Solo [The Switch] Borrowed and Blue

[Aislyn Leavold]

PermissionPermission from Fable to do this solo unmoderated. Shenanigans are good to go! This is the first of three threads that will surround Aislyn and Nythis' fun times in the wrong bodies. Welcome to Aislyn-doesn't-have-a-fun-time the solo.

The corresponding, Nythis-themed thread.

1st of Fall, 515 AV

Today.
Yes, today.
Today, Aislyn was going to get stuff done. So much stuff done. She was going to refresh her advertisements, changing her name to "Maya" on them, make the text bigger, perhaps add a bit of colour. Something eye catching. After that, she'd seek out anyone she could to help her increase her skill. She'd pursue painting, perfect sketching, and make her art actually sought after, not just second-hand. More effort, more profit, right?
No more distractions, just work, Aislyn said, determined, as she lay motionless in bed staring at the ceiling.
She felt different this morning. More powerful; stronger. Like she could reach anything. Do anything. Unyielding. Yes, that was the word. Unyielding. That was something she hadn't felt before.

She had to use this to her advantage.
Finally opening her eyes, Aislyn admired the roof of her abode intensely. However unyielding she felt, she also felt a certain amount of sluggishness that she didn't usually feel. Like with power, she also felt heavy. Peculiar.
After around a chime of wistful thinking, Aislyn rose higher.
And then she blinked.
Then she laid down again, and rose again.
And blinked again.

This was not her room.

This was not her home, not her house, not her bed, not her walls, not her ceiling, not her floor. This was not where she was supposed to be.
Then where was she?
A familiar sense of panic rose in her chest, a similar sense of dread sinking into her gut.
Stop, a command to no one but herself. She had to rationalize. This was one of Ionu's illusions, right? Usually, they didn't extend to the indoors, but maybe... Maybe this one did. This was fine. Everything was alright. The illusion would pass just like any other, then everything would be back to whatever normalcy there was before.
After a few long breaths, Aislyn rose again. She definitely felt heavier. And... Taller. A lot taller. Maybe the room had shrunk, as well?

Investigating the room, Aislyn found no mirror. None of her possessions, either, which meant her pocket mirror was MIA as well. Strange. And inconvenient, of course. She'd have to apply 'Maya' from memory; until she could locate her home again, and with it, a mirror. You never knew how useful those things were until you had no access to them. The only real out of place items in the room (ignoring the bed, desk, chair, and chest that were placed in the otherwise barren room) was a backpack that was lying on the floor to the side of the room. Floating over to it in hopes that it contained some sort of useful item, Aislyn reached over to open the bag.

And then let out a strange half-scream half-hiss. Her whole hand- and arm, for that matter- was blue. A deep, dark, midnight blue. Bigger, too, big and clumsy. The woman scratched at her arm, seeing if it was just a tint or a trick of the light. Maybe an illusion? Yeah, that was it. An illusion. If she walked outside, everyone would be blue. Like last season, with the fruit.
Everyone was cursed, just like this. Right?

[Aislyn Leavold]

Unfreezing her petrified hands, which were just barely floating above the foreign bag, Aislyn began to shakily rummage through it.
A comb, a brush, an eating knife, some gold mizas (Aislyn saved a few of those for later) and something stuffed all the way in the depths of the bag. Reaching in blindly, Aislyn grappled with the item, eventually locating whatever it was. Pulling up, the woman let out a hiss of air; it appeared that she had grabbed a blade. Her hand had not appreciated it.
Carefully making sure she grabbed the handle this time, Aislyn finally removed the blade, her hand dully stinging as she went. The dagger removed was of a likeness Lyn had never seen before. It was almost more art than weapon.

The hilt was decorated in feathers, large, imprinted ones forming the cross guard just above the hilt. Intricate design, and very beautiful too.
Twiddling the blade in her heavier, bluer hands, Aislyn admired it in an automated kind of way, turning it over in her palms. After nearly three chimes of this, she decided to finally get on with the day.
Without a mirror, it was a bit harder to apply Maya's face over hers, but she managed. Her gestures felt strangely empty, as if her efforts achieved nothing. The illusionist, however, trusted her ability. She'd never failed before.
At least, not as much as now. Though Aislyn didn't realize that.
The only red flag raised as she donned 'Maya' was the fact that no matter how hard she concentrated, her skin wouldn't return to the light, definitely not blue colour it had been before. Maybe she was just seeing through her illusion. Besides, if everyone was blue, she'd be fine.
Everything would be fine.

