Undone

Joa

That frightened me. How could she not be certain of that? Had I fallen so low that I could be mistaken for a human?

“Old Dji

Her next question came right to me. “I’ve never met you before, have I?”

“No.” Because I had never worn flesh before. Never craved it.

She nodded slowly, and a slight frown grooved itself between her eyebrows. “David says you’re hurt.” Her blue eyes unfocused, and her black pupils expanded. She was looking into the aetheric, I knew, and seeing my damaged soul. “My God. You really are hurt. Can you draw power at all?”

I managed to shake my head in the negative. Joa

They exchanged a look, a long one, that contained information I could not understand. David touched her gently, a stroke of fingers along the skin of her arm.

“I don’t know what he intends, but if we can’t figure out a way to get her access to the aetheric, this will kill her, no question about it,” David said. “She’s very weak. She could barely settle into this form. No chance she can shift again, at this point. She’s living on whatever she has in reserve right now, and what I try to give her just bleeds away. I think because she’s Ashan’s creature, I can’t really touch her. Not even to save her.”

Joa

He gave her one sharp nod, but said, “If anything happens, I’m cutting the co

I wanted to be offended by such presumption from a mere New Dji

I felt that I was losing more of myself with every beat of my all-too-human heart.

Joa

And power snapped a co

David stood between us, and he pushed me back down, one hand solidly on my chest. He held me on the bed as I struggled, panting, but his attention was on Joa

“Jo?” David sounded alarmed and angry. “Are you all right?”

She waved vaguely without looking up. “Okay,” she said. “Give me a minute. Not fun.”

He pulled in a breath and turned his focus back to me. “Be still,” he snapped, and I stopped struggling, suddenly aware how desperate I seemed—how primeval—and of the anger in his eyes. I stilled myself, except for fast, panting breaths, and nodded to let him know I had control of myself again. He reluctantly let me go. I sat up, but slowly, making no sudden moves to trigger his defenses.

“I’m sorry,” I said, forming the words more easily now. “I did not mean to hurt her.”

“Well, that makes it all better,” Joa

I felt better. Steadier, if nowhere near normal. At least my human form seemed to be working properly—that was a start. I pushed the covers back and swung my legs off the bed, but it took a long, agonizing moment before I could drag myself upright and find my balance.

David didn’t help me. In fact, both he and Joa

“She’s stuck in that form?” Joa

“As far as I can tell.” He was looking at me with a kind of clinical interest, and I put one foot carefully in front of the other, taking my first trembling steps as a human, until I arrived at the mirror on the closet door.

Tall, this body. Thin. For a female form, it was narrow, barely rounded at the breast and hip. Long arms and legs, all of my skin very pale. My hair was a white puffball around my head, frail and ethereal, and my eyes . . . . . . My eyes were the cool green of arctic ice. No shine of Dji

“Too bad, really,” Joa

This was the form I’d chosen, out of instinct. It must have had some truth to it. I shrugged, watching the play of muscles beneath the flawless white skin.

David cocked his head, watching me as I inspected my new body.

Joa

He smiled, and retrieved a garment from the back of her closet door. It was a long, pale pink fall of silken cloth, and it settled cold against my skin but began to warm almost immediately. My first clothing. The color reminded me of disjointed things: primroses in the spring, cherry blossoms fluttering in the wind, sunrise. And it reminded me most strongly of the shifting, ethereal colors of a Dji

I smoothed the fabric, belted it, and looked up at the two of them. David had moved to Joa

I had not, in a thousand years, said a word of gratitude to a New Dji

So it cost me to speak the words, and I still felt a core of anger that I had been brought so low. I knew she heard the resonance of it. The arrogance. But is it arrogance if one is truly superior?

“Don’t thank me yet. You’re feeling better, but that’s not going to last,” Joa

Ifrit. It was the dark dream of all Dji