-game with Shiyama, Michiko and others. “I’ve got it, Your Highness. I can open another portal this afternoon, about five hours hence — I’ve already sent a message to the Deep One. Where’s Leslie?”

Actually, we were being Serenikha with both bodies at the moment — the other one was playing a ball-tossing game in the Peach Garden with Wushao and some of her courtiers — and the one we had there talking to Taylor had probably been Leslie’s. But we didn’t want to say so, since the women we were playing riddles with thought they were playing with Serenikha. We prevaricated, saying: “She’s in the Peach Garden with Pengshu and some others.”

“Well, set aside some time to see us off and then have the Deep One transform you back into the right kind of body. Make sure Leslie comes back in plenty of time.”

“Of course. We’ll both be in your quarters in a couple of hours. You’re welcome to stay...”

“No, thank you, I have things to do to get ready.” She slithered out of the room again, and Theremisia muttered “How rude!”

“Be patient with her,” we said; “mages have so many arcane matters demanding their attention, they can’t always remember less important matters, like manners.”

We had kept trying to use the spell Taylor had left on us to transform ourselves, when we could get a rare moment of privacy with both bodies. (Privacy with one body wasn’t too hard, but if we succeeded, both bodies would undoubtedly transform at once.) Finally, last night after Taylor went to sleep, we’d achieved some limited success: we got our breasts to grow larger, then smaller again. But when we tried to make our bodies like Leslie’s original body, it didn’t quite work. It felt like we were about to change, but the feeling passed and we were still the same nagini.

The next morning, we’d told Taylor about our partial success; she was dumbfounded, and wanted to see us change ourselves. We begged off just then, as the body with which we’d slept in Serenikha’s chamber wasn’t alone. And hours had passed without a good opportunity to have both bodies alone with Taylor.

When we’d arrived in Wushao’s neighborhood we had told her we would spend the whole afternoon and evening with her, as she had invited us to. Now we knew we needed to bring that body back early, but since we still hadn’t explained to Wushao about our stronger link, we needed to send a note “to tell Serenikha” that the Tenacious One needed her help. We wrote it out and entrusted it to Sienpai, privately warning her that Leslie was impersonating Serenikha and she needed to address her as such. After she delivered the note, we made our excuses to Wushao and her courtiers, and returned to our chambers.

After nursing Sakhi again, we went to Taylor’s room with both bodies. She was busy casting a spell of some kind, so we let ourselves in quietly and coiled up in a corner away from her spell circle. A few minutes later she finished the spell — with no apparent effect — and broke the circle.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “The magic levels over there are rising faster than I thought; we can go back pretty soon. Maybe before the Deep One arrives; Serenikha, will you be okay hanging out here in pixie-form — or Leslie-form — until she gets here?”

“Sure,” we said. “And maybe I can change back on my own.”

“Right, you said you’d — um — you’d gotten your breasts to grow, during the night?”

“And then we shrank them back down to normal size. We tried to change other things but couldn’t get it to work.”

“Try again now, please.”

So we concentrated on our memories of being Leslie, and tried to feel what it was like to have that kind of body — walking on two separate legs, nothing wobbling around on our chest when we moved, those things dangling between our legs... Taylor watched us intently, and that felt a little distracting, so we closed all our eyes and concentrated on kinesthetic memory.

Then something gave way and we knew we should have that body. Our legs felt weird, being squished together and coiled up like that... and then they uncoiled on their own and started to separate... We opened our eyes, looking at each other: it was a sight we’d seen in mirrors often when we were Leslie.

“Wow,” Taylor said softly. “How are you even doing that? You’re not casting a spell, it doesn’t look like... but... Huh. Let me draw a spell circle around you, and then do it again while I work a diagnostic spell.”

“Okay.”

We stood there patiently while she drew the circle and began the spell. She paused after waving her staff and chanting for a while, and said: “Okay, now transform again. Back into Serenikha, or, I don’t know, maybe pixies again?”

We thought it would be easier to change back into Serenikha-form, since it was one of the two forms we knew best. We concentrated on what that felt like, and after a few minutes felt our self-image click over to that: now our legs and penises felt wrong, but not for long before they merged into the naga-tails we ought to have. Just after we felt our self-image really change, a beam of light shone from the sternum of one body to the sternum of the other; the light twisted around in the air and changed colors before fading.

“That’s... huh. You remember how I said your transformation spell has a component that holds the form it’s trying to impose on you? And it’s easier to change that form than to remove the spell or recast it, now that it’s tangled with your psychic link? It looks like you’ve learned to manipulate that form.”

“So that’s good, right? We won’t need the Deep One’s help.”

“Maybe. I’d like to have her here just in case. Are you sure you’ll still be able to do that self-transformation when your psychic link is weakened by being in two different worlds?”

We shrugged with one set of shoulders. “Maybe? We’ll have to try and see.”

