Wings

Meanwhile, the me who had stayed at home was getting off work after a busy shift. It was Cyborg Monday, and I was wearing a dragon-girl body with a metal mesh left wing, a camera for a right eye, and LEDs displaying random, slowly changing patterns on my forearms. That was a fun novelty once in a while, but I wanted to get back to a more huggable body before Meredith left for college the following morning. I went by the Venn machine with a few co-workers who were getting off work at the same time and we venned each other into our everyday bodies.

I found Meredith in her room with Sophia and her mom, doing last-minute packing.

“Is there room for me to help?” I asked. “It looks crowded in here.”

“I’ll let you take a turn at it,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “Girls, call me if you need anything.”

It turned out Meredith had already finished packing the essentials and was now figuring out which favorite novels she wanted to bring with her for emergency comfort reading, which posters she wanted to bring to decorate her share of the limited wall space, and so on. Sophia and I gave her advice, but she had to make all the actual decisions, and there wasn’t a lot of physical packing left to do, which was fine with me because I was kind of tired from work. Her boyfriend Hunter came over for supper a little later, and went for a walk with Meredith afterward.

The next morning, I ate breakfast with the Ramseys before they all four drove off to Chapel Hill to get Meredith set up in her dorm room at UNC Chapel Hill. Then I went to work, the same as usual. When I got home, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey and Sophia were home again, and said things looked good for Meredith — they’d met her roommate and her roommate’s mom, and they seemed personable enough.

Later in the evening, I talked on the phone with Jada for a while about her freshman orientation, her roommate, the people she’d met at the mixer the night before, and so on. I put it on speakerphone so Desiree could listen in and ask questions, but Jada didn’t involve Lydia in the conversation, probably because Steph was in the room.

Work continued as usual for the next few days. Desiree and I hung out with Britt at her house on Thursday evening, snuggling and watching anime, and on Furry Friday, I had Jill venn me into a two-headed creature with a sheep-like head and a wolf-like head. After some practice, I tried talking with my usual voice with the sheep head and with a fake Scottish accent with the wolf head; I would recommend the meat dishes with the wolf head and the vegetable dishes and salads with the sheep head. The customers, or at least a good many of them, seemed to like the schtick, and I got better tips than usual. Once when my wolf head was taking a guy’s order, his friend (whose order I’d just taken) whispered to my sheep head asking if I (the sheep) could put in a word for him with my friend the wolf. I played along, whispering back that she was taken.

After work, I met up with Sophia, Mrs. Ramsey, and Ben Vass, the notary who had witnessed my long-term venn a few months earlier. Sophia’s experiment of spending one year as a doll (minus a few days for special family meals like Thanksgiving) was over, and she was ready to try splitting into two independent bodies. So she venned me back into my everyday dragon-girl body and I split her into two bodies, with me, Mrs. Ramsey and Ben acting as witnesses to prove Sophia’s identity to the DMV and the high school.

The smaller of her new bodies was a doll, similar to the one she’d worn most of the time for the last year, but a good six inches shorter. The larger was similar to her baseline body, with a few improvements. She didn’t have a baseline-like body in her recent history, so she’d made two extra trips through the Venn machine, one by herself to split her consciousness by canceling the venn on the larger version of the doll (leaving her in her baseline body), and one with me to make cosmetic improvements. She was now a little taller, with larger breasts, a better complexion, light green hair, and enhanced senses (which entailed slightly larger eyes and ears). On this last trip through the Venn machine, she had a big bag of clothes with her to v-tailor. Mr. Vass took her photos and fingerprints and got us to sign the paperwork, and we were done.

On the way home from the library, Mrs. Ramsey asked them, “How do you feel?”

“Fuzzy and emotional,” the fleshy Sophia said. “And hungry. I haven’t been hungry since Easter.”

“I think I might be sharper and more focused than usual,” doll-Sophia said. “I’ll find out when I do some reading later on.”

