Page 106 of The Shape of Monsters
But the brush of wet hair at ans nape feels like spiders clinging there. Spiders like Iriset’s—like Silk’s. Raia closes ans eyes in something like despair. Sticky hair clinging to ans neck is so wrong. It should trail in smooth locks down ans back, float in the water, clinging to ans arms if anything. Raia desperately misses ans hair.
“Can I bathe with you?” Anis asks.
Raia glances over. The body-twin is tall, but sitting on the tub’s ledge, the water reaches her upper arms, and Raia suddenly realizes Anis jumped in here fully clothed.
Shame flushes Raia’s cheeks, always too visible on ans pale face… except, probably not under the craftmask. Miran are so lucky to not display emotions so easily. Another way they’re more perfectly designed, Raia thinks numbly. But Raia nods.
Anis watches Raia through her stripe of red face paint, holding ans gaze with surprising ease, with a promise of some kind that Raia couldn’t possibly predict, but finds comforting. So Raia watches back as Anis strips off all the thin layers of her court dress, shoving each robe and elaborately ruffled skirt away through the water. Anis’s pink and teal and yellow layers float around them like massive flower petals, and when Anis is nearly naked, she stands up on the sitting ledge. Water pours off her, loud even against the remaining faucet, and Anis peels out of her long under-trousers, kicks them aside, and she unties a strappy loincloth before rising again.
She looks at Raia, chin a little raised and her hair still up in elaborate loops and hair sticks and a long sheer cloth mask in attendant orange. Water streams down sleek mirané-brown skin, off lithe shoulders and a narrow, flat chest with soft brown nipples, down to cup in her navel and run along her little belly pooch. Her groin hair hangs heavily, as wet at it is, curled around a penis.
Raia bursts into tears.
“Raia—” Distressed, Anis splashes back into the water. Ripples knock into Raia, who covers ans face, crying for real now, tears stickier than the bathwater, and when Anis is near enough Raia flings ans arms around her. An buries ans face in Anis’s neck to cry.
The body-twin hugs an tight, pulling them to the ledge. Anis pushes wet hair out of Raia’s face and holds an, stroking up anddown ans spine. Raia’s fingers dig into the meat of Anis’s back, and an murmurs, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” but Anis shushes an every time.
It doesn’t last long, and Raia feels relief as ans emotions ease away. Anis lets go only to turn off the water. When she returns, she pulls Raia close again, Raia leaning against her shoulder, so they’re both sitting on the ledge, the water up to their collarbones. Anis has an arm around Raia’s waist, anchoring an, while Raia’s arms and legs drift. Raia lets ans mind drift, too, listening to the flow of their blood and breath.
Eventually, Raia dips ans arm down into the water to put it against Anis’s, and rolls ans neck so ans forehead touches Anis’s jaw. “Thank you,” Raia whispers.
“It doesn’t really change anything about what you have to do,” Anis whispers back.
Raia nods. “But it helps. To know.”
Anis squeezes Raia. “When Amaranth brings someone into the palace, into her circle, she has always before given them a choice. Even if it’s a bad choice, it’s there. She does feel awful that she didn’t, with you.”
The thought of Amaranth sours in Raia’s stomach, but an nods. “Does it bother you, Anis?”
“Which part,” Anis asks irritably.
Raia would sit up to face her, but doesn’t want to subject Anis to the face of the Vertex Seal. “Apostasy. Human architecture.”
Anis’s arm around Raia jerks a bit, but she sighs. “I think Amaranth only thought to make Iriset impersonate Singix because I’d already told her such transformations were possible. I dreamed of our captured apostate redesigning my whole body.”
“Oh,” Raia breathes.
“You don’t?”
Raia shakes ans head. “Some days I want a different body, but not all days. Not most days. It’s not how I am but how people see me that… bothers me. When they see me wrong, that makes my skin not fit.”
“Ah.” Anis sighs again. “I am not ahz, not an, not him. I’m a woman, and I’d give or do almost anything for that to be reflected by my outer design.”
“Even though it’s…”
“Illegal? Apostatical? A death sentence?” Anis shrugs, the motion translating into Raia’s body, too. “I don’t believe in any gods, sweetheart.”
Raia pulls away, turning. “But the Moon-Eater. Haven’t you felt him, with Her Glory?”
“I’ve felt a lot. But not any more than Iriset has made me feel, or the apex moment of the ritual on the Day of the Crowning Sun.” Anis’s eyes are dry, but a drop of water glimmers on the fan of her eyelashes as she stares intently at Raia. “Whatever the Moon-Eater is, he’s not a god. And when Iriset and Lyric return, we’ll know for sure.”
Raia can’t think of anything to say. An stares.
Anis’s hand comes out of the water and spiders across Raia’s face, pushing an away. “That’s so fucking disconcerting,” she says with a little laugh. “Lyric never makes that expression. Let me wash your hair.”
A little lost, but at least not alone, Raia agrees.
The wood has a memory of being aflame