“Well, try it after we leave, and if you can’t do it on your own, get the Deep One to help you. Here, try changing into pixies; that will save my energy for opening the portal...”

So we thought back to how it had felt to be pixies, and tried to convince ourselves that that was what we ought to be right now. After a few minutes we felt way too large and wingless, and then we were shrinking down to a comfortable size and growing our wings back. We had green skin and violet hair, the same as before, and we looked at each other in satisfaction and nodded before we took off and flew up to look Taylor in the eyes.

“Wow, you two are good. That’s the fastest transformation I’ve seen yet. One of the other students in my class was faster than any of the rest of us, when we came to this world on the field trip to practice high-power spells, but you’re faster than him by a minute or two... I wish we still had our cellphones running so I could time you. Next time, we need to bring actual wristwatches so the batteries will last longer.”

“Are you going to change yourself before or after opening the portal?” we asked, flying spirals around each other and a larger circle around Taylor.

“Now, I guess. Stay back out of my circle...” And she drew another circle around herself, and started working on the transformation. We watched, trying to see if we could tell how she was doing it the way we’d felt her and the Deep One changing us, but we couldn’t see or hear anything except the usual staff-waving and chanting, and couldn’t feel anything unusual.

After about fifteen minutes of that, she started shrinking, grew wings, and split her tail into legs. Her staff shrank with her. This time she had scarlet skin and wings, and dark blue hair.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll rest, maybe take a short nap, and then work the portal spell.” She broke the circle with her staff, then flew over to the bed and laid down on one of the pillows, which was big enough to be a bed for any five pixies. “Don’t let me sleep too long,” she said. “Wake me up when the Deep One gets here, or in an hour if she hasn’t gotten here yet.”

The bed curtains were too heavy for us to pull closed, but we doused two of the lamps so it got dimmer, and then flew spirals around each other in parts of the suite that weren’t visible from Taylor’s pillow, so we wouldn’t disturb her. We didn’t have a clock as accurate as the ones on our dead-battery cellphones, but there was an hourglass on a shelf; it took both of our bodies to flip it over.

When about half the sand had run out, a servant came in and looked around, and was apparently about to turn and leave again when we flew down and hovered in front of her.

“Oh! Ah... is that you, my lady?”

“I am Princess Serenikha,” we said with one mouth.

“Oh. That kappa mage called the Deep One is here to see the Tenacious One.”

“Send her in,” we said with the other mouth. She curtsied and left; a few moments later the Deep One came in, and we flew down to her eye level with one body while we flew over to Taylor’s pillow to wake her with the other.

“The Tenacious One will be with us shortly,” we said to the Deep One, and to Taylor: “Wake up, sis, the Deep One’s here,” and we shook her shoulder. She opened her eyes.

“And I’d only just gotten to sleep... oh well. I think I’m rested enough to cast the portal spell now.” We took off and flew over to hover in front of the Deep One.

“Are you ready, Tenacious One?” she asked.

“Yes, unless you want to rest a few minutes after your journey. Not too long; we need to go through during the optimal period, when magic levels are safely high at our destination.”

“Oh,” we said, “we forgot to ask — where are you opening it to?”

“The back office of the Travel Agency in Santa Cruz.”

“So the Gray One will be there to meet us?”

“No, the Santa Cruz branch is run by the Imperturbable One; he graduated from Kinnison College five or six years ago, before I started there, but I met him when Professor G. invited him to give a talk to the freshman class my first semester. He’s good.”

“And he’ll have clothes for us?”

She shrugged. “They might not fit perfectly, but yeah. He’s gonna give us a ride to Mom and Dad’s house after he closes the office for the day.”

We were feeling a keen anticipation and also a deep apprehension. We wanted to see Mom and Dad and our college friends again, and we wanted to get back to school before we missed any more classes. But we were worried about how being in different worlds would affect our link. Would we still be us?

Only one way to find out.

Taylor drew a pixie-sized spell circle on the floor, while we showed the Deep One our luggage and asked her to throw our valuables through the portal after us. When we’d finished that, we all sat on the edge of the bed and watched Taylor cast the portal spell. Being in pixie form with lots of energy to burn, and nervous about how our link was going to be affected by this separation, we got really fidgety long before she finished casting it, and we took off and flew around the room, looking at the Taylor and the tiny portal (still smaller than a pixie’s fist) from different angles, then alighting on the bed again and dancing for a while... The Deep One seemed both amused by our antics and annoyed at being distracted when she wanted to concentrate on how Taylor was working that spell.

Finally, Taylor got the portal open as wide as it would go — more than twice our height. “That’s that,” she said, resting on her staff for a moment. “Come on, Leslie, let’s go.”

She started toward the portal, but before she went through it we called out with both voices: “Wait!”

She turned and looked at us, where we’d fluttered down and alighted near her spell-circle. “What is it?”

“Which of us is supposed to be Leslie?”

