Maybe it was how pure things were up here, now small the problems below were, how there was little to see except the diffuse clouds that made it impossible to see twenty feet away from me. There was no noise up here, except the wind against my hood and the bottom end of my coat.

Maybe it was that the air was thinner, so there was more room to feel other things.

I could feel distinctions. The ice cube slide of flight became smoother still. It was a slide over skin, not scar tissue. No bumps, no tiny bits of turbulence that weren’t actually wind. If I controlled fire and paid the most acute attention, would I see the difference in how the flames touched and tongued the air? If I mutated from head to toe, would it shape my form, the whorls of metaphorical fingerprints, and the spacing of pores?

Go, I communicated.

I activated my forcefield and aura, and then I let myself fall.

Surrender was the name of the game here, so I pushed everything out of mind. I held onto that tranquility and peace of the cloud cover above, with the thin air and the scarcity of noise. I held onto nothing else. My plummet was almost meditative. The wind didn’t touch me, but it touched the Wretch, catching the broad side of one part of the form, and flipping the Wretch vaguely around me.

My head was below my feet as I watched things unfold. Sidepiece had a double now, shorter, fatter, more missing around the middle. My double was still there, but her double was dangerous, where mine flopped around. It was more wanton in how it tore itself to pieces, but those pieces didn’t all explode, and didn’t explode as violently.

But it was fucking loud. Shouting, squawking, taunting.

Anger and instinct fed into my actions, as I went with the flow. I wanted a weapon and I didn’t even have the buckler or armguard. I patted pockets, found small change, and extended my hand. I let go of it, and it collected within the forcefield.

Then, just as easily, it escaped the forcefield. A mouth or other cavity yawned open. The change leaked out and found another invisible trap to fall up into, one or two coins being lost in the process.

I’d thought about this, a long, long time ago. As a ‘what if’. In reaching for the change, I hadn’t even consciously recalled the memory. It was only when I realized what was happening that I connected the thought.

The change moved, then disappeared.