In the body sitting next to zir, Shria turned, cocked one eyebrow in question.

“You said, ‘if you get too attached to one person,’ instead of just . . . fun explosions. So . . . who?”

Shria ran vir fingers through the long red loops of vir hair, swept it from vir foreheads—the same gesture, in both bodies—snapping it together in a clip mounted behind each left ear. A tracing of silver glittered at vir temples, against vir lavender skin. It looked applied, not grown. “Hmm,” ve said. “No. I’ve been telling all the secrets so far. I think it’s your turn.”

Fift swallowed. “Don’t you think maybe Pom and Pip will be—”

“Ha. Stop stalling.” Standing, ve put vir hands on vir hips. “Pom will never shut up about zir glorious coup with the Cirque Fantabulous until someone shuts zir up. And your Mom won’t be in any hurry to conclude such a profitable transaction. We have plenty of time. No. You. Secret. Now!” In the body beside Fift, ve gave zir a playful shove, vir long-fingered hand clapping on zir shoulder, a gentle, electrifying pressure.

“Okay,” Fift said. Ze took a deep breath. If not Shria, then who? If not now, then when? At zir center, deep in, where there should be peace and stillness, there was an unruly sea. “Sometimes I . . . you know what you were saying about sometimes wishing you were . . . not what you are? Sometimes I wonder, well . . . they can make mistakes, can’t they?”

“Who?”

“The—the Midwives. When they . . . I mean, they come when you’re a baby and they . . .” Fift had watched the house-feed footage of zir gendering a hundred times. It had taken the pair of Midwives, a dour Staid and a bubbly, talkative Vail in matching robes, maybe half an hour—ringing small bells in zir ears, stroking zir tiny hands with feathers, probing and measuring zir reactions—to decide ze was a Staid.

Shria whistled. “I guess. I mean, all those old epics have heroes who get regendered. And people apply today sometimes, too, right? Claim there was a mistake, try to get an adjudicator to declare them misgendered? But I think it hardly ever works anymore; they just get postponed and postponed. But Fift, um . . . I mean . . .”

Fift scowled. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m not very vailish. I’m not brave or strong or wild, I don’t care about dressing up or showing off. I’m not even like Mother Pip, who people used to make fun of because ze’s so decisive and loud . . .”

“Right,” Shria said. “Or Pom Politigus—I mean, ze gets away with it somehow. I guess people expect a somatic styling impresario to be weird—but all those wacky bodies—!”

“I know,” Fift said. “I’m not saying I’d be a better Vail than I am a Staid. I’d be a lousy Vail. You’d probably be better at both—”