Lera + Missie: Swapped!

[firecracker_hopping]

Who: Lera, Missie
When: Sunday the 28th
Where: Mostly Nadir's apartment.
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: Some swearing, Lera gripping with being blind, little bit of emo.

Missie was greeted by the morning sunlight.

For a faint, tired moment, she thought nothing of this peculiarity. She thought instead of how comfortable the bed was, and how much more comfortable it would be if she rolled over and hugged the pillow.

Then it hit her, and her eyes shot open wide, filled with light and color and sight-- and more than that. Bright swirls, swirls like--

Missie let out a startled gasp and sat up, looking to her fingers, rubbing them, trying to make sure she had feeling while her breath rushed in panic. It was only once the fear had faded that she looked closer at her hands, feeling a finger over the edge of an unfamiliar cuticle. She had been blind-- had been-- so it made since she didn't recognize-- she could see. Missie believed she would finally wake up and she could see, and finally, finally, it was true. Her blindness was gone. It was a side effect of the Dark, of resurrection, and it passed the way she knew deep down it eventually would.

She turned her head and a red strand of hair caught her peripheral vision. Missie stopped and felt her fingers through the lock, staring at it. She was not a red head.

This was also not Nadir's apartment.

Missie scrambled for something to look at herself with and found the phone by the bed first. Afraid to get up, she used the camera feature to look at herself and frozen.

That was not Missie! That was Lera! This was Lera's room! And Lera's phone! And Lera's body? Then where was Missie's body?

But it was Lera's phone. Missie scrolled through the contact list until she found herself and tapped to call. (This was so much easier than the voice feature!) She was going to find her body and she was going to give it what for!

When Lera first woke up, she was terrified out of her mind. The sudden loss of sight pointed to one possibility after the initial horrified gut reaction: that someone had taken Xumurdad's eyes from her. The difficulties of this and the fact that she would have been awoken at some point in being kidnapped went out of mind, until she confirmed that she still had eyes. It took her a little longer, though, once she shuffled up, and felt around the bed, to realize something was wrong. Nothing felt right; her legs didn't feel long enough, her limbs didn't have quite the same strength, and the gruesome scar on her forearm simply wasn't there. Without sight, she could not put together the obvious information.

And then a phone rang. It wasn't her phone, but it was something. She tried to cast a quick buff -- one to improve her focus, which had become a standard morning ritual -- and realized with a gut-wrenching turn that her mana was gone. She grabbed at the phone, but in the absolute darkness, it took a long time for her hands to find it.

The phone was vaguely familiar. She set Missie's phone up for her, which was probably the only reason that she could figure out what to do. She ran her fingers frantically over it, before an idea came to mind: maybe it was a blind person's phone. The fact that Lera was blind was a little too fresh to process, even if she could see nothing. She lifted the phone up and practically shouted: "Answer call!"

"H-Hello?" she stammered. Her voice was different; it did not match the voice she heard in her head, the one she imagined herself using. She was too panicked to do more than think that it was familiar but somehow wrong. The end result was that Missie could hear her voice, if panicked, on the other end of the line. "Who is this?"

Who is this?! "This is Missie!" she said, tone with an edge of anger. But then she yelped, because the voice didn't sound right at all. It didn't even sound like Lera's voice the way it reverberated in her own head. Missie forced herself to focus. She needed to be firm about this! Taking bodies was not okay!

"You are in possession of my body and--" These lights were really pretty-- and distracting. "And, also, Lera's soul is missing, so I'm going to need some answers, ghost thief!"

Maybe it was in a jar somewhere? Missie moved to get up, tangled herself in the sheets, and fell with another yelp. She was just going to blame that on being in a different body. Yeah.

If Lera could have seen anything besides darkness, she would be seeing red right now. She still tensed, but it was in all the wrong ways. The voice on the other end of the phone was her own. It was hard to mistake.

"I'm not--I'm not a ghost thief! You are speaking to the Mazda, and apparently with her own voice, claiming to be her friend, and... and--wait, my soul is missing?" she demanded. She started hyperventilating, right until she heard the fall and the yelp. She hesitated, then, and spoke a little more quietly into the phone.

