He stopped that line of thought, aware of the strangest ambiguity. Being in a real body was so intimate; he could feel his consciousness nestling in all the atoms and molecules. He was aware of their million separate yet combined consciousnesses; so tumultuous, like the infinite buzzing of innumerable bees, warm, too close, throbbing. For a moment he felt frightened, confined.

On the other hand he was transfixed, fascinated, attracted to the body experience as to a magnet. He’d never allowed himself to enter the complete physical experience of one of his personalities before. For one thing, he’d never been invited, but suddenly it occurred to him that far more than that was involved. All Oversouls were individual, and related to their personalities in their own fashion. He was adventurous, and he’d set himself and his personalities some great challenges; but the truth was, he didn’t want to get too involved. Worse, he was beginning to suspect that his personalities were setting him some challenges too.

Like right now. This full alliance with flesh and blood was startling; pleasant and unpleasant, and it was growing more unpleasant each minute. He felt … clotted, thickened, caught in a rich, dizzy gestalt of interaction. That was enough of that!

Seven roused himself. But nothing happened. His consciousness was intact, whole, itself, yet it was somehow dispersed throughout Ma-ah’s body, stuck in the cells and wiggly organs, locked in labyrinthine tangled chambers of bone and blood.

The body’s left shoulder was cold. That’s what cold was. He knew the meaning of the word, but the feeling of draft, of empty wind blowing on exposed flesh, this was something new. Seven felt the tiny hairs on the arm raise, arch, stiffen. They stood up so taut and straight that it seemed they’d pull right out of the flesh. Ma-ah turned over suddenly in her sleep, shoving the shoulder beneath her. The hairs instantly softened.

Seven groaned. Ma-ah’s eyes were closed, and he didn’t seem able to manufacture any vision of his own, or do anything for that matter, but experience reality through her body. “Cyprus, this is too much,” he called mentally, but there was no answer. He shivered, or Ma-ah did. He wanted to turn the wind down as he’d done before, but now he was imprisoned in Ma-ah and at the wind’s mercy as she’d been, (and was)! “You could at least turn the wind down,” he moaned to Cyprus, but again there was no response.

His first day was incredible. He experienced morning, noon, and night in sequence, through the body’s senses as Ma-ah did. No more mixing and matching of times and seasons. He saw the world from her viewpoint. That is, he saw only what she saw, though he could interpret events in his own way. He’d never felt so limited. He couldn’t get out of Ma-ah’s day, no matter how he tried.