The mind is a great and terrifying thing. Events unfold including but not limited to: Sarah not actually being present (except for a short cameo at the start) And Hannah finds more then she bargains for when she eventually manages to meditate.

“I definitely have a problem..”

It didn’t take much to get my sorely needed meditation time.
Sarah shot me a weird look when I used the excuse of being tired but mum drew her back into conversation before she could bring it up.

I’m a bit calmer now, about them at least, after the mini-freakout in the car.
Having half an hour of nothing but my thoughts for company has helped surprisingly well.
Whatever was pushing my mental buttons and making me a big depressive bundle of nerves has eased.
I’m kind of glad my element has apparently changed completely, if I was still a fire elemental I’d probably have turned mums car bright orange along with everything and everyone inside it on the ride home.

I can see why mum and Sarah seem so much closer now at least.
With the change in mums perspective and Sarah not being so tense about the elephant in the room between them, namely me as ‘Alistor’, they’re making up for lost time.

For the last few years every time they’ve met up, it’s only been a short time before one of them would mention me and the argument kicked off again.

I’m happy for Sarah, they have a lot to catch up on.
They were always close, I don’t think I even realised just HOW close before.

Knowing all that doesn’t make my problem any better though..

“Stop it”
My eyes cut down to my hand, my nails were digging down sharp enough to make my wince.

It wouldn’t stop!
My hand keeps going, if I try to pin the hand flat my other one will pinch my arm until I moved it again.

I’ve finally got time to meditate and find out what the hell is wrong with my head but I can’t focus because my hands won’t STOP!

“I don’t need this!”

My hand didn’t listen.
I hissed in a breath when my thumb caught on a particularly sore spot I’d managed to dig into my palm over the last half hour.

“Stop it”
I focused hard on my hand.
My fingers twitched but after a moment they continued digging in with my nails.

“STOP. IT!”
My hand spasmed hard and finally went limp.
For some reason my breathing was coming out a bit harshly.

“I’ve seriously got a problem..”

After a careful pause to make sure neither of my hands were going to start up on their mission to harm me again I let out a sigh of relief and closed my eyes.

Finally I can meditate in peace!
I wasted thirty minutes of perfectly good meditation time with my unreasonable emotions and uncooperative hands.

My legs pulled up into meditation pose slowly.

It still feels weird to have shorter but more flexible legs, not to mention the weirdly shaped hips and less ‘obstructed’ crotch area.
Meditation is going to be overall easier on my joints now at least but it still throws me off a little with the weirdness.

“In.. and out.. from the core find the lines, feed them and follow them to the mindscape..”
I’ve not had to vocalise the steps since the third day Edith spent teaching me how to do this but anything to help keep my focus at the moment is helpful.

It’s an odd feeling to describe, the magic flowing up from my core.
The lines..
It’s another of those things that’s easy to feel but hard to explain.

My core feels like a giant bubble somewhere near my heart.
If I give it a prod, not literally but metaphysically.. well kind of..

I said it was hard to explain!

Basically if I prod my core it tends to ripple, if I prod it hard enough a tendril of power will follow the ‘prod’ on whichever lines I lead it.
Your whole body is like a giant maze of power channels for magic, if you’re a mage.
They are commonly called ‘The Lines’ by most people.

By sending core magic along a certain set of lines you can get a certain outcome.
That’s called ‘internalised magic’.
For most people it tends to usually only be possible with the simple stuff.
The stuff you know well enough to skip some steps with so you can avoid having to vocalise the incantation, the use of hand gestures or having to dance out minor spell components in rituals.

Technically you could make any spell into purely internalised magic, with practice, but the difficulty ramps up the more steps you introduce.
You have to split your concentration with every line you use.
Maintaining more than three separate lines at once is just about the limit for most people.

My limit is usually about twelve lines.
My initial, messed up, awakening was useful for teaching me to multitask if nothing else..

Currently I wouldn’t trust myself to cast anything with more than four lines without adding vocalisation and stupid hand waving.

My bodies acting weird, mostly it’s my magic’s fault.

Normally, for a normal mage, your body in general is devoid of active magic.
The magic stays in the core and will only enter the lines if you pull it toward them.
That makes ‘seeing’ what you’re doing a lot easier.

At the moment I have so much magic in my body!.. too much..

EVERY line I can see is full to bursting.
I can’t even track the line I’m tracing from my core to my brain with my inner-eye!
I’m basically casting this meditation ritual blind, using a kind of magical muscle memory as a map.

The lines can be visualised in different ways, it’s all subjective and symbolic, like most magic sadly.
For me, I see them as little golden channels.
Honestly, they look like a very complicated computer circuit to my inner-eye, if I focus enough.

There’s probably a reason for that, I’ve never looked into the implications of what you see when you ‘look’ at your lines.

All I know is that, normally, my lines are a dull coppery gold with little to no activity on them until I start casting something.
Today..
Today, while I’m using my inner-eye to watch them in real-time, my lines are singing with power!
Every line as far as my inner-eye can see is a sparkling metallic gold, the kind of gold you see with polished high-end jewellery.

Arcing out between the lines in neon greenish-purple sparks of electric-like power is wild magic.
It’s kind of beautiful.. and terrifying.

Have you ever seen neon greenish-purple as a color?
Of course not, it’s not a thing that exists.. outside of wild magic.

It hurts your eyes to see it, most non-mages can’t see active wild magic but it still strains their eyes to look at it.
The fact that so much wild magic is INSIDE ME is what makes it terrifying!

My eyes have never been great with magic.
I don’t know why, but the lines to my eyes are some of the weakest ones within my body.
It takes a lot of fine control and a long, slow build-up before I can activate any form of vision spell.

My inner-eye is more of a mental exercise and symbolic vision, like the way my brain processes the complex spell matrix and mental interactions of my mind as the big white space that represents my mindscape.
..It’s bad that my inner-eye is hurting a little from looking at the wild magic sparking across my lines..
..It’s very bad..

There’s something REALLY wrong with me.
It’s like I’m full to bursting with magic and I have no way to vent it!
On TOP of that I’m having all these mental issues too..

The sooner I can reach my mindscape the better.

I’ve lost trace of the line again but there’s definitely a left-turn coming up.
With a mental push I managed to shove the lines power on track again.. I think..
.. This might take a while..

