Doc squeezed her black case and approached the toothy maw. It reminded her of when she first met Magenta, that frantic yet innocent creature who’d burst from between Yaya’s legs in a small bathtub. First touch, first stroke, that first night when she and Doc and Yaya had fallen together into Doc’s bed.

But innocence died quick. She had to remember that regardless of what this new creature called herself, she was not that flailing, peanut butter-craving appendage. Yaya hadn’t been the woman she presented. Both were pieces of a new whole, and now they knew it. So did Doc. That understanding changed the mind within and every action it might take.

On the far side of the maw, the flesh palace sprawled cavernous, a pulsating cathedral from which Magenta could stretch her tentacles across the city. She had recreated Yaya’s chest cavity, only now of enormous size, a comforting, familiar womb. Bony structures formed flat teeth, almost stools and beds, while bony steps climbed to another level. They rang hollow beneath Doc’s boots.

Atop the steps, flesh and bone formed an enormous tusked seat. Doc might

have been projecting, but the scene reminded her of a throne. Perhaps rather than Camille’s tentacled dragon, Magenta would act as queen.

A hard image not to conjure when someone sat on this throne. The inside of Magenta’s palace was dimmer than the surrounding streets, but light still cut through gaps in her muscle and slashed bright lines across the upper floor.

Yaya’s face glowed in golden luminance. “What’s up, Doc?”

Doc’s smile was not forced. For a split-second, she almost believed in Yaya’s resurrection.

But then Yaya spoke again. “Thanks for coming.” This voice rang deep from within palace’s bones. Yaya didn’t sit here, only a puppet form to make Doc more comfortable, same as had appeared in the skyscraper’s Display Hall.

Yaya was long gone. Doc faced a biological community, and she was risking death.

“Take it off,” she said.

Yaya’s face curled into a smirk. “That insistent? We’ve come a long way from asking each other if we’re sure.”

“I’m serious. I don’t want to see her when she isn’t here.”

The Yaya puppet leaned back into the seat, and now the light fell to make obvious that she was naked. Her arms thrust up in a shrug. “Who says I’m not here? I’ve changed, but I’m still me. And who says I’ve made this little body for you? Maybe I like it sometimes.” The Yaya hands stroked down a cleft-free chest, the body formed almost exactly as she’d been on her first Friday night at Doc’s apartment.

And yet magenta limbs slipped from between her legs, each curled in invitation.