“More than usual?” Mrs. Ramsey asked. “You mean more than you’ve usually been over the past year?”

“Right.”

“I felt something like that,” I said, “but I don’t know how big a difference it was. I mean, between being a doll that’s split off from an organic version of myself versus just being a doll. I wasn’t emotionless as a doll, but my emotions were less on a hair trigger, it took more to stimulate them, and I think it was more so when my flesh body was split off.”

“Is that going to be a problem for Desiree?” human-Sophia asked. “And your plushie self that’s living with Jada?”

“I haven’t noticed Desiree being less emotional than Jada,” I said. “It might be a difference between plush and a hard ceramic or plastic body? I don’t know why that would make a big difference, though.”

Mrs. Ramsey and I fixed supper while the Sophias went off to their bedroom to conspire. Later, when they came to the supper table with Mr. Ramsey, doll-Sophia said: “I’d like y’all to call me Bianca.”

“Do you feel like you’re a different person from Sophia?” Mr. Ramsey asked.

“Kind of, but not really? It’s just to avoid confusion, like Jada’s plushie self has been going by Desiree.”

Everyone was used to Sophia sitting with us and chatting but not eating during the year she’d spent as a doll. Now that Sophia was split and Meredith was away at college, the number of people sitting around the table, and the number of those people who were actually eating, was the same. That didn’t mean we didn’t miss Meredith.

 

* * *

 

Meanwhile, Jada was going to her first few classes, going to meetings of a queer student group and an anime and manga fan club, and making a lot of new friends. She only brought a couple of them back to her room to hang out, though. Steph got super anxious whenever Jada brought friends over, so over time Jada started hanging out with her new friends in the common room, or in their dorm rooms, or the student center, and I (as Lydia) saw less of her.

Whenever she was in the room, whether studying or writing essays or watching anime or sleeping, I snuggled in her lap. But I wound up spending a lot more time with Steph than with Jada, since she hardly left the room except for classes and meals. And not all that often for meals; she always ate breakfast in the room, and often lunch, going to the dining hall only for supper. She listened to audiobooks and podcast audio drama, she listened to lectures she’d recorded on her phone, and she talked on the phone with her parents and with a couple of friends from high school. I enjoyed what I heard of her books and podcasts, but they tended to be interrupted, as she’d listen to a good chunk of them via her earbuds rather than the speakers when she was out of the room or Jada was in it.

Possibly because of Jada’s offhand revelation that she was into girls, or possibly from modesty, she always changed clothes in a stall in the bathroom if Jada was around or likely to return soon. But from my perch on Jada’s bed or desk, I saw her change clothes a couple of times, and wished I’d asked Sophia to give this body eyelids so I could give her some privacy. She would snuggle her plushies, mostly at night but also when she seemed to hit a snag with her study or homework, and sometimes when Jada was out of the room, she would gingerly pet me like she’d done the day they moved in.

About the only times Jada and I had to speak privately, when I could move and talk freely, were when Steph had a class and Jada didn’t. And as she started hanging out at the student union with friends between classes more often than coming back to the room, I started seeing her mostly only when Steph was around and we could snuggle but not talk.

One Saturday morning about three weeks into the semester, when Steph had just gone down the hall to the shower and Jada had decided to postpone showering until later, I said, “If I’m going to split like this again after I merge with Lauren, I’d like to reveal myself to Steph before the merge.”

“You think you can trust her not to report us?”

“I’ve spent more time with her than you have, and I’m getting uncomfortable with the way I’m unwillingly violating her privacy, overhearing her phone calls and occasionally seeing her change clothes when she thinks she’s alone. Even if she doesn’t like the situation, I think I can trust her anxiety not to want to confront you about having an extra roommate or go to the housing administration with a complaint. But I’d like to be able to chat with her, when she feels like it. I feel like I might be more sensitive to the cues when she’s getting too anxious to socialize than you are.”