======

“Finally..”
The glare of my mindscapes endless white abyss never looked more inviting.

I have no idea how long it took me to get here through all the background magic.

I lost the line so many times and had to start over each time.
When this is all sorted out I’m GOING to memorise the EXACT route here, instead of just the directions.
That was-

“What the hell?”
My eyes finally cleared enough from the white rooms glare for me to see my surroundings clearly.
“You’ve got to be KIDDING me..”

From her little camping tent to my left a girl in early twentieth century clothing with Arista’s face and general dimensions shot me an annoyed look.
She gave off a huff, put her book down and walked over to me.

Her face didn’t look inviting.
From a small lectern in front of me she picked up a clipboard and started scribbling on it.

“Name, year of death, any important information or prejudices and any enemies who may become a reoccurring problem in the future?”
My mouth dropped open and I gaped at her.

She huffed again and waved a hand in my face.
“Hey, newbie! I’ve not got all day ya know.”

It struck me as weird that she was talking in such a modern manner, considering how she was dressed.
She sounded a lot like me honestly..

“HEY!”
I flinched and swung my eyes around in awe.

My mindscape.. my nice, clean, empty mindscape..

“What the HELL is going on here?!”

The Arista-lookalike, grimaced and turned away from me.
As bad as the implications could be, she’s most likely a past-incarnation who’s not under Inner-Hannah’s control somehow?
This can’t be good!

She shoved her fingers in her mouth and let out a loud whistle that hurt my ears slightly.
“WE GOT AN IGNORANT!”

From the virtual Shanty town of mixed housing and clutter in front of us there was a collective groan.
Slowly one girl made her way out from the mess of clones around her and huffed loudly.

“I didn’t let anyone else out, she can’t be a-”
Her eyes made contact with mine and she froze stiff.
“…crap”

I squinted at her hard.
Her clothes had changed again, she was in some fancy deep purple robes now.
Her voice wasn’t what I’d expected either.
When I talked to her before she’d used twin speak which is mostly hand-gestures, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, but for a part of my own mind she didn’t talk much like me..

“Inner-Hannah”
She winced and rubbed the back of her head nervously.

“Boss..”
If anything, calling me that seemed to make her even more nervous.
From all around us curious heads were sticking out of little huts and houses or temporary tents.
Slowly a crowd of near identical faces came over to form a rough circle around us.

Some of the girls didn’t look very.. stable?..
One girl to my right was twitching every few seconds.

A girl to my left seemed to be absolutely devoid of confidence, despite being a clone of everyone around her she seemed so tiny and vulnerable in comparison.

Slightly to her right was another girl.
She looked kind of normal, if you ignored the almost bikini like loincloth she was wearing.. and all the little marks and bruises across her arms and legs.
My eyes focused in on her for a second.
She flinched, her lower lip started to tremble and her hands scrunched up into tight, painful looking, fists with her nails digging into her palm..

..son of a-

I swung my angry eyes back around to face Inner-Hannah.
She at least had the decency to look apologetic.

“WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE!”

A few of the girls in the circle backed away from me looking frightened.
At least two of them started muttering under their breaths sadly, as if blaming themselves for my anger.

One of them, the one right behind Inner-Hannah, looked familiar.
When my angry eyes settled on her she didn’t flinch back like the others.
If anything she stepped forward, her chin raising in challenge and her eyes daring me to call her on it.
“Anise..”
The French one!

My eyes shot around the crowd in worry.
Most of the girls blended in to the mass of people there but a few stuck out.

To my right, trying to casually leave the area before I could notice her was Lady Arista Montrose.
The Scottish one!
She’s not under control!

That must be why I had all that stupidity with the tartan skirts earlier!
She must have been projecting and influencing me..
They all must be..

“Inner-Hannah.. what the HELL have you DONE?..”
She flinched and her shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Sorry..”
It came out as barely a whisper.
If this wasn’t MY mindscape I probably wouldn’t have heard it.
Before I could really rip into her for failing so badly at the thing she was CREATED for, there was a giggle from right behind me.

The collective ring of girls took in a single, sharp breath of worry.
All of them.. except the giggler.. she just let out another giggle.

Mechanically I turned to face her, part of me already knew who it would be but I dreaded the very idea of it.

My eyes settled on her.
Her Chiton, an almost toga-like draped dress made of dyed indigo wool, was loose to a point of almost being obscene.
Her face was the same as everyone else around me, but slightly twisted with too wide dreamy eyes and a childish smirk on her face.
Her hair was pulled back, held tightly in place by a crown of sorts.
She giggled again and gave me a slow finger wave of acknowledgement.

I spun on my heels and glared at Inner-Hannah.
Sparks of magic flew between my fingers.
Ignoring the fact that such a thing should be impossible in my mindscape, it also did a very good job of conveying just how ANGRY I was.

“YOU LET THEODORA OUT!”

The crowd of past-incarnations around us scattered quickly to hide in their makeshift homes.
Theodora wandered off casually with her eyes trailing along the blank white ceiling, as if she could see something no one else could up there, I could hear her giggles taper off as she moved further away.

In mere moments it was just me and Inner-Hannah left standing next to the wooden lectern the girl from earlier got her clipboard from.

“I’m sorry..”
My anger cooled slightly at the heart-broken tone of her voice.
“I’m really sorry.. I tried.. I really really tried!”
She looked like she was moments away from breaking into tears.
“There’s too many of them! I tried to keep them all calm but some of them..”

She shook her head and cupped it in her hands as if her head hurt suddenly.

“Some of them are so dominant, they pushed the others around..”
Her face tightened and she shot me pained glare.
“I had to do SOMETHING! They were tearing each other apart, they were tearing ME apart!”
Her breaths were coming in pants and her hands fisted tightly to the side of her head.
“I didn’t have any other choice, I had to get the victims out.”

She moved an arm away from her head reluctantly and swung it out to show who she was talking about.
“A band of strong Arista’s have been terrorising the weaker ones and the only way I could think to stop them was to let the weaker ones out”
Her legs collapsed from underneath her and she sunk to her knees.
“..I’m sorry..”

I stood speechless for a moment.

I hadn’t expected so much emotion from her.
I hadn’t expected the reason she’d done this to be so.. I thought she was just being lazy!
I hadn’t thought I..
I hadn’t..
I..

