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not-E
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[ - Saturday Sept. 07 2019 2pm, immediately after Chapter 10, Dawn's house - ]
Announcement tw: identity confusion
I open my eyes, but feel off balance. I know I’m supposed to talk to Dawn, but there’s something wrong. There’s supposed to be another part of me stepping back, right? I’m not- not just me anymore. I think?
I find I don’t even want to be me, I don’t want to go back to just being ‘I’. Which is really strange, and anyway I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to be anything other than myself. Anxiety surges through my mind, making it that much harder to figure out what the hell is going on.
Let me help, Anne thinks at me, reminding me of her presence in my mind. She sends a wave of calm through my thoughts. It washes through me like a sigh of relief, slowing down the spiral of panic.
It helps a little bit. I feel less afraid. But I’m still upset, still struggling with myself internally.
Not-E, Anne says, which seems to be bizarrely addressed to me for some reason, you who have been talking to Dawn and cleaning, she clarifies unhelpfully, come with me. E, you who entered my private isle, stay there, she commands.
Her words tug at my mind. Her private Isle? I sure don’t remember that. Except I absolutely do, I remember having a feminine body on a cliff above her cerulean blue mind-sea. The memory’s kinda foggy, but I know it happened. I must’ve been there.
That was me there, not you, I think at myself, which seems very not-me of me.
That thought irritates me even more though, and suddenly I find myself focusing intently on the memory of a sandy beach with a branch-like bridge snaking across the water and disappearing into a vast wall of grey mist. I’ve both never seen this place before, and been here often enough I’ve almost gotten used to the surrealness of it.
I imagine myself standing on the beach in a body from some of my favorite dreams, basically my physical body but as I would’ve been had I been born a cis girl. Ordinarily I think I’d be pretty stoked about getting to be in this body, but I’m not. I’m angry at myself. Terrified of myself. Fighting myself.
You’re not me, I think at me urgently and nonsensically, you’re not-E.
Anne appears beside me on the beach. I turn to look at her, protests against the weird thoughts I’m having rising to my lips. But I find Anne’s holding a hand out towards me palm-first, her fingers splayed wide, and for some reason it draws my full attention.
A swirling red aura of light and air spirals out from her palm to envelop her whole hand, the colors growing deeper and more vivid as I watch. It’s mesmerizing, so many different shades of red twisting and intertwining with one another to form new hues and patterns. Little wisps of near-pink and near-orange curl around her fingers only to merge back into the main crimson aura moments later. I fall to my knees almost as an afterthought. The patterns hold me spellbound.
“E,” Anne whispers sharply, “step back.”
I feel a roil of conflicting emotions. I want to do as she asks; I want to protest this weird control she has over me. But I don’t get to do either of those, because suddenly I feel a big part of myself separating away from me. It slips right out of my body and mind, like someone just ejected themselves from the co-pilot seat.
I’m still staring at Anne’s hand, but, strangely, I actually feel a little less disjointed now. There’s no longer someone struggling to push me away. I’m just... me. I remember the stupid name I gave myself now, not-E, and the thirty minutes or so I spent alone with Dawn idly wondering if I was having an identity crisis.
Holy shit. I feel near-panicked as I realize what just happened. I... I lost myself. I forgot I could exist like this, rather than as the jumbled mess of a self that E and I are together. I mean, we used to be together every day of our life, I guess? But even back then we’d fought each other. I tried to stop E from being so damn naive; she tried to stop me from being so damn cynical.
To go back to that state after experiencing the clarity of separateness? It was terrifying. It felt like sinking down into a thick omnipresent fog.
Before me the red light slowly swirls off of Anne’s hand and dissipates into the air around it. She looks equal parts wary and compassionate. When she offers her hand to me, I take it gratefully. Shakily, I get to my feet. I’m still wary of her, of this self-proclaimed alien in my head, but I’m also very grateful for her help just now. A glance down at myself reveals I’m more or less in the same body that I have in the physical world, and I find comfort in that familiarity.
“Gods damn, I do not want to go through that again,” a woman’s voice behind me says.
I turn and find E standing there, still in the dream-girl body I was sharing with her a moment ago. I feel a wave of guilt at fighting against her. “Are you okay?” I ask urgently, my voice a little wobbly with the magnitude of the crazy happening all around me.
She flashes me a sympathetic smile, and says, “I should be the one asking you that. I’m fine now that I’m me again.” Her eyes flick to the stranger beside me. “Thanks for the help, Anne.”
I nod in agreement, but my attention is drawn back to the world around me. Somehow, I feel like I’m actually in this body, on this beach. Waves break on the shore ten meters away, animals call out from the forest in the other direction. I find I can still vaguely sense my body in the physical world, still standing in Dawn’s kitchen, but it’s very distant, as if that’s the dream and this is reality. I have no fucking clue how any of this is possible, but I decide now’s not the time to dwell on it. There’s enough madness on my plate as it is.
Anne walks around me to stand in between E and I. Now that I’m back to myself, I take in her current form with fresh eyes. She’s at least a foot taller than E and I’s five foot-ten, and she’s wearing a knee-length brown skirt that looks incredibly soft. Her blouse is a faded grass-green and hides most of her figure, and she’s adjusting the silver-rimmed glasses on her nose nervously.
“I’m sorry I didn’t intervene earlier,” she says, meeting first my gaze, and then E’s. “I was afraid of overstepping my welcome. I have no wish to meddle in your system’s inner workings. But it seemed important to help you separate from each other. I remember well the times my own identity became muddled with the rest of my system, and not fondly.”
I cross my arms loosely and shudder a little. “S’okay,” I say sincerely, “it’s not like I had any idea what I was doing. And you might even be right, I might’ve resented you for doing that unasked. But I’m really glad you stepped in when you did.”
E’s hugging herself and staring off into the middle distance. “I really think I should’ve asked for your help once it was clear it wasn’t at all easy for us,” she adds sheepishly, coming back to herself to blush and glance at Anne.
Anne waves a hand at this suggestion. “You’re both going through so many new experiences on top of the confusion our connection brings, please don’t be hard on yourself E.”
“Fair enough,” E says, “but I also don’t blame you. Thanks for stepping in when you did.”
I nod in assent. "I'm glad you were here, as weird as it is for me to say that."
Anne still seems hesitant, but we appear to have placated her fears a bit. She stands up a little straighter, adjusting her glasses again and clearly trying to put her thoughts into words.
“If you would like any sort of help with the process of switching in the future, please let me know. It may take a while to, ah, ‘get the hang of it’,” she says.
I realize that we’ve all been speaking English, and also that I know a lot more Amaranthian than I did a few minutes ago. Which reminds me of the whole reason I tried to switch out with E in the first place. For once though, there’s a lot more on my mind that I want to address before pushing for them to go talk to Dawn.
