her mind, in her thoughts, in the way she perceived and interpreted and understood all the incoming sensory information about the world…
And then Berenice understood. The twinning they had applied to themselves, the tiny plates now buried in their bodies—she’d been thinking of it all this time as a connection, like a tiny tube that ran back and forth between their minds, piping in thoughts and ideas and words…
But that wasn’t so. The connection was just the start.
A little like how Crasedes tried to use the Mountain, she thought. The little plates in our heads are…reforging us. They’re changing who we are, what we are.
Berenice drifted in the water, listening to Sancia’s words:
The burble of black waters. The flows and currents pulling at her skin.
I am she, Berenice thought suddenly, and she is me.
And suddenly she knew.
She knew how to swim, how to part the water with her cupped hands, how to kick herself forward. She knew how the water would react around her, how to feel the weak currents tugging at her body, how to ignore the bubble threading its way up one of her nostrils. She knew because she was Sancia, and Sancia was also her, and all that was one was also the other.
They turned in the waters, spied the grate at the bottom, and swam down, parting the inky black, their ears whistling and popping under the pressure, one kick after another, until their hands grasped the iron and the scrivings leapt to life in their mind…
<…shall remain SHUT,?> said the scriving,
And they knew how to open it. Of course they did. They had done this many times before, hadn’t they?
If a door opens the wrong way, it doesn’t count as opening…
The next thing they knew they were arguing with it, her mind speaking Sancia’s thoughts, or her thoughts mixed with Sancia’s mind:
A pause.
said the door, confused.
Their lungs began to ache. How long it’d been since they’d drawn breath…
said the scriving.
They withdrew their hand and swam back into the black, waiting, watching…
The little knot of silver began to quiver, then quake. The water trembled around them, and then…
Snap.
The sound of it was so much louder down in the depths of this canal. They swam into the open tunnel, their fingers grasping the edges, and they pulled themselves through, their lungs burning, their head aching. They ignored it, worming themselves on and on and on, clawing their way through the darkness until their fingertips struck flat stone, and they opened their eyes in the filthy, noxious water, and they looked up and saw…
The stars overhead, their pale light lancing down through a narrow shaft above.
They darted up, their body turning with effortless grace, muscles flexing as they parted the waters like a hard, sharp spear, and they rose, and rose, and rose…
Who am I?
Another stretch of shaft, and another, their lungs screaming, their body begging for air.
I can barely remember if we were two people, or if we’ve always been one…
The stars were so close now, the surface just above.
That’s it, isn’t it? We aren’t individuals anymore. Not anymore. There’s no going back. Not from this.
They pierced the surface and gasped, their lungs rejoicing at the feel of air. They grasped the edge of the well in the courtyard, lifted themselves up, glanced around ever so briefly to confirm that they weren’t being