Slowly I knelt down and gathered her up in my arms.
She was crying, a detached part of me could see how weird it was for me to be comforting a part of myself inside my own mind while she cried.
She needed the release though.

It’s my fault.
I sectioned off those past-incarnations to help me handle all the conflicting minds that are stuck in my head and expected a PART of my mind to be able to handle it.. when the WHOLE of my mind hadn’t been able to handle it in the first place!

“Inner-.. do you have a name?”
She stiffened in my arms and looked up at me with red rimmed eyes.

“Hannah, my names Hannah, Sarah named me.”

She seemed to sulk a little when I flinched at her reasoning.
It’s kind of hard to argue.
Technically she’s my feminine side, she got the name first.

“The others.. they call me Yaoel.. Ellie, sometimes I guess..”
My heart warmed a little at that.
I’m not that religious, mum and dad never forced us to go to church or anything so we didn’t learn much about the bible and even if we had, I’m a mage, the bibles not big on witchcraft.
I have the memories of many different women in my head though..

A lot of them come from pre-christian history.
A lot of them were from other faiths entirely in their lifetimes, but the ones that weren’t..
..Especially the ones I can now feel my deeper connection to, the ‘victims’ that are huddled all around me at this very moment..
They named her ‘Yaoel’, the French version of the English ‘Jehoel’ or the original Hebrew ‘Yahoel’.
It’s the name of an angel.
An angel charged by god with restraining the great monster Leviathan and defeating the followers of false idols.

..It works..
I should probably be worried about the implications involved but the name fits her task.
To hold back the tide of life experience I can’t and, through her own choice, save the weak from Arista’s followers inside her own head..

“Ellie..”
She smiled at me weakly, as if she was unsure how I would take the name.
“I always liked the name Ellie.. its cute.. fits you..”
Her smile brightened and she hugged me a little tighter.

I may not be a psychiatrist but there’s something to be said about self-diagnosis in this case.
My emotional problems, my lack of control, my stray thoughts, my overwhelming tide of fear and self-loathing.. this is why it happened.

If I scan my eyes around the area I can see little signs, little hints of things that have been effecting me.
Inner-.. Ellie’s obvious depression at ‘failing’ her job probably didn’t help.

All of the girls around me are setting up roots in my mindscape, making themselves comfortable in a way none of the incarnations could even attempt to do after my first awakening.

They are all affecting me in some way, and they are all damaged in some way..
Now that I know they’re here I can feel it.
Just like after my first awakening.
Only less painful, vocal or pressurised.

There can’t be more than thirty of them here, fifty at worst.
That’s only a drop in the ocean compared to what I had to handle before Inner-Hannah took the reins!

They’re not fighting me for control either.
There are moments when they will obviously, like with the Scottish one and the skirts, times when their opinions are so drastically different from mine and their strong emotions project on to me.

The big difference is that I know it can happen now, and I know WHY it can happen.
I can use that knowledge to keep calm.
To not let it all boil over into the perfect storm of emotions I reached in the car earlier..
..Where everything becomes negative and it’s all my fault..

My lips pulled back into a little smile.
She’d not done what I expected of her, but given the circumstances she did good..
I leaned forward and gave the newly-dubbed ‘Ellie’ a kiss on the forehead.

“I’m glad you saved them”
She looked up at me with wide happy eyes and nodded without words.
She didn’t need them, even if she wasn’t so choked up with tears.

The other girls, the victims that had moved into my mindscape for protection, they started carefully coming out of their temporary housing to see if the expected emotional explosion had been avoided.
I offered them a smile which seemed to calm them down a lot.

“Do you have a meeting hall or something? I need to get to know them all I guess”

Inner-.. Ellie.. That’s going to take some getting used to..
Ellie smiled at me and nodded.

With surprisingly quick movements she was standing up and dragged me by the hand through the mess of tents and mini-houses to a wide open clearing of stark white floor.
Apparently this is their meeting place.

Over the course of the next half hour the girls started coming over to see me, hesitantly at first, but as word spread that I wasn’t going to yell at them they became emboldened to some degree.

======

I smiled politely as Ellie introduced a sun-tanned past-incarnation wearing a ragged dark black robe and cowled hood.
Her name was apparently ‘Allison of York’.

According to Ellie she was a Carmelite nun stationed at the Cathedral of York Minster, England during the late fourteen-hundreds.

So far, she’s my bet for being the source of my sudden bible knowledge.
Possibly even the source of Ellie’s new name too.

No given prejudices aside from ‘The Heathens’ and no enemies who may become a problem in the future.
She seemed slightly in awe of me as I shook her hand and she scuttled away quickly to her own house, which stood out a little from the rest by its tall spire and detailed glass window.

I shared a small smile with Ellie.
She understood the feeling of contentment and closure I was getting from finally gaining a direct insight into some of the voices sharing my head-space, memories are one thing but talking to them feels a lot more personal.

Before we could speak another girl cautiously moved forward and bobbed an awkward curtsy with her burlap dress.
Behind her there was a slight queue forming.

Considering how long it’s taken for me to meet just the few brave ones so far, this could take a while..

======

“How many more do we have to go?”
Ellie looked down at her clipboard and ticked the latest name ‘Avita of the Vaccai’ from her list with a slight frowned.
Eventually she cringed and shot me an apologetic look.

I struggled to hide my smirk.
We’d bonded a little more while working our way through the ‘victims’.
I could tell that she thought I wouldn’t like whatever she had to report.

Her facial expressions remind me a lot of Sarah’s ones honestly.

That probably says something about me and where I get my idea of femininity from.
She IS my feminine side given form after all, or at least she started as that.
I’m not so sure now.
The fact that she can think her own thoughts independent of me and we’ve been mentally two separate parts of the same mind for SO long makes me wonder..

“It can’t be THAT bad?”
Her face set itself into the same ‘you poor ignorant fool’ look Sarah used to give me if I tried to hang-out with her and her friends in school.
She slowly moved the clipboard over for me to read.

It took me a moment to comprehend just how many names were on that first sheet alone.
Have we really been meeting-and-greeting so many incarnations?
On the top of the very first page were three unchecked names.

I groaned while reading each one.
I don’t know what her sorting system in this list was but I would understand if she’d sorted it by ‘most likely to be a pain in the ass’ after looking at the first page and the missing incarnations.

