Page 87 of Ruled By Fate

Well, she hadn’t asked to change, had she? She was just fine the way she was. Maybe she liked her scar. Maybe she didn’t need some stupid magic necklace coming in and… and…

Healing your damage? Some inner voice chimed in gently. Giving you strength you didn’t know you had?

She cupped her hands and splashed some water into her face. Things might be fraught right now, but she was not getting into an argument with herself. There were lines, dammit. There were supposed to be lines.

She got out of the tub and toweled off, glaring at herself in the mirror. Her eyes widened as she did a double take.

Are those abs?

She twisted around in the mirror, and there was no denying it. She was more physically fit than she’d ever been, with significantly less cause to be. Her failed attempt at a run with Sherry that morning was some of the only exercise she’d attempted in months. Back in Georgia, she was too busy completing her schooling to do anything more than a sporadic jog to the waterfall. Here in Virginia, things had been such a whirlwind, it hadn’t been a priority.

Yet, here she was, muscles long and lean, curves smooth and firm. Her hair was longer, thick, and healthy, cascading down her back in a mass of chocolate curls. Her eyes were bright, her skin was clear, and her nails were strong and unbroken.

Her existential dread, her fear of loss of autonomy, and even her annoyance all gave way for a moment in favor of that powerful, most tenacious of all human emotions — curiosity.

She wondered, could she do it again?

She closed her eyes as she had in the hospital and tried to focus somewhere else. Anywhere else. She stayed this way for one minute, then two, three. Nothing happened. Just as she was about to throw on her robe and call her reflection an idiot, something happened.

She heard the squirrels from the attic. Only they weren’t in the attic. They were in a tree.

She couldn’t say how she knew, but she knew it was the tree in her backyard, the large beech with the wonky, low-hanging branch. She could hear them rustling around in a little makeshift nest they must have made when unwanted humans moved into their house. She could hear how many of them there were. Two larger ones and a tiny one, maybe their child.

She could hear them breathing. She could tell they were asleep.

She shook her head and glared at her reflection as though it was somehow her fault that all of this was happening — this alternate Brie, in her alternate world, with her alternate abs and her stupid alternate ability to… what, exactly? Imagine she could hear the relative age of squirrels? Spy on a coworker and a woman she was only half-convinced even existed? Break her house in half?

Great superpower, you effing walnut.

Suddenly, the weight of it all came crashing down on her. She’d erected some impressive scaffolding to keep it at bay, built largely of humor, anger, sarcasm, and disbelief, but reality is too heavy a thing to be borne up by such a structure, and it crumbled in the space of an instant.

She couldn’t tell Sherry about the supernatural things that were happening. She couldn’t tell Cameron about the human things she needed to talk about. She couldn’t talk to a doctor, or she’d be immediately committed. She couldn’t even articulate to herself what was going on because she had no earthly idea what was happening or why. There was no one in the whole world she could talk to about this in its entirety. And all she wanted was to feel like herself again.

She did the only thing she could think of. She called her dad.

He answered on the second ring. “Brianna!”

She was startled at his quick pickup. “Hi, Dad. How are you?”

“Better for hearing your voice,” he said warmly. “How are you doing? How’s the new place? And the new job?”

“It’s… it’s great,” she replied cautiously. “It’s all going really well. Just busy, you know.” She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. This job can get pretty dramatic.”

“Sherry told me you had a rough start. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want to call in case you were still finding your feet. But I’ve been thinking about you a lot, Brie.”

She was stunned. A part of her had expected he’d be two-thirds through a bottle at this time of night and was looking for negative reinforcement to convince herself that, yes, everything was terrible, she had made a bad decision, and this was all some punishment she deserved.

But this? This was new.

“You talked to Sherry?”

“We talk every now and again. She called to tell me why you were late getting there. I hope that’s alright. She said you asked her to.”

Brie nodded swiftly, still trying to catch up. “That’s right, I did. You sound different. I mean, you sound great,” she added quickly, trying to backtrack.

“I’ve been trying out some new things.”

“Oh, like what?”

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