As she moved about the room, her motions felt unnatural. Constrained, as if her skin were working against her. Strange, but Lyn was trying her best to keep calm, so she forced herself not to think about it. She'd solve her problems when they came to her.

Gathering her wits (and the backpack she found), Aislyn tentatively pushed open the door to the room. The raven dagger was clutched tightly in her hand, a few tiny beads of bright blood swirling down the blade from where Aislyn had cut herself. The brighter corridor brought welcomed light towards Aislyn, though the brightness seemed half-hearted. Quite literally, in fact. She hadn't noticed before due to the dimness of the room, but Lyn couldn't bring herself to open her left eye. Her hearing, too, seemed off. Stronger in her right ear, as if the ailments of her eyes affected her ears as well. Something was desperately wrong; like an illusion gone amiss. But one could never predict Alvadas. Maybe this was what was happening to everyone.


Except, as Aislyn stepped out of the strange room, down the stairs, and out of the building she'd awoken in, no one else seemed to be blue. Or half-blind.
Or, Aislyn began to realize, very very tall.
Her heart rate sped up marginally as she frantically scanned the meandering citizens around her. They were all so small! And so... Normal.
Maybe this wasn't something that was affecting everyone. Maybe just half the population. Maybe a third. A quarter?
Maybe just Aislyn.

[Aislyn Leavold]

Feeling like a million eyes were boring into her skull, Aislyn began to panic. She'd failed to find a mirror, or even a shiny enough coin to reflect herself in. She had no idea what grotesque fun-house mirror creature she's become because of this illusion.

Retreating back inside the room of the apparent inn-like setting she'd woken up in, Aislyn looked for more- anything more- to give her hints as to what was going on. Suddenly, she had an idea.
Pulling out the strange, raven-wing dagger she'd discover, the woman polished the blade to as clean as it would be. Small scratches persisted, but it worked well enough. Her features were persistent in the blade, and what was visible in the reflection of the weapon.
Warped, grotesque skin coated the left side of her face, cementing her left eye closed and cupping her ear into a stub. The figure in the mirror of the blade flicked their eyes over the reflection that appeared. The figure in the mirror copied Aislyn's movements; copied Aislyn's thoughts, but wasn't her.
If this was truly orchestrated by Ionu, the deity was crueler than the illusionist had thought.

But, Aislyn told herself, it was all in the name of whimsy. All just a joke. She'd just have to stretch her illusion to cover the new two feet of person she had become. Perhaps even create a new illusion to cover her tracks. 'Maya' hadn't worked... But maybe she just wasn't concentrating enough. She was just distracted. That was it. She was distracted. The woman just had to focus.

Maybe she'd have blonde hair this time. Or dark skin. Maybe she'd be called Samvrita.
Sam had a nice ring to it. Yes, that was it. She'd be Sam.

The pleasant ideas really didn't help much with the panic that was unstoppably prodding its way into her thoughts.

Her hands moved in an automatic motion, though shaking and stiffer than usual. The woman attempted to apply the first layer of a new illusion. Darker skin, shifting the hue of the blue mess to a more natural colour. The shade was easier to manipulate mentally.
Maya's fair skin would be missed, but not forgotten.

Closing her eyes to concentrate, Aislyn moved along the list. Hair colour, hair length, eyes, skin colour, the scars, the body shape. She'd hide her missing eye and ear with hair, then make her way to the bazaar for clothes, and perhaps makeup to ease the strain of using so many illusions at once.
A flawless plan. After that, she'd find her way home, and wait for the illusion to pass. After all, this was just an illusion. She could just apply a mask over another, the way she did with her skin and hair. It would work out just fine.
Except it didn't.
Which became very, very obvious when she opened her eyes.

In the dagger, the malformed figure from before still haunted her. She was still concentrated on "Sam", but her appearance still... Blue.

This was bad.
Very, very, unbelievably bad.

[Aislyn Leavold]

The possibility of prayer briefly occurred to Aislyn.
Often, when things went amiss, the woman’s first thought turned to Ionu. A call for help, a plea for a blessing, or even just a passing request for luck. It was hard to forget the presence of the deity, especially in Their own city. Alvadas was Ionu’s plaything, and, especially when one could constantly wake up to shenanigans such as this, she couldn’t ignore that.
So this had to be of Ionu’s doing, which also meant They could fix it, right? It couldn’t hurt to try.
Or maybe it could.
She’d have to take that risk.