Ellie turned to a girl nearby.
Megan, a Welsh incarnation, relatively modern compared to the rest.
She’d looked me in the eye when we talked earlier and her posture gave off the feeling that she was usually pretty self-assured.

“Round up some of the braver girls. I need you to bring Anise, Lady M and..”
Ellie paused to look at me pleadingly.

I didn’t want to face it anymore then she did but if I don’t handle all of this now I just KNOW it will come back to bite me on the ass at the worst possible time.
My nod made her shoulders droop a little but she tried to put on a brave face for Megan.

“..and Theodora..”

Megan cringed a little.
After taking a deep breath she nodded and made her way into the shanty town that had sprung up around my mindscape.

“Is this really a good idea?”

This time I cringed.
No it probably wasn’t..
If nothing else, it will probably leave me with a headache.
I never thought I’d see the day when the bitchy French aristocrat Anise would be my favourite incarnation from ANY list.
At least I know what she’s like!

Lady Arista Montrose had, until recently, been a face in the mass of identical faces pressing down on my mind.
Pretty much a non-entity for me, harsh as that sounds.

Her actions with the tartan skirts though.. that changes things..
I need to know how she did it.
I need to know WHY she did it.
Most importantly, I need to either have her word to never do that to me again or find some way to stop her next time!

In comparison, Theodora is both the worst incarnation I could ever have to face and yet probably my easiest to handle.
She tends to live in her own world.
The conversation will hopefully be brief at least.

I can’t stay in my own mind forever, mums bound to come and check on me eventually.
Can you imagine the mess that will kick off if she tries to wake me up and I’m still in here?

======

Ellie stood beside me, her fingers tapping on her clipboard in impatience.
It’s been roughly ten minutes and we’ve not heard much activity from the mental shanty town around us.

A thought occurred to me, while I rocked on my heels and stared out at the strange mix of housing styles around us.
Why are the troublesome three even here?

Ellie said she let out the ‘victims’, the incarnations that were being terrorised by the original Arista and her group of followers.
The reason I know so much about those three in particular is a mix of their strong personalities and their power.
Not typically what you would consider ‘victim’ material.

“Why are those three here?”
Ellie looked confused for a moment until her face dropped into a frown when she realised what I meant.

“Arista, the original Arista, she has it out for them in particular. That’s what started all of this off.”
She winced and rubbed her free hand against her head a little.
“Theodora made a prediction. ‘The works of the daughter will dwarf that of the mother’ something like that, I dunno, she barely makes sense when she’s lucid let alone when she’s doing her mystic from Delphi impersonation..”

I frowned at her.
“You don’t believe in it?”

She shot me a confused look.
“You do?”
I shrugged and considered the idea for a moment.

I don’t really believe in the mystic stuff.

Yeah, I’m a mage, I get that the idea of me not believing in something when I can literally do magic is a bit weird but everyone has their limits.
Fena believes in that kinda thing though.

She tried to show me how to use different mediums to get limited future-sight but it was a complete failure.
I understood the theory but I never managed to get anything out of it all.

Edith said I don’t have what it takes to be a mystic.
Well.. no.. what she actually said was more along the lines of:
‘Ya be full girl, be havin’ the touch f’sure. No stomach to ya! Ya ain’ be havin’ the ‘art till ya have th’a stomach! Bad Juju be cloudin’ ya eye. Come, we be workin’ ya lines t’day’

I mentally translated that as her saying that I’m not mystic material.
Reluctantly Fena agreed with me when I brought it up later.

Personal feelings aside, Fena IS pretty good at future-sight.
There must be SOMETHING to it all.
That doesn’t mean I have to like the idea of it.
Being able to predict the future falls a bit too close to ‘destiny’ and ‘unchangeable fate’ territory for my liking.
Fena tried to tell me it wasn’t like that but she struggled to explain why it wasn’t.

Magic DOES tend to be like that at times.
If you can’t feel it personally then words just aren’t enough to explain it properly.

=======

My eyes batted a few times and I focused back on Ellie.
She looked a bit offended.

“Did you just blank me?”
I frowned and waved my hand for her to explain.

“You did that whole ‘getting lost in thoughts’ thing you keep doing in the real world”

Oh.. well that’s not good..

“Something’s seriously wrong with you, don’t think I didn’t notice the magic flashing through your fingers in here earlier, that’s not normal either..”
I sighed and slumped my shoulders a little.

“I know, there’s so much going wrong at the moment I’m having trouble keeping track of it all honestly.”

Ellie gave me an awkward, apologetic look and wrapped me in a loose hug.
She definitely reminds me of Sarah sometimes.
I feel a bit warm and happy knowing that my subconscious made Sarah into my feminine role-model.

She can frustrate me so much at times, but she’s my sister, she’s GOING to do that.
Just because she can be annoying doesn’t mean I can’t see that she’s a good girl..
..Well, a good girl in the sense that she’s good at being one at least..

I’m pretty sure she would laugh at me if I called her a ‘good girl’ to her face, she spent most of her teen years trying to break out of that ‘all-american nice girl’ mold.

“You’re doing it again!”
Ellie squeezed me a little tighter and gave me Sarah’s award winning pout.
“Seriously, you need to go see a shrink. What if this is infectious? I don’t WANT to spend the rest of MY life spacing out every five minutes!”

I leaned away from her a little and stared aghast.
“You’re ME. If there’s something wrong with me, it’s wrong with you too already!”

She held her worried pout for a few more seconds before dissolving into giggles.

“I know, I know, that doesn’t mean I’m not right though.”
I shrugged a little and we broke our hug with a smile.

“You don’t need to worry too much about a shrink, if the storyteller guy has anything to do with it then I’m gonna be in therapy pretty soon.. as much help as THAT’s gonna be.”
She looked momentarily confused but after a second to focus she got my memory of him and nodded in understanding with a mild wince.

The storyteller guy was such an ASS!
If I’m actually put into therapy by the Hub then my mouth is staying sealed shut now.
What’s the point of having someone to talk to about anything if they are reporting to your enemy?!

I opened my mouth to ask if Ellie had any ideas from her ‘tenants’ about things I could do if the situation does end up going that far with the shrink but shut it without a word passing my lips when a commotion started approaching us from the left.

We both shared a nervous look and turned to face the noise.