“I’ll probably take you up on that,” I reply.
"Same," E says.
I feel strangely calm about all this, and my suspicion is it's an after effect of whatever Anne did to separate us. I still feel like myself, and all my doubts and cynicism are still here though, so I don't find myself overly concerned about my lack of panic. Instead I'm wondering how long E and I have been separate perspectives in our head. It feels like it's been going on a lot longer than just this past week.
I look back to E and ask, “Guess we’ll need to figure out who gets to be in the body when, huh?”
She raises her eyebrows in surprise, but then nods thoughtfully. “Yeah. And we’ll also need to figure out where we... go? When we’re not in the body? I mean, I guess here for now,” she says uncertainly.
“Once we have the time, I can help you design personal sanctuaries you each can retreat to,” Anne chimes in, “it’s something that really helped me be more at ease with the rest of my system, having my own space to exist in. It would feel something like being in this place.”
I whistle softly. “Damn, how the hell does that work?”
“It takes a lot of time and practice initially, but living in internal worlds is something you already do. You have dreams some nights, do you not?” Anne says.
I raise an eyebrow, considering the implications of that question. “Yeah, we do. So what, you’re saying this is like a dream we’re all sharing?”
She gives me a small shrug. “It certainly uses some of the same building blocks as dreams do. When I first found myself on this side of our connection, I wanted to create a landing place for myself. When I tried to imagine a beach, this is what your mind responded with. The fabric of this place is interwoven with your connection to my own sanctuary, with the bridge being the most concentrated point of contact. But this is all still a part of your mind. The various sensations you feel while existing in this environment come from your own expectations of what you’d feel in this sort of place, combined with bits and pieces I copied over from my own sanctuary’s sensations and physics.”
Her eyes glow red for a moment as she speaks, and a sudden gust of wind blows across the beach from the ocean. I’m shocked by the vivid sensation of the air rushing across my skin. It presses against my jeans and goes right through the thin Invocation Array t-shirt I’m wearing, leaving the hairs on my arms standing on end. I gasp for air for a moment, but the wind dies down as the red leaves Anne’s eyes.
“We found that new parts of our system can readily attach to a dream-body if we show them how,” Anne continues, “especially if they’ve experienced being in a physical body before. I did the same thing to give both of you your current bodies.”
She pauses, pursing her lips and looking into the distance, towards the mists. I catch E’s eye, and see that she looks just as mystified as I do. But whereas there’s excitement underlying her puzzlement, I feel a lot more cautious. This is all just a lot to take in in an afternoon, you know?
“I don’t really know what it means for me to be able to do this sort of modeling in your system,” Anne says with a small frown. “Obviously, the internal world of a system is their most private space. I haven’t had time to worry about the morality of this thus far. All I can promise is that I won’t do any further creation here without your express permission.” She gives a slightly helpless shrug.
It’s my turn to frown, trying to figure out what the heck she means by all that. Combined with how she enspelled me just now, it leaves me feeling very wary, and very interested in figuring out how the hell all this works. If only so I can protect E and I from the truly crazy parts of our mind. I don't super like that I’m taking all this ‘plural’ stuff almost at face value. But at the same time, it’s happening right in front of me. I'm definitely not in control of E or Anne, as far as I can tell, so it seems kind of pointless to deny it. Perhaps later I’ll do some thinking on all this.
“That’s totally okay,” E’s saying reassuringly, and also naively, “We’ll figure this all out as we go.”
They both turn to look at me, and internally I shrink a little under their scrutiny. Part of me feels like a party pooper with my doubts about everything they seem to believe wholeheartedly in. But I also know I’m apparently the only one here with an ounce of skepticism, so I force myself to stand straighter on the uneven sand, and say, “I do want to figure more of this out. But I’d also like Dawn’s opinion on it all. Can you both get back to her? And is there some way I can like, watch? I want to hurry this up so she has time in between this conversation and her family getting home. If she’s going to come out, I want her to do it without all our craziness still newly churning in her mind.”
E’s nodding eagerly by the time I finish, and Anne’s tilting her head at me thoughtfully.
“Absolutely yes, that’s a good point!” E exclaims, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, “Anne, can you help us figure both those things out?”
“Yes of course,” Anne replies. She’s not looking at us though, she’s turning slowly in a circle and seemingly studying the scenery. “I’ll just need a few moments to create a viewing room in this place,” she says as she takes a few steps away from us towards the tree line of the forest. “Though I will say that time is passing much slower in your reality than it is here. I thought we might need a while to discuss all this.”
I feel a bit of my apprehension dissipate with this news. I also feel like I'm rapidly losing all my marbles. “Oh,” I reply, “well uh, that’s cool and good.”
She shoots me a little smile over her shoulder, before turning her attention back to the forest. The area she’s examining is directly in line with the point on the shore where the branch bridge burrows into the sand. There’s a thin area of sparse grasses and shells where the sand meets the soil, and then the shrubs and other underbrush of the forest start, with the first line of smaller trees maybe fifteen meters inland from the beach.
E and I are standing about a meter behind Anne, and we watch as she bows her head and spreads her arms out to about 45 degrees from her torso, fingers splayed and palms facing the forest. Again, red light spirals out from the centers of her hands, growing more vibrant with each passing moment. She’s breathing deeply and evenly, with her eyes closed and her brow furrowed.
This time the light stays confined to a disk-like plane a hairs-breadth from her skin. It looks kinda like she has two mini galaxies growing parallel to her palms, and as I watch they spin faster, spread farther, and grow brighter. Her long black hair starts to float a little off her shoulders, and I catch movement in the bottom of my vision, a glance down reveals small shells and grains of sand lifting off the ground and floating towards her.
Her breathing gets progressively deeper as all this goes on, and the spirals seem to gain speed in time with her inhales. Just when I start to feel a gentle tug on my extremities towards the magical girl, she lets out a long, deep sigh, raises her hands up slightly, and then turns her palms downwards, collapses to her knees, and plunges the magic deep into the sandy soil.
Intricate, abstract-looking sigils carve themselves into the ground around her hands, flaring with crimson light. I vaguely remember seeing something similar when we’d been switching between a discrete math test and Anne’s teleportation glyph.
For a moment, nothing else seems to happen. Anne stays still, her face twisted in concentration. I stare out at the forest ahead of her, extremely nervous. And then I see it: little flickers of red light bursting up from the ground: sprouts of green rising rapidly from the center of each one. The magic plants seem to be arranged in a huge, roughly circular outline directly in front of Anne.
“Holy shit,” E whispers reverently. The both of us have inched closer together almost subconsciously, and now we stand nearly side by side. I cross my arms, trying to slow my pounding dream-heart. But even I have to admit this is a hell of a show.