"Missie?" she asked. "Is that really you? It's Lera. Um, I can't see anything? Why do you sound like me?" Her eyes -- no longer golden -- shot open wide without any change in her sightlessness. "Why do I sound like you?"

The Mazda! Lera! Missie went still and silent for several moments, blinking her new Mazda eyes. That part hadn't occurred to her just yet. "Lera?" she said as her thoughts churned and put together the few pieces they had. Ooooh that kind of made sense, in a Zenderael sort of way.

"I'm in your body," she said from the floor, sheet around her legs as she looked up at the ceiling. "I called you-- me-- so. So I think you have mine...?"

"I... I can't see anything," Lera said. She started blinking her eyes rapidly, like it might make her see something, and then she realized how silly that was -- as if, somehow, Missie hadn't tried that before. Then, she thought about that for a second longer, and just felt sad. "Yeah, I think we're--yeah."

She hesitated for a second, then she started shouting.

"What the fuck! How did we switch bodies, this doesn't just happen! There's supposed to be like a science project gone wrong, like we get into the transporter pods and there's sparks and then a spooky color spiral and then the doctor's like 'oh no, what has science done!' and we're in each others' bodies! You don't just wake up and it's like that for no reason whatsoever!" Lera hyperventilated, taking a few deep breaths. "We're deviating from the script, Missie!"

"Yeah, um," Missie hesitated, "I'm blind." Or her body was. She could see right now. She could see! And extra sight from the magic. Blue-eye had not been an accurate depiction at all. Missie caught herself staring frequently into the air.

She was lost following a magic trail with her vision when Lera shouted. Missie jumped and crawled back onto the bed, curling up in the sheets like that might protect her body. Lera's body. What if Missie broke the Mazda? Maybe she shouldn't move!

"I-I'm sorry!" she said automatically. "But this is Zenderael, right? I mean-- of course it's Zenderael. It doesn't do science transporters unless it's alchemist science and maybe it was an alchemist, but it was probably just magic! ... Is magic a science?"

"Ah--oh, God, jeez, I'm sorry, that was really stupid of me to say," Lera said, guiltily. It sounded strange in Missie's voice; for that matter, Lera found hearing Missie's way of speaking in her voice to be equally strange. She rubbed at her eye again, involuntarily, and then thrust her hand down at the blanket.

"That--that's a good point," she said. "It's not, but you'll be able to see if there's a lingering enchantment. I want you to lift up your hands. Look for any golden patterns. They'll be discreet, like, they'll be lines and circles forming patterns. You don't need to know what it means, but that's how magic works."

She hesitated.

"If it's not there, then something else did this."

"Ooooooh," she murmured, staring up at her hands as Lera directed. "... I don't think I see anything. I would know if I saw anything, right? But there's gold around the room. It's--" She fell silent, spacing out as she stared again.

"Lera, how do you get anything done?"

Lera grinned brightly at that. Her powers were really rather cool and there was a certain thrill in being able to share them. She leaned to the side, where she thought there was a wall, and instead found that there was not a wall at the moment. She slumped onto the side of Missie's bed, then she shoved herself up with a hand.

"It is hard sometimes," she said. "So many pretty things to look at--ah, that reminds me, you're in Bastan. Fall City. The Ambereyes still in the city were using one of the downtown hotels as their base, after the merge happened. They're getting ready to leave later in the week--um--" Lera's face screwed up and she appreciated that it felt weird. Missie's face wasn't as long as hers. Curiously, she ran her fingers over it, trying to get an idea of what it looked like, without thinking about what they did if this was a permanent sort of change.

She went silent, then.

"Do you think you could come get me? Um, you," she said. "You know what I mean. I'm not sure where I am. If you see anyone, tell them that the Mazda needs a personal day."

It wasn't a lie, at least. Lera did need a personal day. Or... was Missie the Mazda now? That wasn't good for anyone at all! But it would still make it true she needed a personal day. That made her feel a little better about the idea of telling it to spellswords.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, okay. I think I can find you, if I can find my way out of here. Um... what do you want to wear today?" Missie looked over the room for a wardrobe or a closet. "Do I need a uniform? I don't know if I can put those on right... Aaah, Lera, everything is so bright, I forgot!"