A mass of clone-like girls came towards us, visible like a wave through the houses.
Above them, struggling hard and spouting off a lot of rather offensive words in French was another Arista-lookalike.

I let out a breath of relief when her yells increased and they came nearer.
At least it’s not Theodora..

======

She glared at me.
I glared back.
We both seemed perfectly happy with keeping the conversation at that level.

She was the one to finally crack.
Her mouth pulled into a tight lipped smile and she flipped her hair arrogantly.

“You are st’eel ze awkward sissy-boy non?”
My glare went up a level or two.
She smirked a little in victory.

“Still the self-entitled shrew whose father couldn’t even bribe the blacksmiths son to marry her?”
Her smirk slipped and she went back to glaring at me.
Score one for me.

It helps that I have an inside track on her life while she just has what she’s seen of me since my awakening to work from.
If I REALLY wanted to go for the throat, I’d bring up the fact that the foppish man she fell head over heels for in her teens turned out to not only be secretly gay but also considered her ‘a creepy stalker who couldn’t take the hint that she was beneath him both socially, mentally and physically’..
..yeah.. French people can be brutal..

“Can you two try talking instead of lashing out at each other, for once?”
I shot Ellie a hurt look but she wasn’t buying it.

“She started it..”
Ellie glared at me.
Even I could tell it was a childish defence but she DID start it.
I’M the nice one here!

“Why should I listen to ‘im? ’e is not a lady worthy of us. ‘e pollutes our noble line, c’est tres tragique!”
She sniffed and stuck her nose up at me.

…bitch..

“Bitch”
Her eyes flashed.
“Fils de bast!”
My eyes tightened.
“Whore!”
She smirked.
“Fil a putain!”

..you little..
No-one insults my mum like that!

“At least my father didn’t constantly wish he’d drowned me at birth!”
She jolted away from me as if I’d hit her.
Slowly tears came to her eyes and she took in a gasping breath of pain.

Maybe I went too far?

She just sets me off!
Looking around, at the crowd of other incarnations around us, they all looked a bit smug.
She hadn’t made many friends in here with her attitude.

It took me a moment to realise I wasn’t sorry for that, I felt smug too.
..why do I feel smug?

I shouldn’t feel smug for hurting someone.. that’s not me..

Anise growled low in her throat and surged towards me.
A few of the others managed to get a hold on her before she reached me but she smirked through streaming eyes.

“Yours did not wish you dead but ‘e DID run from you, you freakish un-loveable monster!”
My face turned red with anger.
Around me many of the girls had similar looks of rage on their faces.

This is why you shouldn’t fight with yourself, you know JUST how to hurt yourself the most!

My rage took a dark turn.
I wanted to hurt her.
I wanted her to fear me.
I wanted.. I.. wanted..

I DON’T!
Why am I..

DAMN IT!
I cut my eyes around at the near mob of identical looking girls around me.

They all had similar looks on their faces.
She’d insulted me, and in turn insulted them.
THEY wanted to hurt her.
THEY wanted her to fear them.
They..

“EVERYONE STOP!”

Every incarnation in my mindscape came to a standstill.
My hands came up and I pressed hard into the side of my head.
The pressure helped me focus.

This wasn’t me.
This isn’t me.
I don’t treat people like this!
..no matter how much they are asking for it..

“I get that you’re all angry with her but we have to stop!”

Anise stared at me with her mouth open in shock.
Ellie looked relieved for some reason.
Everyone else watched me with obvious confusion.

“Let her go..”
The girls holding Anise reluctantly shared a look and stepped away from her slowly.

She sunk to her knees but didn’t move her awed eyes from mine.

“This.. this collective anger is messing with my head!.. We can’t fight like this!”
A few faces sunk in realisation but a lot of the mob didn’t seem to understand.
“Your here because you had to flee from Arista.. I’m NOT Arista!.. and neither are you..”
A few more faces sunk.
Comparing them to their most recent bully worked better than just stating facts.

“You come here and make yourselves at home in my head.. of course that has consequences..”
Ellie hugged herself a little and gave me a look of pity.

“You’re all a part of me now, YOU decided that when YOU started building this”
My hand waved out at the shanty town they had built.
“What I feel, you feel.. and what you feel, I feel..”

THERE’S the realisation moment I’d been looking for.
With a single gasp of breath all the incarnations realised just how bad our situation could be.

“I’m out of control lately but I’ve just realised why..”

My legs felt stiff, with a bit of force I managed my first step forward.
“.. I’m not just me anymore.. WE are US.”
I waved my arms wide to them and took another step.

“This isn’t like last time, you’re not all parts of Arista taking up space in my head.”
My pace stalled a little but I managed the next step anyway.
“You’re in my head without her.. you’re mine now.. and I’m yours.”

Another step, I was close.

“We can’t fight.. if we fight we will tear each other apart!.. I can’t do this alone..”
One last step and I was within reach of Anise.

“You can dislike each other, you can disagree with my actions.. but if you have a problem we have to DISCUSS it.. you can’t just push your thoughts and feelings on to me.. if you all give me so many mixed inputs at once I might do something we will all regret.”

Anise looked up at me.
She seemed a bit ashamed of herself.
I gave her a tentative smile and opened my arms in invitation.
She hesitated for a heartbeat but eventually she pushed herself up and hugged me back.

I could feel a swell of sappy, happy feelings in my chest.
Judging from the faces I could see, while some of the feelings may actually be mine, most of feelings are probably coming from the other incarnations.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that the way we had gone from fighting to hugging seemed in some way ‘cute’.

My eyes caught on Ellie.
She looked proud but also a bit smug.
If anyone’s the source of the ‘cute’ thought it would be her.
I know it probably counts as an insult to myself, but there’s something not right in her head..

Anise coughed awkwardly to get my attention.
“You can let go now..”
I smirked and hugged her a little tighter for a second before dropping the hug.
She shot me an annoyed look but there was no actual heat in it.

One of the girls from the crowd, Josette I think, she stepped forward to get everyone’s attention.
“How are we going to make this work?”

I sighed and let my shoulders slump a little.
They were all looking to me for guidance now.

Why did I have to open my big mouth and make a speech?..

“Okay..”
What could work?
What would be fair without getting in the way?
I could..
..we could..
..yeah..