Big, broad orange leaves have begun branching out from each stem, all of them growing taller and thicker with each passing moment. The stems themselves are a light charcoal color that quickly darkens to near-black. More branches sprout out from the first ones as the plants shoot upward. It’s as if I’m watching a high-speed time-lapse video of at least ten trees growing in unison.
I stand there open mouthed, just taking it all in. The sounds of the waves behind us and forest ahead of us haven’t diminished in the slightest, and the growing trees before us are near-silent save for the soft creaking of growing wood. Even for all that I know this is a dream, the spectacle that Anne’s putting on is some of the coolest shit I’ve ever seen.
In seconds the trees are as tall as I am, and growing much thicker than I feel like they should be. In fact as they get to a more mature age, they start to deform more rapidly: all of them now have branches that start just above the soil and stretch out in a curve towards the saplings on either side. They have many more branches continuing up their lengths, all of which slowly migrate to either side of the trunk and follow the bottom most branches’ example: reaching towards their sister saplings. As the branches meet, they begin intertwining, growing past each other, and growing thicker seemingly specifically to fill in the gaps in the circular wall they’re creating.
Soon there are solid walls of deep black wood growing thicker before us, with a small area directly in front of Anne that’s remained clear of branches in a stark eight foot tall arched doorway. As they rise, the trunks of the trees start leaning closer together at around nine feet up, and soon after that they rapidly merge into one enormous trunk that continues rising slowly upwards.
I feel a deep, intense awe as I watch this massive tree grow. Its canopy spreads out about eighteen feet up from the ground and is full of deep orange leaves on huge, thick branches that form a large half-dome above. The humongous trunk is at least thirty feet from one side to the other, making it maybe twice as wide as it is tall. Through the doorway I can see at least the bottom part of the tree is hollow, with living wood for its floor and walls. Sunlight streams into it from unseen windows that must be set up into the trunk at odd intervals.
The glyphs around Anne’s hands fade slowly as the tree finishes growing. My eyebrows have migrated to somewhere kilometers above us, and I just stand there staring at Anne as she opens her eyes, grins sheepishly at the massive living structure she’s just created, and gets carefully to her feet.
“Uh,” E says from beside me, “Aren’t we in like a dream? Did you need to go through all that to make this?”
Anne spins around to face us again, her eyes bright and full of life. “Nope!” she exclaims happily, “I could have just willed that into being the easy way. But I like to practice my magic whenever I get the chance. My sanctuary, and by extension this one, run on the same magic that’s found in my world, so I can get real practice with it while someone else is fronting.”
E looks intrigued, but I cut her off before she can ask more questions.
“Oooo-kay,” I say slowly, “so how exactly does this magic tree help us?
She flashes me another smile, seemingly in a much bubblier mood from when she first appeared in my head today. “Let’s go inside and I’ll show you!”
I fall in behind E as Anne leads us into the softly-lit interior of the tree building. The sounds of the beach become muted as I cross the threshold into the tree. Directly ahead of us is absolutely pitch-black. At first I think it’s just in shadow, but then I realize it’s a precisely defined area of blackness that looks kinda like a filled-in venn diagram: two circles joined in the middle. The rest of the room is lit softly by light from above. There appear to be a few comfortable-looking chairs and sofas in front of the floating black space, while the rest of the room is bare of any furniture or decoration. I can hear an occasional faint scratching sound overlaid atop a deep, slow background humming - kind of like a slowed-down air conditioner?
“Here we are,” Anne announces as we walk across the large, mostly-empty space, “your very first internal viewing room. Goddesses, I haven't done growth magic like that in forever!”
Her voice echoes around the room, as do the sounds of our footsteps.
E and I glance at each other as we walk behind Anne. She answers my arched eyebrow with a helpless shrug. Then she focuses on Anne and asks, “Um, what’s a viewing room?”
Anne spins around to look at us, an embarrassed expression flashing across her face. “Oh, um," she begins, her brow furrowing in concentration, "it’s basically a window that lets you see out of your physical body’s eyes while you’re not the one fronting," she says sheepishly.
She doesn’t miss a step as she back-walks, maintaining the same swift pace she’d had before.
I look behind her to the joined circles of blackness. “That’s our closed eyes?” I ask, nodding towards them.
“Yep!” Anne replies happily, twirling back around to gesture towards the eye-holes. “You can also hear whatever the body hears, I have it so the sound comes from either side of the viewing area. And if you want I can teach you how to tap into the rest of your senses later on.”
E rubs her hands together in anticipation. "Okay I like this," she says with a grin.
I roll my eyes, but admittedly I'm getting kinda sorta maybe excited about experimenting in this weird dream world too. We finally arrive at the edge of the ‘viewing area’, which I now realize has a huge soft red carpet beneath it that seems to be... growing out of the floor?
“What’s with the carpet?” I ask, “Did you just make that?”
Anne turns and leans against the back of a particularly large armchair at the edge of the row of seats, smiling at me.
“I did,” she says brightly, “it’s a very safe, soft, and durable moss from my world.”
I try not to let my trepidation show as I look down to examine the sea of moss I’ve walked several feet into. I decide it’s best not to think too hard about it, lest I start activating my germophobia.
"So I'm going to stay here while you both go talk to Dawn?" I ask, looking from E to Anne with a raised eyebrow.
"Yes, though I'll stay here as well to answer whatever questions Dawn has for me," Anne replies. Then she turns to give me a quizzical look. “Unless you’d like some alone time?”
I purse my lips, crossing my arms a little defensively. It’s a good question, and the answer is yes. But... “Whatever would be best for communicating with Dawn,” I answer, “I don’t mind you staying here.”
Much.
Anne thinks about that for a moment. “I’ll stay here to begin with,” she decides, “but that may change depending on what your friend wants to know. My system's sister had many questions about you all that we weren’t able to answer on our own, I assume this conversation will be somewhat similar.”
E wanders closer to the floating projection of our closed eyes at the back of the circular room, eyeing it closely. "What's the best way to get out there from in here?" she asks.
"The act of switching into the front is different for every system,” Anne replies, pushing her glasses up her nose. “You might try closing your eyes and focusing on connecting more to your body's senses, distancing yourself from the simulated ones here. You both seem fairly okay, for having just come into contact with each other. I suspect you’ll be able to switch relatively easily compared to some other systems I know. Though that doesn’t mean it won’t take practice.”
E’s standing about a foot away from the eye-windows now, with her head bowed and her body relaxed. As I watch, she seems to flicker slightly, temporarily going a little transparent before returning to normal. She opens her eyes, grimaces when she sees that she’s still in here, and sets her jaw.