Missie had already decided it wasn't permanent. That didn't make sense. And it wouldn't be quite fair! But it meant she really needed to be extra careful not to break the Mazda. She had already gone blind once. Doing it to the Mazda would be worse!

Oh, Lera thought, clothes. She was wearing whatever Missie fell asleep in -- actually, she had no idea what she was wearing, which felt rather disconcerting -- and only had Missie's clothes to pick from, which she had seen and then couldn't remember. Why couldn't she remember things that she had spent so much time looking at? Her face fell into a thoughtful frown.

"Uh, let's go with the green short and khaki slacks," she said. "I like those." Would they fit Missie, though? She had no clue. "Uh, I'll be careful til you're here. Which direction is the bathroom from your bed?"

She hesitated.

"This is kind of important."

Missie hadn't known what she was wearing, either. Not color or patterns. She only knew the pants were soft and missing the drawstring which made them hang a bit too low on her hips, and the top had some lace on the collar. The top was probably purple, given the lace, but she had more than one pair of lounge pants missing the drawstring. In fact, they were all missing their drawstrings.

She began looking through Lera's clothes to find what Lera asked for. Missie hadn't been blind long, and depending on her sight came back naturally. It just made life so much easier...! She could see the colors, and the shapes, and the textures on the fabric. And also some gold light. Angels singing a chorus behind her would have made it perfect. Did Zenderael have angels...?

"It's um-- Oh, uuh," Missie blanked out, unfocusing as she thought about how many steps it was to the bathroom and where to turn and how to describe it. It seemed more complicated right now than it really was! "Usually I roll to the left, stumble out of bed for three half steps, turn right, feel for the wall, and um follow it until you feel the door frame to the bathroom. You will pass a corner."

"Right! Right, I'll get that taken care of. I'll, um--I'll let you go, okay? I should probably take care of that." And she could send a text message to Ezra and Harriet. Maybe they knew what was happening and she had their numbers memorized. That seemed like the best idea ever. "Uh, on your way out, make sure you grab something from the continental breakfast. It's really good. If you have my tastes, go for the jalapeno sausage kolache."

Hopefully Missie did have her tastes. Oh, God, this would be hard. Lera shuffled as indicated, taking the three steps until she got to the wall and put her hand flat against it.

"Bye, Missie!" She tried to sound calmer than she felt. It really only half-worked.

Lera's hotel was, mercifully, not hard to navigate. The clothes were the harder part, because Lera had maybe two or three civilian outfits. The rest was all uniforms -- combat uniforms, dress uniforms, standard uniforms, with varying degrees of armor. The swordbelt was there, too, for Missie to put on if she really wanted. Normally, Lera would worry about that, but she was preoccupied.

By the time that Missie got to Nadir's apartment, Lera was sitting back on Missie's bed, holding her phone in both hands. She felt uncomfortable standing up and walking around after that.

"Right. Yeah. Be careful! And don't was your hands with the rounded bottle. That's lotion. Soap is the squared one!"

It was only after she hung up that she blinked and said into the phone. "Wait, jalapenos?" Too late. J-jalapenos.

She set aside an outfit for Lera because knowing what you were wearing when you were blind was important, okay! Missie had some feelings about that. It didn't leave her much to put on herself, but she eased her own worry with the knowledge that, well, Lera wouldn't see it.

That was actually terrible. Missie was only just starting to get the hang of things. Her first day blind didn't involve a lot of movement. She threw on the other available casual clothing, afraid to messy the uniform, and didn't even think to take the sword. On her way out she hesitated for thirty seconds, staring at the kolache before braving it, taking it to go while trying to navigate Fall City Bastan. This was so much easier being able to see! And bright, still. The sunlight was white and-- don't say blinding, Missie.