“Okay, how about this.. set up a council of representatives, six girls at most.”
That idea got me some confused looks, it took me a moment to realise some of these girls were born before democracy was invented.
“Ellie will be the leader with the tie-breaking vote. Anything that isn’t life or death can be settled by the council, I’ll make an effort to meditate when I can so Ellie can keep me up to date and we can avoid any big blow up’s like we’ve had recently.”
Most of the girls around me nodded in understanding.

“It won’t be perfect. I’ll warn you now that this is MY life, I’m keeping the choice to veto over you if I feel strongly enough on something, but I promise to not abuse that option.”
A few more nodded in acceptance.
“Anyone who tries to go around the council will have to be punished in some way..”

Before I could voice anything else on that front someone pushed her way from out of the crowd and knelt at my feet, her long court dress spread out around her as she bowed her head.
“I wish to offer my deepest regrets for having abused your trust in such a disgraceful manner”

I smiled a little in bemusement but lifted her chin to look at her properly.
Lady Arista Montrose wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“You don’t have to apologise. I can understand your aversion to the Queen’s colors.”
She didn’t seem reassured by my words.
If anything, she looked worse now.

“You have shown yourself to be a wise and just ruler. I humbly request leniency in your punishment.”

I frowned at her slightly.
I only came up with this whole council thing a minute ago, she can’t seriously think I would punish her for something she couldn’t have known she was doing at the time, can she?

Before I could open my mouth to dismiss her demand out of hand Ellie coughed hard.
My eyes cut to her and she shared a meaningful look with me.
Her hand carefully twitched in a pattern I didn’t instantly recognise.
It was twin-speak, obviously, but not the normal short phrases.
She was spelling out a sentence.
‘..Don’t.. say.. it.. they.. need.. you.. to.. show.. your.. power.. or.. else..’

Oh..
…OHHHhh…
Uh.. okay.. I guess?

I hadn’t really thought properly about this whole punishment thing.
It was more of an idle threat.
Ellie’s right, I need to give them proof that I can back up my words.

What the hell kind of punishment could I give her for making me change some skirts because she didn’t like the color?..

It’s not exactly a deep, truly evil, crime!
I mean, yeah, it was awkward and frustrating.. and it’s probably stuck me with a stupid school uniform-

My mouth pulled into a sharp smirk.

A few of the girls shifted uncomfortably.
Lady Montrose cringed in expectation.

Playing the role she put me into for all it was worth I straightened my back regally and rose my hand to slowly place it on her forehead.

“Lady Arista Montrose, you are found guilty of violating the Pact of Hannah, set forth to bring peace to our broken mind”
The whole mindscape had gone deathly silent.
Everyone was hanging on my every word.
“As punishment, I decree that from this day forth, you shall wear the uniform you have bestowed upon me with your careless actions.”

With a forceful shove of magic into my mindscape I took the image of her, current very regal looking medieval gown, and shifted it.
It took a lot of control to hold back the urge to smile when I was finished.

She gaped at me in stunned shock.
From her black mary jane shoes to her pleated blue/green tartan skirt, her puffy white blouse with a cream colored sweater-vest topped off by a matching tartan neck-bow she looked so adorably confused.

I’m not sure where the extra items came from.

The more I look at her the more I’m convinced she’s wearing more of a stereotypical ‘schoolgirl’ outfit then even I intended to give her.
Her hair is tied back in a loose ponytail now with a tartan scrunchie!
..I definitely didn’t think of that one..

It hurts to say that I like the way the sweater-vest looks..
I might have to see if I can get one if I don’t manage to dodge out of mum’s school uniform idea.

The neck-bow is a bit too much cuteness though.
Even I have my limits.

Lady Montrose looked down at herself and let out an indignant squeak that sounded a lot like the one I made in the parking lot earlier.
In one motion she went from gaping at her bare thighs to slamming her hands down to try and tug the, technically, knee-length skirt low enough that it could meet her knee-high socks.

The crowd around us broke out into chaos.
I’d forgotten in my amusement that the past-incarnations around me were just that, PAST-incarnations.
A skirt that ended at the knee offended a fair few of them much more then I’d anticipated!
At least the romans looked amused.

“QUIET!”
They all fell still and watched me cautiously.
I rose my hands in a sign of peace and tried to come up with some form of damage control before they all start panicking about indecency again.

From the back of the crowd one girl started giggling.
It wasn’t a pleasant giggle.
It came out broken and just a little detached as if she didn’t really understand why she was laughing.

I wasn’t the only one who cringed.
“Theodora”

The girls parted out of her way and brought her into view.
The shoulders of her Chiton dress have slid down a bit further on either side since I last saw her.
It’s kind of lucky that we all have the same body shape as the original Arista, if her boobs were a little bigger she would be just plain flaunting herself at this point.

She stopped giggling at last and with a slight skip in her step she invaded my personal space.
Carelessly she flipped Lady M’s new ponytail with her hand and snorted in amusement.

She fixed her wide dreamy eyes on me and snapped herself into a cadet worthy salute with clicking heels and everything.
“Boss..”
She sounded amused at calling me that title.

I watched her for a moment and decided to just run with my instincts, it’s worked out pretty well since I came in here at least.
“Dora..”

Her face lit up in joy.

“You’re fun! Much better then Mother Arista.”
She stepped even closer to me and ended up leaning her full body weight onto me.

Her cheek rubbed happily against mine and she almost purred for some reason.

For a moment I froze in surprise.
Sarah used to use that same affectionate type of cheek rubbing when we were kids.
Back before the other kids made fun of her for it and she stopped.

When her cheek stroked against mine on a second pass Dora whispered in my ear.
“I can see why she fears you”
I blinked a few times to process that and ended up flinching away from her.

It stunned me a little that she actually took the hint and leaned away.
Seemingly without a care, she rolled her whole body away from me and lazily stalked out in a wide circle to catch the eye of all the girls around us.
I tracked her path and felt a bit put off that I recognised her walk.

I recognise most of her mannerisms actually.

She has Sarah’s strut, her arms flutter in the same way I’d been taught to do when I wanted attention fixed on me and every once in a while she would pause for a moment in a perfect ‘sexy pose’ that I could do with my eyes closed.
Sarah taught me a LOT of those poses when I had to do her modelling shoot for her.

