Chapter 36 Chapter 35: The Morning After
At some point in the deep, quiet hours, the harness was unbuckled and cast aside, a soft thud on the floor. It was a deliberate shedding of artifice, so that nothing remained between us but skin and breath. We curled into each other, limbs entwined, two puzzle pieces clicking into place. I have never felt so whole, so entirely known, as I did that night, wrapped in the scent of her and our shared sweat.
I must have slept, because I remember dreaming. Not of frantic passion, but of profound peace: sunsets over calm waters, and a naked Silver, walking ahead of me, her hand reaching back for mine. It was a dream of warmth, of belonging, of a home I had never known I was searching for.
I awoke to two conflicting realities. The first was a dull, deep ache of pleasure through my entire body, a pleasant soreness that spoke of the night’s exertions. The second was the sharp, unmistakable pressure of my stigma against the smooth skin of her back. Sunlight, bold and unforgiving, bathed the room, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air.
But the feeling was wrong. It wasn't the familiar, manageable presence of my stigma. It was raw, sensitive, and… erect. My heart stuttered, then plummeted. I didn't need to look. The truth was in the pressure against her spine. It was not a stigma anymore. It was an anther, tall and proud, slapping lightly against her back as I shifted in a panic.
It had happened again.
Silver slept on, peaceful in the circle of my arms, completely unaware that the Polli she had fallen asleep with had vanished in the night. In her place was a Nate. I was a Nate.
What did this mean? Who was I? The feeling of wholeness from the dream curdled into a nauseating disorientation. I was whole, yet utterly lost and helpless. The bubble of the night burst, and the real world came rushing back in a torrent of crushing implications: the diplomatic mission, my parents’ expectations, the sterile humiliation of the clinic. The beautiful, Polli-specific clothes waiting for me at Marcel´s, the symbol of my new beginning, were now useless.
I was that freak. The one the doctors couldn't explain. A biological anomaly.
Silver stirred then, a soft murmur escaping her lips as she pressed back against me, and the intimacy of the gesture made me feel like a grotesque imposter. How could she not feel the betrayal of my body?
“Are you awake?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep, spoken over her shoulder.
That’s when the dam broke. A hot, silent tear traced a path down my temple and into my hairline. Then another. I began to cry, not with sobs at first, but with a quiet, desperate leaking of all the confusion and fear.
She felt the shift in my breathing, the tension in my body. She turned in my arms, her sleep-softened eyes blinking in concern. I could see she wanted to help, to ease my pain, but as her gaze flickered down between us, I also saw her try, and fail, to disguise a flicker of a laugh, not of mockery, but of sheer, bewildered surprise.
“Hi, darling,” she said, her voice tender. Her hand reached down and gently, curiously, grabbed my erect anther. It was a gesture of possession, not rejection. But then she saw the full torrent of tears on my face, the utter despair. “It’s O.K.,” she said quickly, her smile fading into sincerity. “I don’t mind. I kind of like it.”
Her acceptance was a kindness I couldn’t process. It just made me cry even more, the sobs finally wrenching free from my chest. I was a wreck, collapsing into heaving, ugly cries. Incoherent sentences washed out of my mouth, fragments of my shattered future. “My work… my family… the mission… my chance… it’s all gone…”
“Shhh, shhh,” she whispered, holding me tighter, her hand stroking my hair. “We will figure it out. Together. Do you hear me? I have never felt the way I feel about you. I thought I could never love again, and now you are here. And I will do anything for you. Nate or Polli. It’s you I love.”
My crying felt useless, a childish storm against the solid rock of her love. But I was drowning in it.
“I have to go to Uni today,” she said after a while, her voice practical yet gentle. “I have a paper that must be handed in. But you, phone in sick at work. Stay here. Rest. We will figure this out, I promise.” She carried on this way, trying to build a raft for me in my sea of panic, but I was adrift, barely hearing her. “I need to go, but I will be back soon. Phone in sick. We will work this out.”
She kissed me goodbye, a soft, lingering promise on my salty lips, and left me alone with the wreckage of myself.
As the door clicked shut behind her, the silence of the apartment roared in my ears. I tried to pull myself together, gasping for air. I couldn't just lie here and dissolve. I needed to understand. To find a pattern, a reason.
With a trembling hand, I reached for the notebook and pen on her bedside table. The movement was stiff, every muscle protesting with a deep, pleasant ache that was now layered with a new, chilling anxiety. I pulled myself upright, the sheets pooling around my waist. The morning sun felt accusatory, highlighting the alien reality of my own body. Each twinge of soreness was a stark reminder of the night’s passion and the morning’s devastating shock.
