Chapter Text
In the orange-tinted glow of my laptop, I turned over the last page and set the book I had been reading on my bedside table. The laptop made a satisfying clicking sound as I plunged the room into almost total darkness. I slid off the sheets and picked up the black rectangle, blindly shuffling over to a more permanent location nearby. I flopped back down into the bed and pulled the covers back over haphazardly, the sheets already having been torn from being secured to the simple bedframe.
I looked over at the clock on my bedside: 2:03 AM. Groaning, I burned into my mind the last image of the last book I read tonight – the main cast of Ascendance of a Bookworm goofing off and celebrating – and sighed. The wonderful ending to one of my favorite light novel series had truly only just been released, but I couldn’t help myself reading it over and over again. Immersing myself in the ending always made me feel warm. I reluctantly put the book down on my table, wrapped my arms around the plush shark diligently standing watch and protecting me in the darkness, and fell into a deep sleep.
I felt like I was in a forest. Or, more accurately, flying above a forest. This must be a dream. I was sitting on a pale yellow horse with wings, staring down at a translucent green-colored egg a few inches in front of my face. The morning sun cast a bright orange glow on the entire scene as a warmly dressed girl stood on a leaf. Shit, she's unprotected, she's gonna fall soon! Subconsciously, I tried moving down to try and catch her from underneath. As I crossed through the barrier, it bent slightly, before bouncing back to its rigid state, denying me entry.
The scene around me faded into another. I was travelling through a narrow passageway carved into a rock face. Am I dreaming of Bookworm? That first place seemed like the Goddess Bath. Would that make this… Mount Lohenberg, then? The air was saturated with scalding water as I descended down the steps. Deeper. And deeper. Eventually, the ground leveled out, and I was staring at a hot spring of sorts. There were a few pretty stones resting in the water. Wait, those are eggs, not stones. I looked off to my side, and the same girl from before reached down to pick up one of the eggs. Rozemyne, I think. But, why am I even being shown this? My thoughts were interrupted by a blood-curdling screech that rang through my body.
My vision faded again, and I stood across from a hooded figure. They were hunched over what appeared to be a blanket filled with brilliant colors. I couldn’t make out any facial features or hair, or really anything besides the fact that they were making steady progress on expanding the blanket. Their cloak was a simple, pale yellow cloak. My field of vision narrowed in as I stood enraptured by the weaver’s hands. The threads seemed to sing and dance under their control, as if they were in a play of their weaver’s design. I lost focus on the weaving in a split second and noticed that a tall woman standing beside the weaver sat in a chair. Her shimmering red hair was pulled up into tight buns on the side of her head. She stared intently at the blanket being woven.
“Watch out!” the red-haired woman yelped as one of the threads popped out of the delicate weave.
The redhead’s companion looked up just a little, exposing their frown. They pulled another thread off from the side and quickly wove it around the other. Miraculously, this kept both threads in the blanket. They sparkled and shimmered together, getting closer and closer to my eyes. The lights are so pretty!
Too late, I noticed that instead of the lights moving closer to me, I had moved closer to them. I stood, frozen, all but on top of the blanket. I stared at the two other figures, making eye contact with the redhead. I was almost face-to-face with the hooded figure as well. Their eyes were hidden, but their smile turned upward with their head. Their hand reached towards me, and I felt a tugging in my chest, pulling me downward into the blanket.
Suddenly, an additional thread appeared, woven crosswise back and forth between the two threads that had been tied together. I stared at the threads in front of me for a minute, before the world started spinning. My mind went fully blank.
I awoke with a start to a burning heat, as if I’d run into Vulcanift’s forge with my entire body’s skin replaced by a cat’s tongue. Unintelligible noises floated in and out of my consciousness.
“So hot!” a voice squeaked out at me.
Hot is certainly a way to put it. I don’t know what’s happening, but I just want this heat to go away. Am I gaining a new headmate in a dream, or something?
I felt a cool sensation against my forehead, and against all odds my mind seemed to clear, and the heat subsided.
“Lari! Lari! Wake up!” the voice finally sounded out to me.
Lari? Is that me? Or at least the headmate this dream acknowledges. I tried reaching out to Lari, but received only silence in return. I guess I need to respond, then.
“I-I’m awake!” I cried out.
“Brother!” another woman whispered out, coming into the room behind the other.
“Now, Auli, give your brother some space,” the first woman chided.
The two of them exited out of the room. Brother. The word echoed sadly in my mind. Why was I getting all these weird dreams? I haven't had a dysphoria dream in years! Unless… this wasn't a dream? I reached over to my cheek, my leaden arm complaining the entire way.
Ouch! Okay, I'm not dreaming. Probably. I guess if I’m aware I’m dreaming, I can make random things happen. I tried lifting my arm, but it felt like crawling through molasses. Well, that’s not good. The room I’m in is so dirty, if this is a dream, maybe I can will it cleaner. I tried for a few seconds, and yet the room was no less filthy.