She had already finished the kolache-- which was surprisingly tasty for a jalapeno death trap-- by the time she looked at the apartment door, keyless and staring in contemplation. One internet search for lock picking and a stick-- now the legendary sword Fantastico-- from the nearby grassy park later, Missie decided now was a good time to mull on the strange feeling she did not understand to be mana. The Mazda's power flowing through her, visible sparkles of light, channeling through Fantastico--

Ah! A blast of ice hit the corner of the door in poor aim. Missie yelped and tossed her stick over her shoulder. Well, the ice fragments were good enough. She used them in place of hairpins-- i-it was't the first time Missie locked herself out of where she lived and tried to mess with the lock.

Several more minutes and very cold fingers later, she finally got through the door. "I DID IT," she said, breathing an exhausted sigh. Triumph was short lived as she hurried and found-- um, herself sitting on the edge of the bed. Those bottoms did not match that top!

"Lera, are you okay?"

"Missie!" Lera called out, looking up. Missie got the strange experience of seeing herself look up but not quite in her direction. She hadn't had the time to realize that trying to look at people while blind was impossible. "Yeah, um--I got to the bathroom by myself! It was, um."

She hesitated. She did not want to say 'I don't know how you do it,' even if she thought it. She grinned up at Missie's general direction, sheepishly. The expression did not quite match Missie's.

"I texted Harriet," she said. "I memorized her number. She doesn't know what happened--um--" She hesitated, before she looked downward. She did not quite tilt her head down enough. "This is so weird. Hearing you sound like me. Um, are you--was everything okay? I don't think you took the wheel when I was sick or anything."

Is that what she looked like. Missie looked back at herself, feeling for a moment she was not seeing Lera at all, but having some kind of out of body experience. Missie knew what she looked like. Obviously! She owned a mirror! But she had never been able to see herself... like this. It was a lot different than how she pictured herself, and maybe some of that was Lera. Maybe some of it wasn't.

"I-- You feel fine!" she assured Lera, smiling, then awkwardly realizing the forced smile didn't matter. Was this how everyone was with her. "And I made sure to chew my food fully and not touch any strange dogs on the way here." Which was very heroic, Lera. That's really hard to resist doing!

"I wonder what happened... You don't think this is a political anti-Saftan scheme, do you?"

Lera grinned sheepishly. She still did not look directly at Missie -- herself -- and she missed the strangeness of seeing herself, fully three dimensionally, moving independently of her mind. She wasn't sure whether to be grateful or not for that.

"I appreciate that. I, um, I'd tell you I washed my hands but I always wash my hands?" she said, before she laughed. It sounded just absurd enough to be funny. She sat up straighter and tilted her head up, trying to look in her direction. "I don't think it's some political stunt. They wouldn't make it random if it was, I'd probably have woken up as someone else in a jail cell. And someone would be pretending to be me..."

She frowned.

"So now that I said that, I'm really glad that didn't happen," she said. She started up with one of her rambles, but the tone and tenor were entirely different with Missie's voice."How, um--how did it go? Getting out of there? Did you have one of the sausages? Did any of the soldiers stop you or anything? Ah--oh, I didn't think to brush your teeth or something. Oh, shit, and I didn't put on deodorant! Ah, Missie, I'm sorry, I'm gonna make you smelly, this is awful!"

"Oh," Missie said. "That makes more sense." Crisis averted! But this story was now a lot less intriguing. Zenderael's Strange Things could be fun, but they were also frustrating. This one was! It was also extremely invasion! Missie was happy it was Lera in her body. Someone she knew, and someone she could trust with it.

But then she was also more embarrassed because it was someone she knew in her body, which felt... damaged. She knew she wasn't supposed to think of it that way. Plenty of people without sight got along independently enough, didn't they? Missie wished she knew how.

"Don't worry about smelly! I can unsmelly. Unsmelly is easy. Here, let's get you-- me?-- dressed." S-something that matched. Maybe she could make some kind of texture catalog for herself, and what was which color, but then if she did get back into her body (and, blindness and all, she would rather have her own...!) then she couldn't read it. "I did have the sausage. I think I have your tastes. Nobody stopped me but I might have ran a little bit. Um. I'm sure it'll all work out, right?"

She glanced over the apartment. It felt like seeing it for the first time. She had only ever been at the front of it...