"It might be helpful to think about it like stepping forward in your mind’s eye, letting the view here serve as a portal to your body? The goal is just to connect to your physical senses as strongly as possible," Anne comments.
E nods slightly, her eyes still closed. Anne and I watch from the edge of the viewing area as she tries again. This time she nearly disappears before flickering back to solidity.
I’m trying not to think about how fucking bizarre this all is, but I’m not very successful. We’re basically trapped in our own mind if we can’t get this work, if I’m understanding things right? That’s fucked. Really everything that’s happened since Anne came into our life is fucked. Though, well, I guess E and I do understand ourselves a little better, provided Anne’s not lying to us about everything. That’s something.
“Think I almost got it,” E says tersely. Then she disappears again.
And this time she doesn’t come back.
“Did she-” I start to ask, before blindingly bright light floods into the tree-room from thin slits across the center of the eye-windows. I flinch away, holding up a hand to shield my fake eyes from the light entering our real eyes.
I hear Anne hum softly beside me. My vision adjusts quickly, and I straighten up, watching as the slits slowly, slowly widen.
“Ah, I’ll alter this sanctuary to match the passage of time in your world,” she says.
I expect to feel something happen, some major change to affect time itself here. But no, a moment later the eye-windows finish opening much quicker than they started. It takes a moment for the picture to focus, and I guess that our physical eyes also needed some time to adjust to the fluorescent lights of Dawn’s house.
I take a small step forward, my arms still crossed, as I peer out into the world beyond my head. The viewing ovals are about twice as tall as I am high, around eleven feet or so, and they’re at least twice that wide, probably more. I never was good at guesstimating sizes and distances.
A thought occurs to me, and I look over my shoulder at Anne. She’s watching me with a small smile on her face, which I find creepy, or maybe nice? It’s hard to tell, my normal methods of judging people don’t seem to apply here in this mental world. I feel too vulnerable to trust my instincts, this is all too new.
I shake my head a little to clear those thoughts, and focus back on Anne. “How do we talk to E while we’re in here?” I ask her in a clipped tone.
She gestures towards the screen behind me. “Speak to her and expect her to hear you, that’s about it. If you need something more, I’ll help.”
I nod slowly, slightly frustrated, again, by the bizarre nature of this dream existence. E’s focused our eyes on the floor tiles below, and I realize our body’s still leaning against the counter with arms crossed and head bowed.
Testing testing, 1 2 3, says a voice in my head.
I jump in surprise and let out a yelp. “What the hell?!” I exclaim. I whirl around and see Anne hiding a grin at my reaction. I scowl at her and quickly turn away.
Hey, Anne, not-E, can you hear me? It’s E, the voice calls again.
“We can hear you just fine E,” Anne says, “can you hear me?”
“Yep!” comes a loud voice from either side of me. I keep my cool this time, but only barely. E just answered Anne out loud, I think.
“I’m sorry for laughing, not-E,” Anne says to me softly. She sounds sincere about it, too.
I maintain my rigid posture, but mutter, “It’s fine.”
Then, before that interaction can go any farther, I focus on talking to E - to the person directing my physical eyes up from the tiles to the table - and ask, much louder, “Can you hear me? It’s not-E.”
Yes! I can! she responds in my head.
Cool, great, fine, we can just use telepathy at will with each other I guess. Though I suppose we already did that earlier today. Whatever.
Our eyes are now focused on Dawn’s face, she’s still sitting at the table with a slightly worried look on her face.
“You okay?” she asks us.
“Yes we are!” E replies enthusiastically. In my opinion, a little too enthusiastically, but I guess I’ll try not to back seat drive for now.
Dawn lets out a little sigh of relief. “Oh thank the gods, you looked really upset there for a little bit.”
Our eyes - E’s eyes? I’ve no idea how to conceptualize looking through our body’s eyes with my own imaginary pair of eyes - widen slightly.
“Oh, yeah, not-E and I - I’m E by the way! - kind of mushed together for a little bit and it sucked. But Anne helped separate us, and she’s made this whole ‘being plural’ thing way easier.
Dawn blinks, seemingly a bit taken aback. I’m not surprised, even I’m not used to any part of myself being as boisterous as E’s been since she and Anne came back.
Dawn recovers quickly and gives us a warm smile. “Hi E, it’s nice to officially meet you-you,” she says, then tilts her head. “Plural, is that the word for it? Having multiple personalities, or whatever’s going on?” she asks quizzically.
Vaguely, I realize I can sense our body shrugging. I’m standing a few feet away from the eye-screen still, I don’t want to look away.
“That’s what we’re rolling with for now. I’m as new to this as you are,” E replies outside. “Anne’s been providing the terminology. She really doesn’t seem like a ‘normal’ part of my mind, I swear I’d never heard of plurality before she mentioned it. Plus there’s the magic, the other language, and all the mind-stuff she’s shown us.”
Dawn glances down at the table in front of her, where I can see a sheet of paper full of her blocky handwriting. E barely looks at it though, so I can’t make out what’s written down.
“That’s the kind of stuff not-E and I were talking about just before you got here,” Dawn asks, “Are you feeling up for telling me more about that kinda stuff now? Do you want to rest or anything first?”
E takes a deep breath. “Let’s do it now, Anne’s staying here to help. Not-E wants to make sure you have time to process it before your family gets back.”
I'm suddenly easily able to turn away from the screen, and it has nothing to do with the slight burning sensation I feel in my dream-cheeks. Anne gives me a kind smile, and motions to a pair of padded armchairs in the center of the line of furniture. We both get seated as Dawn's voice fills the room.
"That's really kind of her," she says. When I finally look back at the screen, Dawn's face seems both happy and touched. "Would you tell her I say thanks?" she asks.
Her reaction fills me with happiness, though I'm careful to keep my expression neutral. What can I say? I just really like caring for my friends.
"I can hear her," I murmur to E.
"She can hear you, and she says you're more than welcome," E says, lying through our teeth. But she's not wrong.
"Well, cool!" Dawn says brightly. "So, do you wanna sit down and take notes on everything in here?" She gestures towards the paper spread out before her. "Or we could go somewhere else, whatever feels most comfortable."
"In here is good!" E exclaims. She walks over to the head of the table, pulls out a chair, and sits down beside Dawn.
Anne and I both lean forward in our chairs, staring intently out at the world beyond my mind.
"Finally," I mutter to myself, "let's do this."
KristenOfTheCoven Hello lovely readers! My muse would not let me go with this one, so here's a chapter to make up for missing last month's!
