Tessa and Lisa

As she packed her keyboard back into its original box, Tessa breathed in deeply, taking in the almost forgotten scents of her apartment. It was strange how new something so familiar could feel.

“So is it different than before?” Pillowcase asked.

It was. So very different. Tessa had never possessed an exceptionally acute sense of smell, but among the other perks she’d picked up, that seemed to have been included in the package. It wasn’t just the old scents that had changed though. It was the scents of the Clothwork Soul Knight who stood beside her rather than sharing a body with her. And the scents from the shower as the woman she loved indulged in the chance to clean up after all the lifting and moving they done. And the Vampire who was currently raiding her fridge for the leftovers from the take-out meals they’d had the night before.

Even taken all together though, there was something else different in the air. A freeing lightness that lifted Tessa’s spirits where she would have been prone to maudlin nostalgia.

She didn’t have reams of good memories to associate with her apartment. She’d gotten it after her last breakup and it had been little more than a place for her stuff and a place she could collapse into bed after a long and unrewarding day.

That ‘little more’ though? It was still meaningful, and she’d always been the sort to be sad at leaving even small treasures behind.

“I think I’m the one that’s different,” Tessa said, looking around at the sum total of her Earthly possessions. The boxes of clothes and books and tech and stuff didn’t really amount to much. Certainly nowhere near the mountain of loot she’d amassed in the Risen Kingdoms. She was glad to have them nonetheless though. For as much as she couldn’t claim to be the woman she’d been, both physically and mentally, that Tessa was as much a part of her as any other, and had been just as vital in ensuring her survival as anything other than yet another cosmic horror.

“I gather that, in and of itself, isn’t unusual though?” Lost Alice said, coming into the living room with a box of fried noodles and some chopsticks. 

Tessa paused for a moment to consider that before shaking her head.

“I’ve always been the odd one out, but I was always me. Inescapably so. There were so many times when it sucked to be who I was. I would have sold souls to get to be someone else.”

“Souls? Plural?” Pillowcase asked.

“Well I wasn’t going to sell my own so I always figured the rate would be higher.”

“I’m curious that you choose to let Pillowcase go in light of that,” Lost Alice said.

“She didn’t,” Pillowcase said. “We’re still as connected as we were before.”

“Mostly,” Tessa said. “We don’t have our easy telepathy when we’re in different bodies. But Pillowcase is right, we’re not exactly separate either. Not when we can do this.”

She gestured towards Pillowcase who was standing on the other side of the small living, offering her hand as though for a dance. When Pillowcase returned the gesture, they flowed into the center of the room like a shower of sparks to reform together as Pillowcase.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to do that here?” Lisa asked, towling her hair dry.

“Non-Void Speakers should be careful with it,” Pillowcase said. “Mostly because it’s easy to get stuck like this.”

“The rebonding is pretty intense, so it can be a bit sticky,” Tessa said. “And theoretically there’s a chance that it doesn’t work and the two personas wind up Disjoined.”

“Disjoining only seems to be possible though in cases where one side is forcing the bond on the other, and even then the far more likely result is a bonding failure and Backlash,” Pillowcase said and visibly released a breath she hadn’t needed to take. With her exhalation she fizzed back into light and reformed as herself and Tessa.

“I don’t think any of us need to worry about Disjoining, and getting stuck isn’t really a problem for Pillowcase and I because I can just Fracture us apart again if we need to separate,” Tessa said.

“Like for carrying the last of these boxes?” Lisa asked, glancing with a smile at the small stack of cardboard containers they had left to haul down to their rental truck.

“I figured four of us would have an easier time polishing off the left overs too,” Tessa said. “I’m supposed to the leave the apartment in ‘move in condition’.”

“I thought your landlord got eaten by a Lava Pterodactyl ?” Lost Alice said.

“That was the Director of IT where I worked, my landlord was eaten by a Magma Mole,” Tessa said. “Someone else will be moving in here though, probably, so leaving the place in good shape seems like a decent thing to do.”

“A decent thing and significantly less like to get you eaten by the next Magma Mole that comes through if the statistics I was reading are even vaguely correct,” Lisa said.

“How much do you think this world is going to lose its mind when people figure out that there was a serious bias in the casualties of the apocalypses?” Tessa asked.

“Oh I think this place lost its collective mind a long time ago,” Lisa said. “I suspect the responses will range the usual gamut though from people who are chill about it to ones who either form up a new religion or go into a frothing rage over it.”

“That sounds like something it would be a delight to stay and watch over,” Lost Alice said, rolling her eyes at the thought.

“I do feel a little bad for abandoning everyone here to that,” Tessa said, fighting to keep the frown out of her voice and off her face.

“I’d feel bad too,” Lisa said. “Except that we’re not abandoning them. You know we can’t make the whole world listen to us just because we’ve got some good ideas.”

“Well, we did talk to Gaia for a bit. That’s kind of like having the world listen to us, isn’t it?” Tessa asked.

“And she’s going back to sleep why again?” Lisa asked. “Because it’s supposed to be up to the people here what happens next right?”

“Yeah. and I suppose if anything catastrophic does come up, we can always come back if we’re needed,” Tessa said. “I guess I’m not worried about that though. The big catastrophes are easy to see and and clear to respond to. It’s the little things. The day by day moments of keeping things on track so that the next day can be better than the last one. It feels like if we take our eyes off that, everything’s going to start backsliding immediately.”

