(Continues from Not the Tenerife Sea)

Midnight in the city
falling into ruins,
there lays a girl busy
weaving a spell to unpin
reality from its moorings.

Fiona writhed, twisting incantations and mashing together a hasty spell. She flung it, and its shiny net caught me before I fell. Before, I reconnected to the dying flesh reaching towards me. Before, I landed back where I belonged. Her spell flung me and my knife since we’re an item, towards a distant point winking in the darkness.

I slammed into a body, my own thankfully, and slid into a familiar fleshy sleeve. Taking a breath, my first since turning ghost, I savored it. My second breath sent me into a coughing fit. Something wound around my chest compressing each breath. I poked the metal cuirass unable to reach the binding cloth underneath. Was I wearing a corset?

Reality smacked me upside the head. I’d bound my breasts flat to hide them before donning my plate armor because I was a woman. No wonder my ghost bod had felt odd. It had been all wrong. Fiona had bought the lie I upheld with padding and a fake swagger. She’d thought I was a man and so when she’d shoehorned me into another reality, she’d dumped me into a man’s body.

Now my confusion over there made sense.

My eyes landed on Fiona, the author of my misery. She twisted, dancing with the wind. Shawls billowed around her.

Fiona’s ice-chip eyes met mine, but she wasn’t called Fiona here. No, she wore a far fouler name–Kaydara Ironwood, the worst kind of sorceress.

I removed my helm revealing my face. Sweat had dribbled away my make-up disguise. Her eyes widened, and her mouth formed a perfect O.

Yeah bitch, you messed with the wrong woman. But I was the mouse taunting a lioness.

“I am Tevara, Guardian of Shayari,” I shouted making my point. Though the crystal sword at my hip likely offered better proof of my claim than my dumb challenge.

 Find the earlier parts of this series here.

For the November Notes Writing Challenge hosted by  Sarah Doughty of Heartstring Eulogies and Rosema of A Reading Writer.

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