She stared at us silently for a few moments. “You mean you don’t know?”

“We kind of lost track; it didn’t seem important. We can be Leslie or Serenikha with either body, or with both at once if we need to. But when you were showing the Deep One how our transformation spell worked, you said you could see our true forms underlying the form the spell was imposing on us...?”

“Yeah, I can. Give me a minute.”

She worked on the portal again for a bit, and then stepped outside the portal spell-circle and said: “Okay, stand a little further apart... good. Now hold still.” She drew separate circles around each of us and then worked another spell, much simpler and shorter than the one she’d used to transform us.

“Okay, you’re coming with me,” she said, pointing at our body on the left, “and you’re staying here. Got it?”

“Sure,” we said with the mouth on the body she’d identified as Leslie’s. “Can we break the circles now?”

“Come on.” She took off and flew the ten inches or so to the portal and into it. We looked at each other for a moment, then sent our Leslie-body through the portal after her.

And then I was only me, flying through the portal-tunnel and out into a vast dark space. I couldn’t see where I was going, and I ran into Taylor, who was already turning back into her human self, though she hadn’t quite reached her full size. I bounced off her, feeling myself already growing too heavy for my wings to support me, and managed to land semi-gracefully on the floor before I lost the ability to fly entirely.

I was nearly back to my full height and mostly back to my usual light tan color when the room suddenly lit up. Taylor was standing by the light switch, almost full size but still growing a little. Her staff seemed to have reverted to full size faster than her.

“Get clear of the portal,” she said, just as a cellphone flew out of it and hit me in the ankle.

“Ow,” I said, and stepped away.

By the time the other cellphone and both our wallets had flown out of the portal, Taylor and I were both back to normal. At least physically. I was feeling a huge gap in myself, unable to feel Serenikha’s body or share her thoughts, but I was able to function. Our phones were followed by a few more small items from our luggage before the portal collapsed.

“How are you feeling?” Taylor asked. “Can you still see through Serenikha’s eyes and all?”

“No... I can hardly feel her at all. At first I thought our link was broken, but now... it’s like my arm has just gone to sleep, instead of getting cut off.”

“Thanks for that lovely image. Is it as uncomfortable as that makes it sound?”

I thought for a moment. “I can get used to it, I guess. It’s just the way things were before, only now I know something better is possible and I kind of miss it.”

She shook her head. “That was really creepy, the way you two seemed to merge into one person. I’m glad you’re back.”

“I was never gone.”

“I know, but... never mind. Let’s find those clothes the Imperturbable One said he’d leave here for us.”

But on searching the room — which contained only a couple of filing cabinets and a stack of cardboard boxes — we found no clothes or anything we could use for clothes.

“Are we sure we’re in his office and not, say, the insurance agent’s next door?”

“Um... I think so. Look,” she pulled one of the files from the filing cabinet, “it’s a rental agreement between the Gray & Isaacson Travel Agency and Hsung Leasing.”

“So we’re either in his office or his landlord’s office.”

“His,” she confirmed, pulling another file and finding phone bills in the name of the Gray & Isaacson Travel Agency. “Let’s see if he left the clothes somewhere else.”

We left the storage room and explored the rest of the office, which was equally dark and deserted. It was night here, a little after one a.m. we discovered when we found a clock. And we couldn’t find anything more clothes-like than some hand-towels in the kitchenette.

We did manage to find a USB charger cord in one of the desk drawers, and we started charging Taylor’s cellphone. We debated calling the Imperturbable One at home, either on the cell once it charged a bit or on the office landline, but decided to wait until sometime after dawn. “He’s already doing us a massive favor,” Taylor said, “so let’s not piss him off by waking him in the middle of the night. Probably he was expecting us to arrive during working hours.”

After a while, I curled up on the sofa in the lobby and took a nap, while Taylor turned on the computer and web-surfed. She shook my shoulder and woke me just as it was getting light outside.

“We probably shouldn’t be naked here in the lobby when people might come look in the windows at us,” she suggested.

“Yeah, I guess so.” I had something to tell her, but it could wait a few minutes.

We moved back to the storage room and sat down to wait.

“I called the Imperturbable One, told him we were here and and asked him to bring some extra clothes. He apologized and said he meant to leave them at the office yesterday, but forgot and left them in his car... anyway, he’ll come in early and give us a ride to his condo, if we want, so we can sleep in a real bed while he works. Then he’ll give us a ride to Mom and Dad’s house.”

“Good. Um... about my link with Serenikha? You know how I share dreams with her?”

“Yes?”

“Well, in this dream I was us. I mean we were both me... we were like we were the last few days in her world. We shared everything, not just the stuff we wanted to deliberately show or tell each other.”

“And now?” She looked worried.

“Now I’m just me again. But I remember everything that happened to Serenikha between the time we left and the time she fell asleep.”

Four of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format. (Smashwords pays its authors more than other retailers.)