I opened the notebook to a blank page. The whiteness was blinding, a void waiting to be filled with the chaos of my existence.
And I began, or at least, I tried to begin, to map out my life story over the last few weeks. The words formed in my head, but my hand refused to move. The first change was at Silver apartment. The second, humiliating one was also there after being with her. This one, here, in her bed, in the one place I had felt truly safe. The incidents were like jagged islands in a foggy sea. There had to be an answer, a trigger, a key buried in the chaos. There had to be. My sanity depended on it.
I stared at the blank paper, my vision blurring, willing it to deliver me an answer, a starting point. But my mind was a frantic, scrambled mess. I didn't know where to start. The sex? My childhood? The biology textbooks that had always insisted this was impossible.
Pull yourself together, I thought, the command harsh and useless in my own head. I was coming apart at the seams.
First things first. Practicality. An anchor in the storm. I fumbled for my com unit, my fingers clumsy. I typed out a terse, unconvincing text to my boss: Unwell today. Will not be in. Apologies. Sending it, felt like severing a tie to the person I was supposed to be.
As I set the com down, a gnawing hunger clenched my stomach, a raw, physical demand cutting through the mental static. I needed fuel. I needed to do something. I padded into Silver's kitchen area, the cool floor a shock against my bare feet. The domesticity of the space, her mismatched mugs, a half-empty bag of bread on the counter, felt like a life I was trespassing on.
I foraged quietly, assembling a simple meal from what I found, the mechanical actions of slicing and spreading a temporary respite. Then I saw it: a jar of course-ground kafka. I never usually drank the strong stimulant, it was too sharp, too anxious, but today, my mind felt like a swamp. I needed something to burn through the fog. I prepared a pot, the bitter, rich aroma filling the small kitchen, a scent that promised alertness, if not peace.
With a full belly and a warm, intimidating cup of kaf-ka steaming in my hand, I returned to the notebook. The caffeine was already beginning to hum in my veins, sharpening the edge of my panic but also focusing it. I sat down, the pen feeling heavier now, more purposeful.
I took a deep breath, the scent of kaf-ka and the memory of Silver’s perfume mixing in the air. I tried again. This time, the pen met the paper. I drew a line. I wrote a date. The beginning of the end.
The warm, bitter kaf-ka had cleared a narrow path through the fog of my panic. I stared at the timeline I’d begun to sketch, the dates and events staring back at me like accusations. The dieball match. The clinic. Last night. My gaze drifted from the page, wandering aimlessly around the room, searching for a clue I hadn't yet seen.
It landed on the strap-on, discarded carelessly on the floor near the bed. The black leather gleamed dully in the morning light, a stark, intimate reminder of the night's passion. A simple, clinical thought surfaced, a fact I had been putting off, was it sex that was making me change, but my and Siver did not have penetrative sex the first time when I change and it can’t be Silvers presents or love because I never change the night we were just together did not change.
Sex, I thought, the word echoing hollowly in my mind. I always changed after sex. It was the common thread. The first night had been a whirlwind of alcohol and forbidden attraction, ending in a frantic, secretive coupling. The clinic… the shame of that examination, the cold, clinical touch, it had felt like a violent inversion of intimacy, but it was a physical violation, nonetheless.
But then, like a crack of thunder, the contradiction struck me.
No. Not the first night with Silver.
My eyes widened, my breath catching. That second night, after the bar after the pizza, after stumbling up the stairs… we had fallen into her bed exhausted, wrapped in each other's arms, but we had not had sex. We had simply… slept. I had awoken as a Polli, unchanged, whole.
The pen slipped from my fingers, rolling across the paper and leaving a small, ugly smear of ink.
It wasn't just sex or was it, the first night we had not had sex.
The realization was terrifying and exhilarating all at once. It was a variable eliminated, a false pattern shattered. My heart began to hammer against my ribs, not with fear now, but with a desperate, burgeoning hope.
I looked from the strap-on on the floor to Silver’s side of the rumpled bed, my mind racing. The last change at Silvers had been after a night of superlative, thrilling passion. The change before that the first one I we had not had sex together.
But the change here, now… this was different. This was after a night of… what? Of connection. Of vulnerability. Of a joy so profound it felt like a Trembling of the soul. And the second night, with her, I had not changed at all.
I whispered the question aloud into the silent, sunlit room, the words hanging in the air, charged with a new and terrifying possibility.
"Was it just Silver that changed me?"
How could I say that how could I blame another person maybe the person I loved for my failings.