We gave Marisol three days simply to rest before attempting anything resembling formal investigation—a private chamber near our own, a physician sworn to discretion, Miraya visiting quietly to offer whatever comfort her calm, steady presence could provide to someone whose entire understanding of reality had apparently fractured somewhere between one world and another.
"She sleeps poorly," Miraya reported, on the second evening, having spent considerable time simply sitting with our unexpected guest. "Nightmares, though she struggles to describe them coherently upon waking. Fragments of two different lives, apparently, colliding in ways her conscious mind hasn't yet learned to properly separate."
"Similar to what I experienced," I said, thinking of my own early months in Aria's body, the disorientation of memories that felt neither fully mine nor fully foreign, gradually settling into something manageable only through considerable time and patient adjustment.