"Where's Nadir?" she asked. "Ah-- he's... maybe on the roof, early practice...? Or..." This was actually much earlier than Missie tended to wake up since her blindness, she realized. Night and day cycles vanished, and she had been half nocturnal because of her job. Blindness meant she had nothing much she could do, and a little itty bitty bit of lingering moroseness, which was not as itty or as bitty as she liked to pretend, made getting out of bed a slower ordeal than it needed to be. Nadir could have easily scheduled himself around that.

"Sure--yeah, sure," Lera said. "Getting dressed would be good. Um, Nadir is--ah, I'm not sure. I called Ezra. His player. The Spenta." She stammered that out and flushed, but her face did not feel quite right. Her cheeks were not as hot as they usually felt. She rubbed at her eyes again, involuntarily, and then shot her hand down into her lap suddenly. She knew no amount of rubbing them was going to bring Missie's sight back. At this point, she felt like she risked being insulting with her movements.

"Ez said that he would text Nadir and tell him," she said. She hesitated. "I don't know if he'll tell him everything, though. I guess we'll just have to see."

She took a careful, shuffling step forward, and then stood up. It was hard to balance without sight. It was even harder in Missie's body. Her legs weren't as long and her shape was different. It was actually some effort, but it made it fun somehow. It appealed to that physical competitiveness that Lera liked. She took a couple of steps forward, before she grinned proudly.

"Once I'm dressed, do you want to go out?" she asked. Maybe it was temporary. It had to be temporary, right? She couldn't tell Missie that, though. But if it was, then she should let Missie have some fun. "I mean--um, you liked some food I never did. I gotta see what it's like to get those sweet drinks from the coffee shop."

Lera never could stomach them, but it wasn't her stomach anymore.

Missie wondered if she rubbed her eyes that much. She know she had at first. Her lips pressed together, a common Missie expression now on Lera's face (and with no one to appreciate it!) as she watched herself move. Did people stare at her like this too...? Maybe not, she was mostly staring because it was herself! And herself in a way she could never see. Because Reasons.

"Oh, that's good... I don't know if I could explain. Maybe he would think it was another story I made..." Missie could already hear his voice, vaguely stunned, but responding with the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head. Well. Maybe this was all a bit more serious than that. And the idea of him seeing her in the wrong body... Aah, it wasn't right at all!

Lera couldn't see Missie's panicked face, or that it flickered back to normal in an instant. "Out? Are you-- are you sure?" There was a pause for Lera to answer, but she interrupted it with another sudden burst of a response: "Not that I mind! We can go. But. Are you... comfortable?"

It had taken Missie days to be comfortable. Of course, she had also been murdered... That might have had a lot to do with it, she reflected. Most to do with it.

No, Lera wasn't comfortable at all. Part of her wanted to crawl up into a ball, close her eyes (for what little good that would do), and hope this stopped. It seemed unfair, though. Missie had put up with it and gone out. Had she really wanted to? Suddenly, Lera wondered. She tried to smile and look reassuring, but that wasn't going to work.

She sighed and gave up on that. She did want to get out, because it was probably better to get her mind off the fact it might not end with something fun. If it did end, too, she could have an idea of what it was like for Missie. Maybe she could make it easier or know things to avoid.

"I'll get by all right," she said, finally. "I mean, um--you know, it's an opportunity that we don't get too often, right? Walk a mile in someone else's shoes."

She grinned, still in the wrong direction.

"Not a mile, though."

"Not a mile!" Missie agreed, smiling. Then the smile left her. "I don't know if I understand that expression now. Doesn't it matter where you walk? And why a mile? And if you're that far, how do you give the shoes back?"

She pondered it a moment, her mind taking things literally as she imagined the scenarios. "And what if they're high heels?" Missie was incapable of wearing high heels.

Her mind snapped back to reality seamlessly. "I brought the outfit, but um-- I just realized, it might not fit. I'm a lot shorter. But I just thought, maybe, it'd be better to know what you had on." Because that's how Missie felt, but then it wasn't Lera presenting Lera's body. Maybe the desire to look her best was, er, muddled in all of that. "I can describe some of my things, if you'd rather...?"