“I don’t believe that will happen,” Lost Alice said. “Not on either world.”

“You think things will be calm and peaceful on Earth and in the Risen Kingdoms?” Pillowcase asked.

“Not at all,” Lost Alice said. “There will be strife, and problems, and plenty of work to do in rebuilding. Both of our worlds, and all of the others we know of, have something new in their favor though.”

“The other worlds,” Tessa said, seeing what Lost Alice was getting at. “They can act as pressure release valves. People won’t feel as trapped in bad situations anymore since they won’t be. Not to the same extent at least.”

“Most people aren’t World Walkers though. So hopping off to another worlds on a whim?” Pillowcase said.

“True, but there will be gates that anyone can use,” Tessa said.

“Gates that people will definitely fight each other for control of once they understand what they are,” Lisa said. “Unless my sister nips that in the bud.”

“Wait, Rachel is still teaching people how to World Walk?” Tessa asked.

“Yeah, why, that’s not bad is it?” Lisa asked.

“That’s fantastic!” Tessa said. “If that becomes common enough, the Earth will embrace and people moving back and forth between world and a lot of worlds should get really easy to get to, at least compared to how it is now.”

The image of a sky full of different planets with people jumping between them as columns of light filled Tessa’s mind’s eye.

As much as she couldn’t imagine humanity turning its back on the petty cruelty and irrational divisions that it had clung to for millenia, she equally couldn’t see a place for those old hurts in the future that awaited them all.

She was different from who she’d been, and not because of the class and level she’d won. The apartment she stood in had been half of her life, and it was so small, but she hadn’t been. Her imagination had carried her to distant worlds long before the Fallen Kingdoms had taken her bodily to the High Beyond. 

In stepping out of dreams and onto another world in reality though, the horizons of her life had altered on a fundamental level.

“So you’re still okay with leaving then?” Lisa asked.

Tessa breathed in and knew that she was. The wistful, nostalgic part of herself let go of what she’d had in her apartment, in her city, and in her world.

She could carry forward the things she valued, she could retain her connections with the people who mattered to her, but she couldn’t pretend that she would fit back in her old life.

“Are you still willing to come with me?” Tessa asked, knowing the answer but wanted to hear it anyways.

“Always,” Lisa said.

It was just as nice to hear Lisa say that as Tessa had hoped. Part of her wanted to jump for joy still, unable to believe she’d fall in love with someone who was willing to love her back. The rest of her was kicking at her own backside to do something she’d been considering for probably longer than she should have been.

“How about you two?” Tessa asked instead, nodding towards Pillowcase and Lost Alice.

“For us it’s going home, sort of, so of course we’re going back,” Pillowcase said. 

“Though I’m not sure we’ll be following you exactly,” Lost Alice said.

“What do you mean?” Lisa asked.

“I thought I’d take this one,” Lost Alice indicated Pillowcase, “and start searching for some nice spots for the reception.”

“What reception?” Lisa asked.

“I think they mean this one,” Tessa said, causing Lisa to turn to her with an expression caught halfway between puzzlement and hope.

In her outstretched hand, Tessa held a simple, unenchanted ring. It had no mystical effects bound to it, it hadn’t been forged by a master craftsman, and there was no secret history hidden in its heart.

Tessa knew exactly where the ring had come from.  She remembered the day her Grammy had passed on the engagement ring she’d received and worn all her life.

“What’s important is that you find someone who makes going through the bad times better,” Grammy had said. “Doesn’t matter who that is, just that they’re good for you and you’re good for them.”

Lisa was that person. Tessa knew it to the bottom of her soul. It wasn’t just that they’d been through so much together, it was how they’d been through it and who they’d been for each other. Lisa was good for her and, after everything, Tessa was starting to believe she could be good for Lisa too.

Even if that meant apparently giving her a heart attack.

“This is an offering,” Tessa said, her careful speeches blowing like autumn leaves out of her mind as the words her heart want to say tumbled out of her lips. “I love you. I love you and I’ve loved for you for so long now. But this is still an offer you can refuse and I won’t love you any less. I want to be with you, I want the world to know that I love you and that I am yours. Always and forever. If you’ll have me that is. Will you? Be my wife?”

Lisa, who’d been struck speechless and frozen, let out of a short gasping breath before conjuring a similarly plain ring to her hand.

Tessa watched, similarly stunned, as Lisa hurriedly but with perfect dexterity slid the ring she’d produced onto Tessa’s ring finger.

“Mine!” Lisa said and wrapped her in a hug before pulling back and smothering Tessa with kisses. “Mine. Mine. Mine!” she said between each kiss, moving from from Tessa’s lips to her neck and then her ears.

“That’s a yes then, right?” Tessa asked with a chuckle, to which Lisa clasped her tighter and returned her kisses to Tessa’s mouth.

“Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes you goofball,” Lisa said and they were both crying and laughing and at some point Lost Alice and Pillowcase had vanished to carry the last boxes downstairs.

There would be people to tell and plans to make, but for that moment, Tessa longed for nothing more than to keep holding her fiance close so she could lose herself in the love she saw shining in Lisa’s eyes.