Kali told you to leave Miko alone, so you do. There you change into the pajamas--you'd at least had the presence of mind during the day's panic to wash them--and climb into bed.
Despite having walked around all day in Miko's body, it feels odd to lay under the covers with it, and you keep your hands firmly off yourself. You also have Kali's words weighing on you.
It's the Libra. You thought you'd gotten rid of it, finally, when Frank had taken it with him. But it's still here, with you, in you. In a sense, Kali had said, you now are it. And as you can use the book to make instruments you can use upon yourself, so too you can execute the its spells directly upon yourself.
Somehow, as a result of Miko's teasing kiss last night, that power erupted during the night, leaving you like this.
You raise and stare at your palms in the darkness. You must find some way of activating the power again. Tomorrow is Saturday, and Kali and Miko will only have to work in the morning. Kali has promised that they would get started directly after lunch in finding a way to reverse things.
She had also urged you to put aside your mortification and take a shower in the morning.
You lower your hands and stare at the ceiling. "You will wear your gifts well," she had said. How good is it to be a shapeshifter? You recall all the stories you've read and movies you've seen that contain them. They are always monsters. What could the Stellae want with a monster, especially one infected by a book that they keep referring to as being "damned"? Are they only keeping you around until they can figure out a way of killing you safely? Is that why they invited you out, to test you and discover how deep the rot had spread into you? Maybe they didn't know, but only suspected. Or maybe they didn't suspect, and are now weighing what to do with you, now that they know what kind of monster you really are.
A hot tear rolls down your cheek. You don't feel like a monster.
Were they all monsters in those stories? Or were they only misunderstood, fretful and dangerous because they knew they'd be treated like monsters? You know that you'd have a hard time trusting anyone who could do what you can now do. You'd be paranoid about a thing like yourself, and so it's hard not to assume your erstwhile, would-be colleagues are paranoid too. And that makes you paranoid of them. Maybe that's why shapeshifters are always acting like monsters, because they have to assume everyone will treat them like monsters.
Do vampires treat shapeshifters like they're monsters?
You jerk your eyes open. You're beginning to drift off, and you don't want to, because you're frightened of what dreams you will have.
Drift off. You were supposed to do another meditation exercise tonight, but naturally that got lost in the uproar. Is there any point in trying?
Well, you'd really like Kali to continue trusting you. You should do what she said, even if she forgot to tell you tonight. Miko, you sourly think, will say you're only trying to amplify your powers so you can really become a monster.
You're very tired now, but maybe that will make it easier. You crawl out from under the covers, and after making sure the window is closed and locked you sit cross legged on the bed and shut your eyes. Almost instantly your mind becomes foggy. And then it becomes very clear.
The Moon is before you again, but larger than ever. You are pulled toward it, as though drawn into the vacuum it sails through. And then you are racing toward it. Its shimmering light falls about you, without touching you. It seems to tremble, inviting you shyly to partake of its poor warmth. A pity for its yearning loneliness overwhelms you, and you embrace it.
And then he is with you, all about you, in the form of a voice, whispering words you can't make out, nuzzling at your ears. His tone is insistent, but filled with a stern tenderness. Thin tendrils touch you, and wrap about you, but loosely. You somehow understand that they cannot bind you, that only you can wrap yourself in them. And you do, spinning yourself up in a light cocoon, cloaking what you now perceive was your own nakedness within the lunar light.
The image of the Moon is now invisible, and you understand that you are now riding around within it. The voice nestles within you, though it now seems content to be silent. You turn, or something within causes you turn, and you see it: a great web of filaments spread across almost infinite distances into the darkness. They shine and refract more colors than you knew existed. But you perceive running through them a web of silver lines, and that you are standing upon such a one. And somehow you understand that the silver lines, alone of the other strands, are nearly invisible to any but yourself.
And then you are racing along, more sure-footed than any spider or acrobat, only lightly touching your foothold in the sky. But you are not alone, and the web, like an impossibly thin road, takes you past the others.
Strictly speaking, you see nothing, but the first seems a globe of verdant, almost volcanic greenery. You have the vivid impression of great plumes rising and spreading and falling. Flowers like stars burst and fade. Beneath it all is a coppery canopy that seems to boil and froth, and a great desire seizes you, to nourish yourself in its roots and soils, to grow strong and great like its trees, and to burst yourself asunder, returning seed and nutrients to nourish others. And then you are past it.
The next is a bright, sinewy ball of shifting metallic sheen. Again, strictly speaking, you hear nothing, but your mind rings in sympathy to its tintinnabulations. They are like bells and trumpets and strings shouting joyously, unmindful of each other, but blended in perfect and kaleidoscopic harmonies and consonances. You plunge through it, and then you are shouting and singing too. And laughing. Every joke, every pun, every word play you ever heard blazes inside your head. Your tongue dances in your mouth, and you argue and cajole with the music and voices and the song, blending your own with them. You feel a momentary spasm of regret as you leave it behind, for you instantly forget all you had said and heard.
And now comes a hard world, of iron cliffs and frigid seas. You see small figures, tossed in great waves and clinging to vertiginous faces. And you are one of them, though you are only watching. You feel the ache of muscle, and the rasp of harsh oxygen, and the piercing shafts of adrenaline. The labor of unceasing combat against a world that bites the hands and claws the flesh, and the hardness of sinews that must bend and break and tear away that which would tear the flesh. And the shout of triumph that comes in brief moments when one victory has been won and before another must be earned.
Another volcanic world, like the first, but a world of reds and yellows, of caustic eruptions and withering geysers and fizzing, bubbling seas. Continents rise and sink, islands are overthrown. And yet there is life here, too. Every ruin throws up a new structure, proud and tall, like a tower, or grand and spacious, like a palace, before tumbling in chaotic decay, replaced by something entirely new, but which yet retains echoes of what it has replaced. No good thing--no straight line or delicately baroque curve--ever completely vanishes but seems to become incorporated within and even improved by what succeeds it.
Then the deep world, of airs covering hazes covering vapors covering clouds covering mists covering fogs covering oceans that cover oceans that themselves cover oceans. There is no end to them, and no center, either, only shifting and flowing currents that whirl into vortexes where they meet. Faces and forms appear and dissipate; great behemoths rise from the depths, take wing in the upper airs, spread themselves, and dissolve in drenching downpours back into the great, all-encompassing maelstrom.
And then the throbbing world. The energies of all the other worlds seem contained in this one, bound under titanic pressures, laboring and laboring without buckling. It is wrapped in a Stygian cold and darkness, but you sense it is brimming with more light and heat than anything you have yet seen--not hoarding it, but bending it to Herculean labors. The strands leading to and from this world pulse and writhe, and you know it is not feeding on those other worlds, but feeding them with itself. As you brush past, your mind briefly fills with ambition and frictionless schemes.
Then you are filled with rest when the next world looms ahead. It is a vast cathedral of space and solitude. Archways open into vast halls and corridors, which branch off into other halls and corridors that run off into a labyrinth of more halls and corridors. Within that great, silent maze, you are given to understand, are cloisters, one of which is yours. But you cannot enter it--not yet--for a great swinging scythe blocks every door.
Now, before you is a great conjunction, a blending of a light golden and a light majestic. But you do not approach them. Not yet. The voice inside, which you realize has been speaking to you all this time, is silent. There is another path here, that vanishes into a distant darkness. You yearn to visit and bathe in the conjunction before you, but you are also seized by a curiosity about the other path.
You've been racing along up to this point, propelled from point to point. But now you seem to hang motionless. And you realize the next movement, in either direction, must come from your own will.
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