"Oh, yes, good idea," Lera said. She nodded her head. It gave Missie a chance to look through her clothes -- which was probably a good idea anyways, while they had the opportunity -- and it spared some embarrassment. She hadn't considered that angle. Suddenly, she felt sheepish.

"It would be even weirder if I'm in your body, wearing my clothes, and then my pants fall down in front of you--um, your pants fall down in front of me. Um." She put her face in her hand and promptly wondered about that. Why was it so easy to sense where her hand was, to move her body in relation to itself, but not have a sense of things in the room? She hadn't ever thought about it before. "I guess I'm saying that would be tragic."

She reached down, running a hand along the bed, and guided herself to a bedpost. She gripped it, to serve as an anchor, and faced where she thought Missie's closet would be. Instead, Lera addressed her nightstand.

She had spent all of five minutes in Missie's bedroom before this, though. "Okay!" she said. "What all do you have?"

"Oooh, yeah, let's not have that happen." Missie did not sound especially embarrassed by the thought. Embarrassment was rarely, for her, the result of what happened so much that she happened.

Her clothes were hanging up in a closet, which was much easier for her to go through blind than when they were folded. Nadir's apartment-- formerly Ezra's-- had not been designed to be large enough for two. It made her feel guilty now, realizing how true that was. It seemed much more a sacrifice of space for Nadir to allow her to stay. She needed to do something about that, or to think him... or... anything to be useful.

If this was temporary, then maybe she could borrow Lera's eyes for that. And they were magic eyes. Missie needed to take as many mental notes as she could, and maybe some not so mental ones to go with it.

It was easy to look, but Missie reminded herself to feel as she did when she was blind. She would need the memory of touch, not of visuals, to help her later. "I'll skip the sweaters." For now. "It's too warm. I have a blue dress. It's a wrap dress, above the knee, with ruffled hems. Um, a light shade, like skyish blue, with ruffles at the collar. A white, short sleeved, button blouse and a white skirt with floral patterns..." She went on, trying to describe her clothes without going into excruciating detail. If Lera was hoping for her to eventually announce "pants" as an option, she would be disappointed. "...And this is a yellow-- what? Why do I have this? It looks terrible against my sk-- ... Oh, it's not my skin."

"Yellow usually doesn't look great on me," Lera said with a grin. She realized she wasn't facing quite the right way and turned to look roughly in Missie's direction. She had to think about all of that and try to visualize it in her head -- how did Missie do this? -- and then picture how it looked on Missie, instead of her. She did notice the lack of pants, but she couldn't really complain to Missie about her choice of clothes. Even though pants were awesome and Lera wore them nearly every chance she could.

"The blouse and the skirt sound cute!" she said. The wrap dress sounded gorgeous, but possibly hard to put on, especially when she kept thinking that she was a taller person than she was. She leaned back against the bedpost -- testingly, not sure of its structure or her weight -- and then nodded.

"I talked to Ezra while you were out--um, hope that's okay, I had to use your phone," she added. "He said Nadir will probably call me ma'am and stuff when he finds out. Ezra might have told him."

"It's all set up for it!" Missie said cheerfully. Her expression softened a bit. "You already know that. You set it up. Um. But you can use it as much as you need to. It knows most people's names by now, but-- oh, I didn't think to add leader titles in yet. I couldn't remember how to spell or say them properly."

She got the blouse and shirt and gently set them on Lera's lap. "Here they are, skirt, then blouse on top. It is really cute. One of my favorites. I can go step behind something and hide my eyes while you change. I usually feel for the tag to make sure I get it on right."

There was something bizarre about telling someone how to use her body with its blindness. Missie felt the need to be nonchalant and encouraging about it, like it was no big deal, even if she was repulsed by it, constantly wishing it would go away. It occurred to her she couldn't hide how it felt to Lera right now. Maybe this wouldn't last long. Maybe that would make a difference?