Was this it? I suppose so. I dragged my hand around to feel my body, to check for any differences. As I moved it up and down, I felt something that put me on edge. After all I did to chase myself away from those words, they still seemed to catch up to me even in another life. All my effort down the drain because suddenly I was elsewhere.
Suddenly, the fires of the forge roared back to life. Ah… so hot…
Wait a second. Internal heat controlled by emotions? Could it be? It couldn’t be, that would be too convenient. Well, it’s at least worth a try. I can do this.
I imagined the heat as soup in a pot, and ran through the exercise of boiling it down, reducing it by half. I pulled out the resulting mess, and imagined it as layers of pasta dough, and shoved it into a box, where it turned into cloth. I neatly folded the cloth into the box, pressing down on all sides to wring out the air. What was the next step? Ah yes, turning the box into a bag and squeezing it tight. The heat seemed to pull away, a lot further away than when I started. I had a lot of hypotheses about where I had ended up and what was happening. I was going to figure out those mysteries, sometime. But for now, I had my first tangible bit of information to work with: I must have had something like the Devouring.
So, okay. I’ve got something similar to the Devouring, and I’m stuck in this world in a form I’ve spent so long trying to shrug off. Do… Do I even want to go through with this? Like, ostensibly, I could let the heat wash over me and just be done with this. I shook my head. I got through life before by facing my problems, not turning away from them. No need to change up the formula now.
My fever broke that night. My mom, whose name I learned was Ada, and my big sister Auli came in after dinner to check up on me. I had finished running through the compression a few times since the first attempt to help draw down the heat. They immediately rushed out of the room to fetch my dad, Dan, who proceeded to pick me up and cradle me.
“I’m so glad you weren’t taken to the stars, Lari,” he said.
All I could do was nod. It was winter when I woke up in Lari’s body. My older sister Auli had just had her baptism the previous fall and kept talking throughout the day about the God of Life being melted away by the Goddess of Water, and the Goddess of Wind holding off the God of Life. She couldn’t remember the names, but that was enough to convince me that yes, I was in Yurgenschmidt. At the very least, that would definitely help me prepare; I’d be able to come up with a survival plan.
“I’m looking forward to having you experience it, little brother.” Auli smiled at me.
“Your baptism will be in a little less than three years, Lari. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to fully remake your baptism clothes, but at least I’ve got a few years,” mom informed me.
I looked around at the filthy conditions we lived in, with what appeared to be wood surrounding the only room I had ever known, and sighed. Here goes nothing.
“Mom, couldn’t I just wear Auli’s hand-me-downs?” I asked.
“Dear, we’ve told you this before. As you’re a boy and Auli is a girl, I can’t just give you her hand-me-downs. Besides, your baptism outfit will need to look its finest. We can’t have you looking like a girl for it.”
Wait, they’ve told Lari this before? I had gotten a few memories from Lari, but I hadn’t had a good chance to actually go through them. I looked through them, and I felt a familiar, but unwelcome feeling wash over me. Hello, dysphoria, old friend. Here to terrorize another sister-in-arms, are we? I could feel the pang of it all just barely reaching out to the poor kid. Lari was frustrated to have not been treated like Auli had been, and whenever she asked for this type of treatment, her fever came back with a passion. It was then that I steeled my resolve; I had to push harder, for her sake.
“But why not?” I cried out.
Dad released me from his embrace, and stepped a few feet away. “You’ve gotta become a proper man and make a wonderful husband one day! Once you’re cured of this phantom sickness, I’m sure you’ll be the best man there is to be.”
Nope, already tried that. I think I’m done with entertaining that idea, and Lari was getting to that point herself, too.
I chuckled a little before flashing a toothy grin at dad. “Well, what if I wanted to be a wife instead?”
All three of my family’s faces sported blank stares. Lari had never gone quite this far, I suppose.
Mom was the first to recover. “Ah… ha ha, what a good joke, Lari.”
Dad patted my shoulder. “Such a goofball.”
Only Auli didn’t have much of a response. She looked at me, pity in her eyes, until mom and dad filed out of the bedroom. Then, she sat down at the edge of the bed, and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered in my ear.
I expected some amount of transphobia and misogyny; it’s not like Yurgenschmidt is free from human rights abuses, but… I just wanted something to go right in this world. If I was forced to live in it, I might as well get something out of it, right?
Water flowed freely from my eyes, as if Flutrane herself provided blessings to them and them alone. I was not strong enough to dam them, and I didn’t care to try. Auli sat there, rubbing the back of my hand in tiny little circles until the springs ran dry.
After sitting there for what must have been an additional thirty minutes, Auli herself stood up, slowly raising herself up to her full height. She turned to face me, giving me one last sad glance, before exiting the bedroom. I passed out soon after, resolved to do something, but lacking the strength to even assemble a plan.