She reached nearly the half way mark in her circle parade around me and she suddenly stopped.
Her arms went limp at her side, her legs stumbled a little and she stared off into thin air with a blank look.

My stomach rumbled.
I tried to ignore it but it progressed to a gut deep feeling that something was vaguely wrong.
Just when I was really starting to worry it eased off.

With a deep gasp of air Theodora surged back to the ‘real world’ and almost fell forward in relief.
Her eyes seemed less glazed now.
She shakily pushed herself back to her feet properly and locked eyes on me.

I froze under her intense gaze.
She worked her way over to me, some people went to protest but she waved them off carelessly.
It looked like she wanted to cry.

Slowly she cupped my head in her hand, pulling it to her chest.
Her mouth settled over my ear and I shivered a little as her breath caressed it slightly.

“You are so young.”
Her lip brushed against my earlobe which elicited another uncomfortable shiver from me.
“..So very young.. young and naive.. and they will DESTROY you for it”

I tried to jerk away from her but she held my head tightly in place.

“Your Max, my John.. no, that’s not right.. MY Max.. Your John.. He will love you like no other, but do not trust him.. not even for a single moment should you trust him..”
My attempts to pull away from her became a bit more frantic.

I could feel a few pairs of hands coming around us to try and free me from her grasp.

“Your other half will hurt you, she will cause you more pain than you have ever experienced.. It’s Sarah’s right to do so, a heart of a heart”
Her free hand gently stroked my cheek and she sighed deeply.

“You won’t listen. You never listen..”
She squeezed my head slightly harder in her surprisingly strong arms.
“Someday little Alice, someday you will see just how far the rabbit hole goes and you will remember my words with such regret..”
Without a moment’s notice she tossed me away from her and let off a piercing giggle.

There were a few gasps and some of the girls joined me on the floor with assorted uncomfortable grunts.

By the time I’d gotten myself back together from the fall she was gone.
Some of the girls in the outer ring were looking off to my left but I couldn’t see Theodora from here and none of them seemed willing to go after her.

“Are you okay?”
I looked up at Ellie.
She had her arm out to offer me a hand up which I took gratefully.
She seemed nervous.

“What did she say?”

I frowned and hesitated for a moment.
She said a lot of things.
Arista fears me?.. why?..
Sarah is gonna hurt me?.. She’d never do that..

About the only part of it I can really agree with is Max.
Of course I’d never trust Max.
I’m not stupid!

“She was spouting off a lot of stuff. Not much of it made sense.”
Ellie’s eyes seemed unusually focused.
“Anything important?”
I shrugged helplessly to her.
It’s Theodora.
She’s insane.
Even if she believes she’s some kind of mystic you can’t do magic in your mindscape..
You especially can’t do magic in someone-else’s mindscape!

Fena didn’t do any of the weird stuff that Theodora just did when she used her future-sight.
Hell, Theodora didn’t even have some kind of focus medium!
..The whole thing’s suspicious..

“Nothing important really, she’s crazy”
Ellie let out a relieved sigh and smiled at me.
“You know if she’s crazy and she’s in here, then that must make you a bit crazy too right?”
I smiled back at her.
My nerves eased a bit at her laughing eyes.

“I think I’ll survive being one-fiftieth crazy. I’m a mage, we’re all a little bit not-normal.”
Ellie slung her arm around my shoulders and grinned.
“That’s assuming the rest of us aren’t crazy too, you must be a pretty awesome mage, we’re about as not-normal as you can get!”
We both laughed a little.

The girls around us seemed to be calming down from Theodora’s dramatics.
A few of them were already talking about it all, the general consensus seemed to be that she was crazy, that being the normal opinion with Theodora.

I just had to jinx it earlier by assuming she would be the easy one to handle didn’t I?

I smiled while some of the girls came over to talk with me and Ellie.
For some reason her predictions had shaken me a little still.
My gut instinct says she wasn’t lying, she could still be wrong but she seemed so certain about what she was saying..

“Do I really have to keep wearing this?”
I jolted a little from my thoughts and smirked at Lady M.
Her voice had lost a lot of her previous stiff and regal tone, if anything, the question almost seemed to be more of a whine than anything else.

If I look like she does in the ‘school uniform’ mum’s blatantly been trying to get me to wear for my ‘advanced tuition’ then I can kinda understand why mum would do it..

Even while she’s flustered and grumpy she still looks adorable in it!

“You’re the one who begged for punishment, I was gonna let you go with a warning”
Her jaw dropped and she flushed to the tips of her ears.
“Seriously?”
I barely held back a laugh.

She scrunched up her nose in annoyance.
The expression did nothing to make her look less adorable.

“These.. clothes.. are embarrassing. I’m an elder of-”
Before she could build up a head of steam with her titles Ellie cut in and slung her arm over her shoulders to hug her warmly.
“Welcome to the twenty-first century. The skirts are short, the food is fast and the morals are questionable”
She shot a look over at me and grinned.
“and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
I grinned back.

Scanning my eyes around the crowd of past-incarnations I couldn’t help but feel a bit warm and happy.

They were weird.
They were most likely going to get annoying eventually.
They were a work in progress.. but they are mine too.

Obviously they are having an effect on me, that’s to be expected with awakenings.
They AREN’T trying to take over me though, that’s important.

One of the biggest reasons I fought so hard against my first awakening and tried every trick in the book to keep myself completely separate from it all when possible was the fear that Arista would just come in and take over.
That I wouldn’t be ME anymore.

These girls though..
I can see so much of ‘me’ in them.. and so much of them in me.
Little things.
Little but important things.

To my right a group of four girls in similar roman style clothing were huddled up chatting.

The roman girls have long or awkward names in general, I struggled to remember them at first.
I know the one with her back to me goes by ‘Dexi’ these days.
For all of her bluster and self-assurance, I could see as she talked excitedly with the others that she waved her hands in the same way I do.
The girl to her left, ‘Lexi’, smiled my smile and flicked her hair in a way that I used to think was unique to me and Sarah.

These girls aren’t some invading force coming to take away who I am.
They are me.
A bit different at times sure, but still me.

The last few days of instability and confusion have been anything but fun.
I don’t think I would change them now though?

If I did, then I wouldn’t be standing here in my mindscape right now feeling so content.
I’m not worried anymore.

They know me as a person now and I know them as individuals too.
A lot of the fear on both sides has been mitigated by our simple introductions.