Lera was starting to get an idea of how hard it was. She could tell herself that part of why it was hard was that it just happened to her. Realistically, it also just happened to Missie. How much were a few weeks? She looked up and smiled (still in the wrong direction) and ran her hands over the two. She tried to find the tags; she also tried to get a idea of the floral patterns. It wasn't the sort of thing that she would ordinarily wear, but she ordinarily couldn't pull off that sort of look.

"I think it had trouble with the Khshathra," she said. "Maybe we can do them later, but, um--well, don't sweat it. Ah, sure, I'll let you do that. Turn around, I mean. I'll go ahead and start changing."

Suddenly, she was grateful that it was Missie here in her body. She could trust Missie to turn around, but she had no way of confirming that happened. She waited a couple of seconds, before she started getting the pajamas off and the clothes on. It took a lot more care than she was used. It was a balancing act, sometimes, in a body that she wasn't used to balancing in.

She felt down her front to make certain that everything was on. She managed to get it facing the right away, though her shirt was pulled to the side. "Ta-da!" Lera called out. "Uh, the blouse feels funny. Did I get it on right? How's the rest?"

There was, unfortunately, no way to feel the pattern on the fabric. Lera would have to take Missie's word for it. The skirt had a bit of a crinkled ruffle to it, which Missie had failed to accurately describe. Words were hard and clothes especially had common traits nobody gave names to! "Right, no peeking!" ... But it was her body. Would it have mattered?

Once Lera was finished, she hesitated to turn around (but why) and then smiled at her. No one could see it, but expressions were automatic! So there! Missie stepped over to her and said, "Let me smooth it out," as a warning before brushing her hand lightly over the collar to get it in place. "It's on right! It looks good!" It wasn't a conscious choice, but Missie's voice-- even using Lera's, a the time-- had a lot of expression in it to make up for the lack of facial ones. Sorry, Lera, hope you don't mind hearing yourself being exceptionally enthusiastic and cheerful.

But that meant the hesitation was equally easy to hear. "Do you-- do you feel okay? Are you sure about... things."

Yes. Things. Missie would have made vague gestures, but that would have been pointless. (It would have been pointless anyway, Missie!)

Oh, that was weird, hearing her own voice with a bubbly cheerfulness that Lera never quite had. It sounded a little too low for it, too. Still, it was the smile-worthy kind of weird. She grinned sheepishly, tugging at the shirt -- trying to get a few more details about it -- and then she nodded.

"Yeah, I feel fine, I'm sure about things. It won't be scary or anything!" she said. Unfortunately, she did not quite believe that, and it showed in her voice and on her face. Finally, Lera sighed, and her shoulders drooped and her head hung in exasperation. The fact that she could not see her feet weirded her out a little more. It was a gesture she did often enough, but on Missie, it looked a little weird.

"Okay, so maybe a little scary," she said. "But we should have fun with it, right?"

Trying to think of it as something that could be fun was where Missie hit her mental road block. Blindness was not anywhere near the realm of fun for her. It could be different for Lera, though. It could be Missie didn't know how to handle it properly, or was too weak a person.

Or, right, being in different bodies, once in a lifetime opportunity (she hoped) kind of fun! That fun.

"Right!" she said, trying to muffle her uncertainty behind more enthusiasm. "Nothing ventured and nothing gained. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, even if there's seven of them with tentacle whiskers!"

Look whatever gift horse this was, it had to look at least a little like that.

She took Lera the same way she remembered people taking her that was most comfortable: arm hooked and easily led. It wasn't even something she ever would have thought of without it having been done to her first. She'd have grabbed her own hand and tugged herself wildly through blind space. This was the opposite of good.

It felt like Missie should know more of what to do, but she had very little idea of what she, herself, needed, let alone what Lera would in the same body. In some ways it felt like trying to help herself in a bizarrely twisted out of body metaphor.

"Let me um, let me know if... you need anything?" There was nothing about that sentence that was sure of itself. "It's a little warm outside today, but it's still early. And I did find a cute little cake shop in Bastantown-- city?-- Wh-whatever it is now! Before I uh-- couldn't find it anymore."

That was how euphemisms worked right.

"T-Tentacle whiskers?" Lera stammered out. She took a moment to appreciate her own voice saying that.