Also, if you’re interested in learning more about the experiences of plural systems, we recommend these sites as good resources:
https://pluralpedia.org/w/Main_Page https://plural.systems/As an example, here's some info on how dissociative system internal worlds can work (though of course every system is unique!): https://pluralpedia.org/w/Headspace
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not-E
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[ - Saturday Sept. 07 2019 2pm, immediately after Chapter 10, Dawn's house - ]
Announcement tw: identity confusion
I open my eyes, but feel off balance. I know I’m supposed to talk to Dawn, but there’s something wrong. There’s supposed to be another part of me stepping back, right? I’m not- not just me anymore. I think?
I find I don’t even want to be me, I don’t want to go back to just being ‘I’. Which is really strange, and anyway I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to be anything other than myself. Anxiety surges through my mind, making it that much harder to figure out what the hell is going on.
Let me help, Anne thinks at me, reminding me of her presence in my mind. She sends a wave of calm through my thoughts. It washes through me like a sigh of relief, slowing down the spiral of panic.
It helps a little bit. I feel less afraid. But I’m still upset, still struggling with myself internally.
Not-E, Anne says, which seems to be bizarrely addressed to me for some reason, you who have been talking to Dawn and cleaning, she clarifies unhelpfully, come with me. E, you who entered my private isle, stay there, she commands.
Her words tug at my mind. Her private Isle? I sure don’t remember that. Except I absolutely do, I remember having a feminine body on a cliff above her cerulean blue mind-sea. The memory’s kinda foggy, but I know it happened. I must’ve been there.
That was me there, not you, I think at myself, which seems very not-me of me.
That thought irritates me even more though, and suddenly I find myself focusing intently on the memory of a sandy beach with a branch-like bridge snaking across the water and disappearing into a vast wall of grey mist. I’ve both never seen this place before, and been here often enough I’ve almost gotten used to the surrealness of it.
I imagine myself standing on the beach in a body from some of my favorite dreams, basically my physical body but as I would’ve been had I been born a cis girl. Ordinarily I think I’d be pretty stoked about getting to be in this body, but I’m not. I’m angry at myself. Terrified of myself. Fighting myself.
You’re not me, I think at me urgently and nonsensically, you’re not-E.
Anne appears beside me on the beach. I turn to look at her, protests against the weird thoughts I’m having rising to my lips. But I find Anne’s holding a hand out towards me palm-first, her fingers splayed wide, and for some reason it draws my full attention.
A swirling red aura of light and air spirals out from her palm to envelop her whole hand, the colors growing deeper and more vivid as I watch. It’s mesmerizing, so many different shades of red twisting and intertwining with one another to form new hues and patterns. Little wisps of near-pink and near-orange curl around her fingers only to merge back into the main crimson aura moments later. I fall to my knees almost as an afterthought. The patterns hold me spellbound.
“E,” Anne whispers sharply, “step back.”
I feel a roil of conflicting emotions. I want to do as she asks; I want to protest this weird control she has over me. But I don’t get to do either of those, because suddenly I feel a big part of myself separating away from me. It slips right out of my body and mind, like someone just ejected themselves from the co-pilot seat.
I’m still staring at Anne’s hand, but, strangely, I actually feel a little less disjointed now. There’s no longer someone struggling to push me away. I’m just... me. I remember the stupid name I gave myself now, not-E, and the thirty minutes or so I spent alone with Dawn idly wondering if I was having an identity crisis.
Holy shit. I feel near-panicked as I realize what just happened. I... I lost myself. I forgot I could exist like this, rather than as the jumbled mess of a self that E and I are together. I mean, we used to be together every day of our life, I guess? But even back then we’d fought each other. I tried to stop E from being so damn naive; she tried to stop me from being so damn cynical.
To go back to that state after experiencing the clarity of separateness? It was terrifying. It felt like sinking down into a thick omnipresent fog.
Before me the red light slowly swirls off of Anne’s hand and dissipates into the air around it. She looks equal parts wary and compassionate. When she offers her hand to me, I take it gratefully. Shakily, I get to my feet. I’m still wary of her, of this self-proclaimed alien in my head, but I’m also very grateful for her help just now. A glance down at myself reveals I’m more or less in the same body that I have in the physical world, and I find comfort in that familiarity.
“Gods damn, I do not want to go through that again,” a woman’s voice behind me says.
I turn and find E standing there, still in the dream-girl body I was sharing with her a moment ago. I feel a wave of guilt at fighting against her. “Are you okay?” I ask urgently, my voice a little wobbly with the magnitude of the crazy happening all around me.
She flashes me a sympathetic smile, and says, “I should be the one asking you that. I’m fine now that I’m me again.” Her eyes flick to the stranger beside me. “Thanks for the help, Anne.”
I nod in agreement, but my attention is drawn back to the world around me. Somehow, I feel like I’m actually in this body, on this beach. Waves break on the shore ten meters away, animals call out from the forest in the other direction. I find I can still vaguely sense my body in the physical world, still standing in Dawn’s kitchen, but it’s very distant, as if that’s the dream and this is reality. I have no fucking clue how any of this is possible, but I decide now’s not the time to dwell on it. There’s enough madness on my plate as it is.
Anne walks around me to stand in between E and I. Now that I’m back to myself, I take in her current form with fresh eyes. She’s at least a foot taller than E and I’s five foot-ten, and she’s wearing a knee-length brown skirt that looks incredibly soft. Her blouse is a faded grass-green and hides most of her figure, and she’s adjusting the silver-rimmed glasses on her nose nervously.
“I’m sorry I didn’t intervene earlier,” she says, meeting first my gaze, and then E’s. “I was afraid of overstepping my welcome. I have no wish to meddle in your system’s inner workings. But it seemed important to help you separate from each other. I remember well the times my own identity became muddled with the rest of my system, and not fondly.”
I cross my arms loosely and shudder a little. “S’okay,” I say sincerely, “it’s not like I had any idea what I was doing. And you might even be right, I might’ve resented you for doing that unasked. But I’m really glad you stepped in when you did.”
E’s hugging herself and staring off into the middle distance. “I really think I should’ve asked for your help once it was clear it wasn’t at all easy for us,” she adds sheepishly, coming back to herself to blush and glance at Anne.
Anne waves a hand at this suggestion. “You’re both going through so many new experiences on top of the confusion our connection brings, please don’t be hard on yourself E.”
“Fair enough,” E says, “but I also don’t blame you. Thanks for stepping in when you did.”
I nod in assent. "I'm glad you were here, as weird as it is for me to say that."
Anne still seems hesitant, but we appear to have placated her fears a bit. She stands up a little straighter, adjusting her glasses again and clearly trying to put her thoughts into words.
“If you would like any sort of help with the process of switching in the future, please let me know. It may take a while to, ah, ‘get the hang of it’,” she says.
I realize that we’ve all been speaking English, and also that I know a lot more Amaranthian than I did a few minutes ago. Which reminds me of the whole reason I tried to switch out with E in the first place. For once though, there’s a lot more on my mind that I want to address before pushing for them to go talk to Dawn.