“Probably, yeah. You want me to broach the subject or just hint at it and then let you speak up?”

“You’d better tell her outright. It’d be less of a shock that way when I talk.”

“Okay. As soon as she gets back from the shower?”

“Sure.”

So when Steph got back, fully dressed except for shoes, Jada said, “Hey, Steph, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Oh?” Steph didn’t seem worried or wary; good. She sat down at her desk and swiveled the chair so she could face Jada. And me, incidentally.

“You know how I usually sit with Lydia in my lap when I’m watching TV or reading?” I was sitting in Jada’s lap at the moment, as usual when she was in the room and sitting down.

“Yeah... it’s fine, I don’t think it’s weird or anything. Even if I just sleep with my plushies and don’t cuddle them that much during the day.” (She was totally lying about not cuddling her plushies during the day.)

“Well, there’s a reason for that. I don’t get to spend as much time with my girlfriend since I started college and especially since I started getting involved in clubs and stuff, so when I’m here, I like to snuggle with her as much as I can.”

“...With her... you mean?”

“Hi,” I said.

She stared at me in shock for a few moments before gathering her wits to say, “You’re venned? But — I’ve heard Jada talking on the phone with her girlfriend? And you were with her when — do you have more than one girlfriend, Jada?”

“Yeah,” Jada said, and I added:

“Have you heard about people venning into multiple bodies?”

“So you’re here and also back home? But then why would Jada need to talk on the phone with your other body when — oh. Because I was here and she thought I’d think she was crazy if she talked with you. And you couldn’t talk back with this body because... wait, why are you telling me now?”

“Because you’re a neat person and I’d like to hang out with you as a friend,” I said. “But only if you feel like talking. Also, the way we venned me, I’ve got independent copies of my mind in my body back home and here. When the venn expires in about another week, this body will vanish and my mind will merge back into my other self’s body.

“Oh!” Steph was having a hard time taking all this in; I didn’t blame her. “That... but you... uh, that must be really cool. Can you show me how to do that sometime?”

“Sure. I can’t go in a Venn machine myself, because I’ll vanish and merge with my other self early if I do, but Jada can show you.”

“You can read about it on VennWiki before we do that,” Jada added.

“Anyway,” I said, “like I said, this split venn is going to wear off in about a week, and I’d like to spend a few days as one whole person before I split again — if I do it any time soon. Whether I split again in a couple of weeks kind of depends on you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you’re not comfortable with having me as an extra roommate, Jada can just take me to the Venn machine today and pop me in to merge me with my other self, and I won’t bother you any more.” Jada looked surprised; we hadn’t planned that. “But if you don’t mind hanging out sometimes and maybe being friends, then I’ll come back with Jada as a plushie again next time she goes home for a visit.”

“Oh, um... you seem nice? But I’m still a little weirded out... I mean,” she said, blushing, “I changed clothes here when I thought I was by myself...”

“I apologize; I don’t have eyelids, and I thought about turning around toward the wall, but I was worried about you being shocked and I wound up doing nothing... But now that you know I’m here, if you don’t mind my staying after that, you can ask me to turn my back when you change.”

“Oh, no, I’d probably just change in the bathroom... Can I decide later?”

“Sure. If you ever decide you don’t feel comfortable with me here, I’ll ask Jada to take me to the Venn machine the next chance she gets. Only we need to talk to my other self and make sure she isn’t busy. I don’t want to merge our minds and several weeks worth of memories when she’s in the middle of a busy shift at work.”

“Oh, sure, no hurry... I guess it’s probably fine if you stay. Um, is Lydia your real name? I thought I heard Jada calling her — I mean you — I mean — when she called her on the phone, she called her ‘Lauren’?”

“Lauren Lydia Wallace is my full name. When we split up, the smaller version goes by my middle name.”

“Neat.”