It was easy enough to follow Missie. It was the reverse of what they usually did, with Missie leading Lera. It probably even looked the way it usually did. She clung onto her own arm tightly, walking after. "Sure," she said, "that sounds like a good idea! I like cake--um, let's have cake! That's..." She squeezed her own arm. This was what it felt like? She lifted Missie's (her own) arm up and poked it with a finger.

"Oh my god, is this what my arm feels like? It's bigger than I expected." Poke, poke, poke. "Hey, I've been putting on more muscle! That's great! But I totally imagined it as smaller. What the hell? I can't even get you hand all the way around it."

She tried again.

"Yep, nothing." Lera sighed. "So weird."

The difference from inside to outside had been stark to Missie, especially in the wet summer heat, now dulled again by her being distracted visually. There was something about light and color that Missie was determined to soak in. If this wasn't an affliction that solved itself, they would have to find a way to fix it. The world would need its Mazda! And it wasn't fair to ask someone to take her blind body when she had been the stupid one to get herself killed.

Missie gave her own-- er, Lera's arm-- a squeeze herself. "Yeah, you're pretty firm!" she said cheerfully. "I'm um. I'm kind of soft and squishy. Sorry about that." Kind of squishy. She was bony under her alleged softness, in spite of her love for sweets.

"There's this scar too!" she said, proud on Lera's behalf. "Did you get that in the war? It's so big!"

Lera ran her fingers over her own scar. It felt familiar, but not; the angle was different and the way she didn't feel her fingers pressing down on it was weird. She laughed, then nodded, while she kept walking. The change in temperature and humidity let her know that she was outside. "I did," Lera said distractedly, still in Missie's voice. "It was against Mezzron--ah, I got thrown about, and broke my arm. The scar is where the bone tore out and then I healed it with a potion, so it set a little funny."

She turned her head to sort of look in Missie's direction. "I put on a lot when I started training with the Ambereyes. Best gym I ever joined, I guess!" She laughed. "Oh, and if your right knee hurts, that's because sometimes it acts up in humid weather. When I was in the army, I got it messed up in a nasty fall. It's mostly better."

She kept walking, turning her head around.

"No light sensitivity at all," she murmured, mostly to herself, and then felt terribly guilty about it.

Missie couldn't help feeling the scar further after Lera did. Mezzron. A god. What a strange thought...! But Missie had seen the Dark. She thought she might have even met demons. Was a god much more compared to that? Well. Yes.

But there was the physical evidence. It was evidence of injury, too, and pain. Lera's body had been through so much. She tested the right leg and knee, but didn't feel much more than a weak tug for the moment. Curious.

"It's the Dark," Missie said after she readjusted her gait to something normal. "It looks just like that. No light at all. Not even spots or moving shadows."

It was a thought that made Missie's heart sink, but she said it so matter-of-fact, so casual, as if she were only commenting on the weather.

"It was scary when it happened," she added quietly. "At least it wasn't my sword arm."

Healing, both magical and scientific, kept the injuries from the war from being a constant nuisance. It took the right set of circumstances to make it bother her -- and really, a few buffs usually dulled it -- but humid weather was one. Lera blinked her eyes a few times, trying to get used to that idea. She heard the Dark described before, but it was different to see it (or not see it). The fact that she had been seeing it without knowing what it was felt vaguely creepy. She frowned for a moment, before she turned her head back into Missie's direction without quite looking at her.

"Oh," she said, at first. She shivered. Then, she squeezed with her arm, something that approached a hug. She wasn't sure how it bugged her; her tone was just so detached from the experience. She hadn't ever asked about the Dark, either. She wasn't sure that she wanted to -- or that she wanted to ask Missie to think more about it. "I'm sorry, Missie."

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Let's get some cake."

Missie opened her own mouth-- Lera's!!-- to respond to the apology, or explain further, or... well. No.

Cake was a better plan.

She wisely shut whatever response she was forming away and nodded, giving Lera's-- her!!-- arm a gentle squeeze. "Let's. And maybe a chocolate chip cookie, too. I need to know if they're as magical for everyone as they are for me..."