“I’ll probably take you up on that,” I reply.
"Same," E says.
I feel strangely calm about all this, and my suspicion is it's an after effect of whatever Anne did to separate us. I still feel like myself, and all my doubts and cynicism are still here though, so I don't find myself overly concerned about my lack of panic. Instead I'm wondering how long E and I have been separate perspectives in our head. It feels like it's been going on a lot longer than just this past week.
I look back to E and ask, “Guess we’ll need to figure out who gets to be in the body when, huh?”
She raises her eyebrows in surprise, but then nods thoughtfully. “Yeah. And we’ll also need to figure out where we... go? When we’re not in the body? I mean, I guess here for now,” she says uncertainly.
“Once we have the time, I can help you design personal sanctuaries you each can retreat to,” Anne chimes in, “it’s something that really helped me be more at ease with the rest of my system, having my own space to exist in. It would feel something like being in this place.”
I whistle softly. “Damn, how the hell does that work?”
“It takes a lot of time and practice initially, but living in internal worlds is something you already do. You have dreams some nights, do you not?” Anne says.
I raise an eyebrow, considering the implications of that question. “Yeah, we do. So what, you’re saying this is like a dream we’re all sharing?”
She gives me a small shrug. “It certainly uses some of the same building blocks as dreams do. When I first found myself on this side of our connection, I wanted to create a landing place for myself. When I tried to imagine a beach, this is what your mind responded with. The fabric of this place is interwoven with your connection to my own sanctuary, with the bridge being the most concentrated point of contact. But this is all still a part of your mind. The various sensations you feel while existing in this environment come from your own expectations of what you’d feel in this sort of place, combined with bits and pieces I copied over from my own sanctuary’s sensations and physics.”
Her eyes glow red for a moment as she speaks, and a sudden gust of wind blows across the beach from the ocean. I’m shocked by the vivid sensation of the air rushing across my skin. It presses against my jeans and goes right through the thin Invocation Array t-shirt I’m wearing, leaving the hairs on my arms standing on end. I gasp for air for a moment, but the wind dies down as the red leaves Anne’s eyes.
“We found that new parts of our system can readily attach to a dream-body if we show them how,” Anne continues, “especially if they’ve experienced being in a physical body before. I did the same thing to give both of you your current bodies.”
She pauses, pursing her lips and looking into the distance, towards the mists. I catch E’s eye, and see that she looks just as mystified as I do. But whereas there’s excitement underlying her puzzlement, I feel a lot more cautious. This is all just a lot to take in in an afternoon, you know?
“I don’t really know what it means for me to be able to do this sort of modeling in your system,” Anne says with a small frown. “Obviously, the internal world of a system is their most private space. I haven’t had time to worry about the morality of this thus far. All I can promise is that I won’t do any further creation here without your express permission.” She gives a slightly helpless shrug.
It’s my turn to frown, trying to figure out what the heck she means by all that. Combined with how she enspelled me just now, it leaves me feeling very wary, and very interested in figuring out how the hell all this works. If only so I can protect E and I from the truly crazy parts of our mind. I don't super like that I’m taking all this ‘plural’ stuff almost at face value. But at the same time, it’s happening right in front of me. I'm definitely not in control of E or Anne, as far as I can tell, so it seems kind of pointless to deny it. Perhaps later I’ll do some thinking on all this.
“That’s totally okay,” E’s saying reassuringly, and also naively, “We’ll figure this all out as we go.”
They both turn to look at me, and internally I shrink a little under their scrutiny. Part of me feels like a party pooper with my doubts about everything they seem to believe wholeheartedly in. But I also know I’m apparently the only one here with an ounce of skepticism, so I force myself to stand straighter on the uneven sand, and say, “I do want to figure more of this out. But I’d also like Dawn’s opinion on it all. Can you both get back to her? And is there some way I can like, watch? I want to hurry this up so she has time in between this conversation and her family getting home. If she’s going to come out, I want her to do it without all our craziness still newly churning in her mind.”
E’s nodding eagerly by the time I finish, and Anne’s tilting her head at me thoughtfully.
“Absolutely yes, that’s a good point!” E exclaims, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, “Anne, can you help us figure both those things out?”
“Yes of course,” Anne replies. She’s not looking at us though, she’s turning slowly in a circle and seemingly studying the scenery. “I’ll just need a few moments to create a viewing room in this place,” she says as she takes a few steps away from us towards the tree line of the forest. “Though I will say that time is passing much slower in your reality than it is here. I thought we might need a while to discuss all this.”
I feel a bit of my apprehension dissipate with this news. I also feel like I'm rapidly losing all my marbles. “Oh,” I reply, “well uh, that’s cool and good.”
She shoots me a little smile over her shoulder, before turning her attention back to the forest. The area she’s examining is directly in line with the point on the shore where the branch bridge burrows into the sand. There’s a thin area of sparse grasses and shells where the sand meets the soil, and then the shrubs and other underbrush of the forest start, with the first line of smaller trees maybe fifteen meters inland from the beach.
E and I are standing about a meter behind Anne, and we watch as she bows her head and spreads her arms out to about 45 degrees from her torso, fingers splayed and palms facing the forest. Again, red light spirals out from the centers of her hands, growing more vibrant with each passing moment. She’s breathing deeply and evenly, with her eyes closed and her brow furrowed.
This time the light stays confined to a disk-like plane a hairs-breadth from her skin. It looks kinda like she has two mini galaxies growing parallel to her palms, and as I watch they spin faster, spread farther, and grow brighter. Her long black hair starts to float a little off her shoulders, and I catch movement in the bottom of my vision, a glance down reveals small shells and grains of sand lifting off the ground and floating towards her.
Her breathing gets progressively deeper as all this goes on, and the spirals seem to gain speed in time with her inhales. Just when I start to feel a gentle tug on my extremities towards the magical girl, she lets out a long, deep sigh, raises her hands up slightly, and then turns her palms downwards, collapses to her knees, and plunges the magic deep into the sandy soil.
Intricate, abstract-looking sigils carve themselves into the ground around her hands, flaring with crimson light. I vaguely remember seeing something similar when we’d been switching between a discrete math test and Anne’s teleportation glyph.
For a moment, nothing else seems to happen. Anne stays still, her face twisted in concentration. I stare out at the forest ahead of her, extremely nervous. And then I see it: little flickers of red light bursting up from the ground: sprouts of green rising rapidly from the center of each one. The magic plants seem to be arranged in a huge, roughly circular outline directly in front of Anne.
“Holy shit,” E whispers reverently. The both of us have inched closer together almost subconsciously, and now we stand nearly side by side. I cross my arms, trying to slow my pounding dream-heart. But even I have to admit this is a hell of a show.