After that, poor Steph was plumb socialized out, and Jada and I shut up and left her alone for a while. But we were able to snuggle more freely after that, and I didn’t have to stay still so much. And later in the day, after Jada went to hang out with some friends from the anime group, Steph looked over at me and shyly asked, “Do you... would you like to come sit next to me while I work on this?”

“Sure,” I said. “You’d have to pick me up, though. I can’t jump that far.”

“Oh, sure.” She came over and gingerly picked me up, holding me just below her chin, and brought me over to sit on the desk beside her. “You’re so soft!” she marveled.

“Yeah, the Venn machine makes the cuddliest plushies. What are you working on?” I glanced at her laptop screen. It was running a word processor I wasn’t familiar with, the screen filled with several lines of bulleted text at the top followed by an incomplete paragraph.

“An essay for Freshman Comp. It’s supposed to be about someone you admire, and I think I’ve pretty much figured out who I’m writing about — E. Nesbit. She was a writer and a political activist around the turn of the last century...” She told me about E. Nesbit’s life and works, a couple of which I’d heard of but hadn’t read. “Only I’m having trouble getting my thoughts in order.”

“Let me read what you’ve got so far,” I said, and read the highly tentative bulleted outline and the fragment of an opening paragraph. I gave her a little advice about narrowing down the focus a bit — her outline covered a whole bunch of stuff, too much for the word count she’d been assigned. I noticed a couple of typos in the opening paragraph, but didn’t point them out; I figured I could do that after she finished the first draft.

After that, for the next nine days, I would sometimes help Steph as well as Jada with homework in the subjects I was good at, and we got to know each other better. She had a huge vocabulary, and was a fast, fairly accurate typist, but had to guess at the spellings of a lot of words, since she knew their pronunciations and meanings but hadn’t seen them written out all that often. She read more slowly than most college freshmen, which was understandable given that she’d started learning to read print only two years ago.

She was not exactly affection-starved; she seemed to have loving parents who called every few days if she didn’t call them first, which happened more often, and they were apparently planning to come see her later in the semester. But she was lonely, apparently being away from home for the first time, and not making a lot of new friends. We hadn’t been working on homework together for very long, less than a week, when she asked me timidly if she could pet me. She’d been very gentle every time she picked me up from Jada’s desk or bed and brought me over to her desk to sit next to her, but she hadn’t touched me more than was necessary to get me over the big gaps between pieces of furniture.

“It would be okay with me,” I said. “But I wonder if I might should ask my girlfriends if it’s okay with them?”

“Girlfriends?” she asked. “You mean Jada and the other you — Lauren?”

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask her, too. But I meant Britt, Jada and me’s other girlfriend.”

“Oh... Jada said something about sort of having two girlfriends, but then she explained about you being split in two and I thought that was what she meant.”

“Britt’s our girlfriend, but she’s asexual, and we just cuddle and hold hands with her. We don’t kiss or anything beyond that.” She seemed curious, so I told her a little more about our relationship, and the little bit I knew about polyamory in the larger world, but didn’t go into any details about how much farther than cuddling Jada and I had gone. “So anyway, I figure they would probably be okay with you petting me, but I think I should ask them.”

“Oh... okay. I shouldn’t have asked... you don’t have to say anything to them about it.” She looked embarrassed.

“No, it’s okay. I’m a plushie, I like being snuggled. It’s not sexual for me in this form any more than it is for Britt. But still, I feel like it would be more respectful to talk with my partners about it first.”

“Okay,” she said. “That’s cool.”

I talked to Jada about it the next morning when Steph was in the shower. “Sure,” she said. “Steph is a sweetie and I’d be a hypocrite to say you can’t let her pet you, or even sit in her lap and snuggle, after I started out our relationship asking if I could keep snuggling with Britt.”

I asked her to let me talk with Britt and Lauren next time she called them so I could ask them the same question. “Now’s not a good time,” she said, “but maybe tonight. I’m sure they’ll say yes, anyway.”