When I visited the hospital, I noticed that while Suki was clearly not exactly ‘comfortable’ the staff did do their best for her. She had a bed, two pillows, even a blanket. Not as good as the one I brought to her, but… better than none at all. The temperature was cool if not cold, and she had a means to call for help from the staff if she needed it.

Look, I hate tooting my own horn, and I’m sure you don’t want to hear me go on about how awesome I, personally, happen to be. But the only way to say this is to do so. I’m a skilled observer, I noticed how important it was for her to be as comfortable as possible in the course of her treatment, and I noticed how my own body responded to comfort vs discomfort.

So I knew from these observations that keeping Celia calm and comfortable was vital for this process. High stress makes it almost impossible for us to ‘swap’. Our scientists even suggested that it’s why our native bodies have such trivial emotional highs and lows compared to other species. It makes it easier for us to shift.

But now that she was stuck in the body of a very emotional species, and worse, a young one, (and those are prone to very emotional states even more than their adults) the importance of calm and comfort was doubled and then redoubled.

So I settled her down in front of the t.v. and we watched the gambling games begin. I didn’t remember this series too well, except that the artwork was marvelous. However, I’d forgotten some of the other details. Like the girl whose hair was forcibly cut, and how she finally struck back and shouted, ‘I am a human being!’ and destroyed her oppressor.

Personally I would have liked to see that scene elaborated on, if anything. I wished she’d said to him, ‘I’d have been loyal to you, if you’d been loyal to me when you won…’ In all the dictatorships I toppled, all the painting jobs I’ve done, and there have been many, do you know what I saw most often? That real loyalty at the top is seldom given by either side. Those at the top just below their dictator of choice are either just waiting to topple him, or in it for their creature comforts. Genuine loyalty is extremely rare, and that’s always made my job easier.

So I enjoyed that scene in particular, while Celia? She pumped her fist and shouted, “Get him! Get. Him!”

She shouted it with glee, and I knew I had her relaxed again.

I hit the pause button, then held out my hand and lined up the snacks we had on hand, out on the table. I sorted them by flavor first, and then consistency subcategories underneath. She opened her mouth to protest, but didn’t when she saw that I was focused. I laid out everything in such a way that the coffee table was completely covered.

“We’ll keep watching. But,” I pointed to the table, “I want you to try one of each thing and hold it in your mouth for thirty seconds or so while you try to change back.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“But… you’ll eat everything.” She protested. I raised my finger and parted my lips to object… then looked down at the pile of wrappers that were already scattered, and dropped my finger.

“I’ll make a conscious effort not to do that, and I’ll only eat what you’ve already tried.” I promised, “But you have to keep this up, even if there’s a snack you don’t like.”

Celia gave a little nod, her bright green eyes looked up at me, “You’re… really… really not going to tell anyone this happened?”

“I promise.” I said.

I didn’t blame her for doubting me, we may not be an emotional species, but we were a driven one, and at the agency, standing and reputation were vital to progress. If you wanted to reach the top, you couldn’t ever let yourself be shamed or disgraced. If I let this slip to someone and they believed it? Well, let’s just say her chance of promotion would be worse off than Suki’s prognosis before I intervened.

It must have been strange to Celia that I wasn’t interested in using this against her, which honestly just made me feel worse about what she was going through. I didn’t reassure her again, she was clearly struggling to believe me, and I mentally prepared myself for her to ask again later. Having something over somebody else was a popular way to advance.

Further reassurance would have just been ‘methinks thou dost protest too much’ to borrow the words of a human author who was saying that denial of guilt is proof of guilt, if the denial is hard enough.

I placed an order for some popular dishes, chinese food, pizza, other things I didn’t have on hand that might help her shift.

Then I hit the unpause button and we continued watching to the end.

I monitored her out of the corner of my eye. Watching while she tensed her body, gritted her teeth, and stretched her arms out like she was trying to grow or change something.

You don’t often see someone grunting like they’re having a hard time on the toilet while holding a double fudge cream filled cookie over their tongue and trying to suck the flavor out of it at the same time…

If I were to compare it to anything… there was this one time I was on a painting mission and to get to the dictator I had to imitate one of his wives. I didn’t have any reason to hurt any of them, so I snatched the one whose body I swapped into, gagged her, and stuffed her away somewhere. While she was gagged and wiggling around, she made lots of muffled noises.

Celia was sounding a lot like her right then.

It honestly would have been funny if she weren’t working herself up into a fit.

When she got a third of the way through the snacks, I knew she was losing her cool. I put my hand out and touched her shoulder, “Hey, Ce-Ce, it’s okay. Relax. Let’s just watch something so awful that you can forget the struggle for a bit.”

“Awful?” She asked.

“Yes. The worst thing ever produced. It’s so awful you won’t be able to look away.” I promised, then before she could ask I said, “Humans sometimes create bad entertainment to be entertaining by its badness, like sheer incredulity can be funny in its own way.”

She gave a little nod and I turned on a show about a high school girl whose heart shaped eyepatch made her a master swordsman.

As distractions went… it was decidedly effective. And little by little she settled down, until at last she was ready to try again.