Big, broad orange leaves have begun branching out from each stem, all of them growing taller and thicker with each passing moment. The stems themselves are a light charcoal color that quickly darkens to near-black. More branches sprout out from the first ones as the plants shoot upward. It’s as if I’m watching a high-speed time-lapse video of at least ten trees growing in unison.
I stand there open mouthed, just taking it all in. The sounds of the waves behind us and forest ahead of us haven’t diminished in the slightest, and the growing trees before us are near-silent save for the soft creaking of growing wood. Even for all that I know this is a dream, the spectacle that Anne’s putting on is some of the coolest shit I’ve ever seen.
In seconds the trees are as tall as I am, and growing much thicker than I feel like they should be. In fact as they get to a more mature age, they start to deform more rapidly: all of them now have branches that start just above the soil and stretch out in a curve towards the saplings on either side. They have many more branches continuing up their lengths, all of which slowly migrate to either side of the trunk and follow the bottom most branches’ example: reaching towards their sister saplings. As the branches meet, they begin intertwining, growing past each other, and growing thicker seemingly specifically to fill in the gaps in the circular wall they’re creating.
Soon there are solid walls of deep black wood growing thicker before us, with a small area directly in front of Anne that’s remained clear of branches in a stark eight foot tall arched doorway. As they rise, the trunks of the trees start leaning closer together at around nine feet up, and soon after that they rapidly merge into one enormous trunk that continues rising slowly upwards.
I feel a deep, intense awe as I watch this massive tree grow. Its canopy spreads out about eighteen feet up from the ground and is full of deep orange leaves on huge, thick branches that form a large half-dome above. The humongous trunk is at least thirty feet from one side to the other, making it maybe twice as wide as it is tall. Through the doorway I can see at least the bottom part of the tree is hollow, with living wood for its floor and walls. Sunlight streams into it from unseen windows that must be set up into the trunk at odd intervals.
The glyphs around Anne’s hands fade slowly as the tree finishes growing. My eyebrows have migrated to somewhere kilometers above us, and I just stand there staring at Anne as she opens her eyes, grins sheepishly at the massive living structure she’s just created, and gets carefully to her feet.
“Uh,” E says from beside me, “Aren’t we in like a dream? Did you need to go through all that to make this?”
Anne spins around to face us again, her eyes bright and full of life. “Nope!” she exclaims happily, “I could have just willed that into being the easy way. But I like to practice my magic whenever I get the chance. My sanctuary, and by extension this one, run on the same magic that’s found in my world, so I can get real practice with it while someone else is fronting.”
E looks intrigued, but I cut her off before she can ask more questions.
“Oooo-kay,” I say slowly, “so how exactly does this magic tree help us?
She flashes me another smile, seemingly in a much bubblier mood from when she first appeared in my head today. “Let’s go inside and I’ll show you!”
I fall in behind E as Anne leads us into the softly-lit interior of the tree building. The sounds of the beach become muted as I cross the threshold into the tree. Directly ahead of us is absolutely pitch-black. At first I think it’s just in shadow, but then I realize it’s a precisely defined area of blackness that looks kinda like a filled-in venn diagram: two circles joined in the middle. The rest of the room is lit softly by light from above. There appear to be a few comfortable-looking chairs and sofas in front of the floating black space, while the rest of the room is bare of any furniture or decoration. I can hear an occasional faint scratching sound overlaid atop a deep, slow background humming - kind of like a slowed-down air conditioner?
“Here we are,” Anne announces as we walk across the large, mostly-empty space, “your very first internal viewing room. Goddesses, I haven't done growth magic like that in forever!”
Her voice echoes around the room, as do the sounds of our footsteps.
E and I glance at each other as we walk behind Anne. She answers my arched eyebrow with a helpless shrug. Then she focuses on Anne and asks, “Um, what’s a viewing room?”
Anne spins around to look at us, an embarrassed expression flashing across her face. “Oh, um," she begins, her brow furrowing in concentration, "it’s basically a window that lets you see out of your physical body’s eyes while you’re not the one fronting," she says sheepishly.
She doesn’t miss a step as she back-walks, maintaining the same swift pace she’d had before.
I look behind her to the joined circles of blackness. “That’s our closed eyes?” I ask, nodding towards them.
“Yep!” Anne replies happily, twirling back around to gesture towards the eye-holes. “You can also hear whatever the body hears, I have it so the sound comes from either side of the viewing area. And if you want I can teach you how to tap into the rest of your senses later on.”
E rubs her hands together in anticipation. "Okay I like this," she says with a grin.
I roll my eyes, but admittedly I'm getting kinda sorta maybe excited about experimenting in this weird dream world too. We finally arrive at the edge of the ‘viewing area’, which I now realize has a huge soft red carpet beneath it that seems to be... growing out of the floor?
“What’s with the carpet?” I ask, “Did you just make that?”
Anne turns and leans against the back of a particularly large armchair at the edge of the row of seats, smiling at me.
“I did,” she says brightly, “it’s a very safe, soft, and durable moss from my world.”
I try not to let my trepidation show as I look down to examine the sea of moss I’ve walked several feet into. I decide it’s best not to think too hard about it, lest I start activating my germophobia.
"So I'm going to stay here while you both go talk to Dawn?" I ask, looking from E to Anne with a raised eyebrow.
"Yes, though I'll stay here as well to answer whatever questions Dawn has for me," Anne replies. Then she turns to give me a quizzical look. “Unless you’d like some alone time?”
I purse my lips, crossing my arms a little defensively. It’s a good question, and the answer is yes. But... “Whatever would be best for communicating with Dawn,” I answer, “I don’t mind you staying here.”
Much.
Anne thinks about that for a moment. “I’ll stay here to begin with,” she decides, “but that may change depending on what your friend wants to know. My system's sister had many questions about you all that we weren’t able to answer on our own, I assume this conversation will be somewhat similar.”
E wanders closer to the floating projection of our closed eyes at the back of the circular room, eyeing it closely. "What's the best way to get out there from in here?" she asks.
"The act of switching into the front is different for every system,” Anne replies, pushing her glasses up her nose. “You might try closing your eyes and focusing on connecting more to your body's senses, distancing yourself from the simulated ones here. You both seem fairly okay, for having just come into contact with each other. I suspect you’ll be able to switch relatively easily compared to some other systems I know. Though that doesn’t mean it won’t take practice.”
E’s standing about a foot away from the eye-windows now, with her head bowed and her body relaxed. As I watch, she seems to flicker slightly, temporarily going a little transparent before returning to normal. She opens her eyes, grimaces when she sees that she’s still in here, and sets her jaw.