I know this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I know that without Ellie, without her hard work to keep the thousands upon thousands of other incarnations under control, I would have never had this chance to become comfortable with them at all..
My eyes drifted over to Ellie again.

Ellie suits her better then ‘Inner-Hannah’.
She’s still thinks of herself as Hannah but if she won’t hold it against us for calling her a different name, I won’t hold it against her for wanting to keep that name for her own.
It’s got sentimental value to her.

It should have, it does for me too.
Sarah gave us that name..

“Boss, ya got an opinion on this?”
My head jerked back to the girls talking with Ellie.
They all gave me the exact same smug, superior look.

Is that what I look like when I’m amused?.. I’ll have to work on that one.
It’s kinda annoying.

“Sorry I was-”
They all giggled and I could feel my cheeks flush a little.
It’s not fun to have yourselves laugh at yourself..

..awakenings really ARE bad for pronouns aren’t they?..

Ellie gave me a warm smile and waved the others to stop laughing.
“We get it, of all of us, you’re the one who has the best reason to space out once in a while.”

They all nodded, the other girls looking a bit solemn about it now.

The first girl to speak perked up again quickly and bounced excitedly on her heels.
“So what I was asking was, what you thought about the council makeup? How should we sort out a good representative for all the girls with such a small sample group?”

She stumped me on that one.

I have no idea.
How do they sort this thing out in modern councils?
I’ve never really gone too deep into politics, let alone how government works.

With the amount of time I’ve had to spend out of the country in the last few years, on missions, I’ve barely been able to keep track of who the president is honestly..

My mouth opened to tell her exactly that when my shoulder started wildly shaking without any input from me.
It stopped after a moment and I could just faintly hear someone’s voice calling me.

Ellie shot me an understanding look and waved me away with a hand flick that said she would handle things from here.
I let out a relieved sigh and nodded thanks to her.

With a mental push I broke my connection to my mindscape and came back to the real world.

======

The first thing I saw upon opening my eyes was mum.
She looked a little flustered but calmed down quickly when she saw me looking back at her.

“Oh thank god. I was really getting worried there, are you feeling okay? I tried to wake you up but you wouldn’t respond at first. If you hadn’t twitched and groaned when I shook you we’d be half-way to the hospital by now.”

I smiled at her awkwardly and shrugged.
I can’t lie to her about my feelings.
..stupid brand..

She wouldn’t accept ‘I’m fine’ as an answer anyway.
She never did from Sarah when we were kids.

“I’m a heavy sleeper, shopping really wore me out too.”
Mum looked at me a bit suspiciously.

“That must have been some kind of dream..”
My eyebrow popped up with an unasked question.
“You’re clammy and it looks like you’ve really hurt your hands in your sleep”

I followed her eyes down to my open palm with its deep, sore looking self-inflicted nail marks.
..damn it..

A general pat down of my shirt showed that I wasn’t just ‘clammy’.. I was wet.
My back especially.
.. stupid ice to water thing..

I only just managed to remember mum was watching me before I mentally sunk into trying to work out how to fix the stupid ice thing.
It’s REALLY getting on my nerves.
As casually as I could, I slipped my face into an awkward smile for mum.

“Yeah, it was a pretty bad nightmare”
She nodded and gave me a strained smile back.
“..Do you want to talk about it?”

NO! I don’t want to talk about it, it’s not actually a real thing!
Why did I ever want her to pay attention to me before?

She never would have been this observant with Alistor!

“It’s over now, I’m-”
My brand gave me a warning twitch.
“-I just want a shower, ya know? Being all sweaty is gross..”

Mum didn’t seem to pick up on my slight pause.
She nodded knowingly and waved me towards my new room’s en-suite bathroom instead.

“I was just going to go put the chicken in. It’s a lovely night out, do you fancy a chicken salad on the balcony?”
I smiled a little.

Mum used to make us chicken salads a lot in the summer as kids.
Dad said it was because she couldn’t be bothered to cook a lot in the heat but I think she just enjoyed eating fresh food on the balcony.
I liked it too back then, it’s been so long..

My lips pulled into a wider smile and I nodded happily.

Mum smiled back at me and ruffled my hair a little.
It felt really nice to have her do that.
She always did it to Sarah when we were kids but the only times she did it with me was when she thought I was Sarah.

My smile soured a little at that thought but luckily mum had already turned away from me to walk downstairs.
With a barely audible sigh I got out of bed and cast a quick drying spell on my bedding.
..stupid Ice-water thing..

“Yay, a shower.. Just what I need, an excuse to see myself naked..”
I frowned a little but quickly shook my head to clear the dark mood before it settled in properly.

I should be happy.
My head feels a lot clearer than it has in ages.
I can feel some contentment coming from inside me that is definitely not directly ‘mine’.
I can also feel a lot of contentment inside me that definitely IS mine as well.

Peace in my mindscape.
Mum’s happy with me.
Fresh salad on the balcony.
Sarah’s probably off somewhere having fun with Tor.

I should enjoy it while it lasts.
I have nothing to be unhappy about at the moment.

My eyes cut over to the bathroom.
My minds-eye flashed with an image of water dripping down my curvy new body, washing soap-suds over parts of me that have only recently become a lot more sensitive than they were before.

My cheeks flared a little in embarrassment with just a touch of something else.
.. It’s okay if I blame those thoughts on Theodora, right?..
She’s an insane pervert, she’d happily take the credit for them.

Maybe I do have some reasons to be a bit put-off about things still, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m ‘unhappy’ with things as they are.
Maybe it’s just the contented feelings that are making me feel all warm and fuzzy talking but..
Who cares?
I’ll just enjoy it for now.

Well.. once I get the shower out the way at least.

“Let’s just get it over with”
Despite my grumble, my cheeks refused to stop glowing.

This new body is going to take some getting used to.
It’s only been a few days, I’m amazed I’m handling it as well as I am so far.
..Let’s not kid ourselves..
The two-thousand years, plus or minus a few centuries, of experience with this exact body in the form of past-life memories that I have comfortably settled in my brain at the moment probably help a lot too.

“Stop stalling”
I nodded to myself forcefully and faced my newest enemy.
Today I shall defeat the great and evil shower monster, then celebrate with a salad!

.. I'm such a dork sometimes..