68th Summer, 513AV
Tsaba inspected her tiny, round fingernails and flexed her two fully mobile hands. It had been a week since the body transfer, and she was still adapting to the feel of the new form. She was feeling stronger, mentally; strong enough to try something that she had been wondering about for awhile. Something dangerous, in her current condition. But not ridiculously so. Not compared to some of the other things she'd done.
Eyes closed, she began to chant, letting the rhythm of the words flow over her. "Djaspond dalat. Irst Radjudt. Abase pechit pond. Caposirst, daeqirst... radjudt!"
She opened her eyes and let the auras seep into her vision. She took a brief moment to light one of her six-chime candles (hoping that six chimes would be long enough), and looked down.
Physical condition of the body... better than her previous one. Some marks from her own inexpert attentions, certainly, but no signs of decay. Still dead, though. She suspected that that would always be somewhat off-putting.
And the aura of life...
Well, it was... there. That was a good sign. It clung in bright rivulets and ripples to her palms, feet, chest and, she could only imagine, her forehead and mouth. The rune sites for her body transfer ritual. But in her previous body, the energy, while noticeably brighter at those sites, had run smoothly through her body between them. In this one, it didn't... fit yet. It was like a river adapting to new topography after a flood. Small streams of energy moved through her, but they were uneven, confused, not yet settled. Tsaba had expected to see a weaker life force, but she hadn't expected to see a confused one. She'd always assumed that adapting to a new body was merely a matter of relearning a new center of gravity and limb length, not an internal physiological issue.
The candle went out just as she was trying to get a closer look.
She could keep going. She was learning a lot. And she might only need a few more chimes. Such a waste, to stop just a few chimes short of a breakthrough. She'd improved so much since making those candles; she could afford a few more chimes.
Ignoring the voice in her head that wanted her to look deeper, to see more, to understand more, Tsaba reluctantly shut off her Auristic sight. She could afford longer... but if she started breaking her own rules, she'd find herself in trouble.
She scrabbled for parchment to note what she'd learned. As interesting as what she'd seen was, it just raised more, more interesting questions. Was the aura permanently different between bodies, even after the nuit had adjusted? Was her life force, her very self, fundamentally different now than it had been in her previous body?
Time would be needed to answer that question. |
|