Ionu, my god, this is Aislyn speaking, though I expect you already know that.
I wish for your blessing, just this once, more than luck. More than I’ve asked for before. I’m so, so, sorry, if I disappoint you, my deity, but I must hail your attention for just one moment of your time to ask that this… Change… be reversed. I fear you laughing at me as I pray, but this is one thing I cannot take in light. I use your mark- your blessing- to hide myself behind a mask. My appearance is, just as your great city, an illusion. Now, that has been taken away, and I cannot even make use of your mark anymore. It has become an emptiness that I can no longer feel. If this is a punishment, I accept it, but please, my deity, provide me with an explanation of what I can do to prove myself once again worthy of your power.
In hope of meeting again, thank you.

There was a certain tightening in her chest as she mentally spoke the words, her mouth silently moving along, two heartbeats behind. After that, nothing. Emptiness filled her mind. Not in a serene way, either. In a eerie, what now kind of way.
Aislyn didn’t want to admit it, but she was scared.

That was when the angry voice in the back of her head said hello. Not to her, though. To Ionu. It sounded a bit like white noise, at first. Like blood rushing in her ears; a sound that slowly became less noise and more words. Very, very angry words.
...... and petch you with my petching lakan and see how you like having someone inside you against your will.

Surprised, Aislyn snatched the strange blade off the table she'd set it on, preparing for an attack from someone who'd managed to get into the room. Right behind her, it sounded like. But that was impossible. There wasn't an entry point other than the door, and she'd been facing that. Yet that voice most definitely wasn't hers, and it sounded close.

It looks like we have the same idea, but you might as well put that down. The crow shat on my head and flew away

She wasn’t that crazy. Not enough to hear voices- not yet, at least. Questionable sanity wasn’t supposed to run in families, was it?
If it did, Aislyn might have inherited her mother’s. Voices in one’s head that were not, in fact, one’s own, was a worrying sign.

[Aislyn Leavold]

Turning around again, until she was almost spinning in circles, Aislyn tried to find where the voice was coming from. The window? A hole in the wall? It sounded too close for that. Was this some sort of trick? A trap? What did anyone have to gain from doing something like this to her? The woman had more than a handful of people in Alvadas whom she wasn’t exactly friends with, but none who had either the incentive nor power to do something like this. Her hand remained clasped tightly around the blade, knuckles turning white, but it wasn’t much of a comfort, if she were honest.

Ah, there we go. The fear. That slight dilation of the pupil. I expected you to faint, the first time you looked. You were panicking already. The absence of sound after the voice spoke created a stillness in the air that Aislyn really didn't like. Of all the souls to replace...

As the voice made angry muttering sounds in the back of her mind, the woman tried to lay out what she knew. First of all, she had woken up as a big, blue, deformed non-human body. Second, she was in the Cubacious Inn. Third, there was an angry voice in her head that seemed to be just as much of a fan of the circumstances as Aislyn was.
Now, the questions she had to answer.
Why was she stuck like this? What had she done to deserve it? Who was the rather foreboding voice in her head?
Was she going insane?

If she were truly honest with herself, Aislyn knew the answer to the last question.

Sitting herself on the bed, the woman forced herself to accept the situation. And, after that, get all her thoughts in a line. This wasn't the ordinary sort of illusion. It didn't seem to hold the same humour that Aislyn had come to associate with Ionu. There wasn't much of a punchline; not from the inside. Just panic and anxiety over what was happening... And what could happen. On top of that, Ionu's illusions were detailed, yes, but They were a deity of (usually) lighthearted tricks. Nothing so detailed as a complete background story, just for a body. And certainly not as detailed as a completely new consciousness, resting in the back of Aislyn's skull.
Ionu Themself certainly wasn't the one speaking to her, yet if not Ionu, then who?

The mind of the soul she'd replaced? The person whose body was now unwillingly in the woman's control?
If that were true, the voice was understandably upset. Aislyn would be too, should she be suddenly ripped from control of her body, only to be forced into the backseat to watch what went on from a third-person perspective.
Perhaps this wasn't a punishment for Aislyn, but a punishment for the body she'd taken over. For a moment, she felt a sort of sympathy for the voice. That is, until it spoke again.

Tell me, does the skyke Ionu dumped on me have a name?

And just as quickly as it had appeared, all sense of sympathy disappeared. The voice in her head quite obviously wasn’t her friend. Someone she could coexist neutrally with, at very most. But they were both trapped inside whatever body this was, which meant she’d have to work with what she had.

”Maya. My name is Maya."