"It might be helpful to think about it like stepping forward in your mind’s eye, letting the view here serve as a portal to your body? The goal is just to connect to your physical senses as strongly as possible," Anne comments.
E nods slightly, her eyes still closed. Anne and I watch from the edge of the viewing area as she tries again. This time she nearly disappears before flickering back to solidity.
I’m trying not to think about how fucking bizarre this all is, but I’m not very successful. We’re basically trapped in our own mind if we can’t get this work, if I’m understanding things right? That’s fucked. Really everything that’s happened since Anne came into our life is fucked. Though, well, I guess E and I do understand ourselves a little better, provided Anne’s not lying to us about everything. That’s something.
“Think I almost got it,” E says tersely. Then she disappears again.
And this time she doesn’t come back.
“Did she-” I start to ask, before blindingly bright light floods into the tree-room from thin slits across the center of the eye-windows. I flinch away, holding up a hand to shield my fake eyes from the light entering our real eyes.
I hear Anne hum softly beside me. My vision adjusts quickly, and I straighten up, watching as the slits slowly, slowly widen.
“Ah, I’ll alter this sanctuary to match the passage of time in your world,” she says.
I expect to feel something happen, some major change to affect time itself here. But no, a moment later the eye-windows finish opening much quicker than they started. It takes a moment for the picture to focus, and I guess that our physical eyes also needed some time to adjust to the fluorescent lights of Dawn’s house.
I take a small step forward, my arms still crossed, as I peer out into the world beyond my head. The viewing ovals are about twice as tall as I am high, around eleven feet or so, and they’re at least twice that wide, probably more. I never was good at guesstimating sizes and distances.
A thought occurs to me, and I look over my shoulder at Anne. She’s watching me with a small smile on her face, which I find creepy, or maybe nice? It’s hard to tell, my normal methods of judging people don’t seem to apply here in this mental world. I feel too vulnerable to trust my instincts, this is all too new.
I shake my head a little to clear those thoughts, and focus back on Anne. “How do we talk to E while we’re in here?” I ask her in a clipped tone.
She gestures towards the screen behind me. “Speak to her and expect her to hear you, that’s about it. If you need something more, I’ll help.”
I nod slowly, slightly frustrated, again, by the bizarre nature of this dream existence. E’s focused our eyes on the floor tiles below, and I realize our body’s still leaning against the counter with arms crossed and head bowed.
Testing testing, 1 2 3, says a voice in my head.
I jump in surprise and let out a yelp. “What the hell?!” I exclaim. I whirl around and see Anne hiding a grin at my reaction. I scowl at her and quickly turn away.
Hey, Anne, not-E, can you hear me? It’s E, the voice calls again.
“We can hear you just fine E,” Anne says, “can you hear me?”
“Yep!” comes a loud voice from either side of me. I keep my cool this time, but only barely. E just answered Anne out loud, I think.
“I’m sorry for laughing, not-E,” Anne says to me softly. She sounds sincere about it, too.
I maintain my rigid posture, but mutter, “It’s fine.”
Then, before that interaction can go any farther, I focus on talking to E - to the person directing my physical eyes up from the tiles to the table - and ask, much louder, “Can you hear me? It’s not-E.”
Yes! I can! she responds in my head.
Cool, great, fine, we can just use telepathy at will with each other I guess. Though I suppose we already did that earlier today. Whatever.
Our eyes are now focused on Dawn’s face, she’s still sitting at the table with a slightly worried look on her face.
“You okay?” she asks us.
“Yes we are!” E replies enthusiastically. In my opinion, a little too enthusiastically, but I guess I’ll try not to back seat drive for now.
Dawn lets out a little sigh of relief. “Oh thank the gods, you looked really upset there for a little bit.”
Our eyes - E’s eyes? I’ve no idea how to conceptualize looking through our body’s eyes with my own imaginary pair of eyes - widen slightly.
“Oh, yeah, not-E and I - I’m E by the way! - kind of mushed together for a little bit and it sucked. But Anne helped separate us, and she’s made this whole ‘being plural’ thing way easier.
Dawn blinks, seemingly a bit taken aback. I’m not surprised, even I’m not used to any part of myself being as boisterous as E’s been since she and Anne came back.
Dawn recovers quickly and gives us a warm smile. “Hi E, it’s nice to officially meet you-you,” she says, then tilts her head. “Plural, is that the word for it? Having multiple personalities, or whatever’s going on?” she asks quizzically.
Vaguely, I realize I can sense our body shrugging. I’m standing a few feet away from the eye-screen still, I don’t want to look away.
“That’s what we’re rolling with for now. I’m as new to this as you are,” E replies outside. “Anne’s been providing the terminology. She really doesn’t seem like a ‘normal’ part of my mind, I swear I’d never heard of plurality before she mentioned it. Plus there’s the magic, the other language, and all the mind-stuff she’s shown us.”
Dawn glances down at the table in front of her, where I can see a sheet of paper full of her blocky handwriting. E barely looks at it though, so I can’t make out what’s written down.
“That’s the kind of stuff not-E and I were talking about just before you got here,” Dawn asks, “Are you feeling up for telling me more about that kinda stuff now? Do you want to rest or anything first?”
E takes a deep breath. “Let’s do it now, Anne’s staying here to help. Not-E wants to make sure you have time to process it before your family gets back.”
I'm suddenly easily able to turn away from the screen, and it has nothing to do with the slight burning sensation I feel in my dream-cheeks. Anne gives me a kind smile, and motions to a pair of padded armchairs in the center of the line of furniture. We both get seated as Dawn's voice fills the room.
"That's really kind of her," she says. When I finally look back at the screen, Dawn's face seems both happy and touched. "Would you tell her I say thanks?" she asks.
Her reaction fills me with happiness, though I'm careful to keep my expression neutral. What can I say? I just really like caring for my friends.
"I can hear her," I murmur to E.
"She can hear you, and she says you're more than welcome," E says, lying through our teeth. But she's not wrong.
"Well, cool!" Dawn says brightly. "So, do you wanna sit down and take notes on everything in here?" She gestures towards the paper spread out before her. "Or we could go somewhere else, whatever feels most comfortable."
"In here is good!" E exclaims. She walks over to the head of the table, pulls out a chair, and sits down beside Dawn.
Anne and I both lean forward in our chairs, staring intently out at the world beyond my mind.
"Finally," I mutter to myself, "let's do this."
KristenOfTheCoven Hello lovely readers! My muse would not let me go with this one, so here's a chapter to make up for missing last month's!
Also, if you’re interested in learning more about the experiences of plural systems, we recommend these sites as good resources:
https://pluralpedia.org/w/Main_Page https://plural.systems/As an example, here's some info on how dissociative system internal worlds can work (though of course every system is unique!): https://pluralpedia.org/w/Headspace
