Cold was ruminating in headspace about what they had read, thinking over on how she could get creative with it, but Heat was just excited to try it. She had grabbed a clay tablet and stylus- apparently the Librarian hosted classes every Sunday teaching some basics like literacy and math to whoever wanted to join, and there were plenty of supplies for it- and began to inscribe a symbol. It resembled a stylized candle flame inside a lightbulb; no one else here would know what it meant, but the important part was that she did. Unfortunately, Heat’s handwriting had always been terrible even back when she was Sophia, so the process was slow and she had to retry frequently. But eventually the symbol was perfect… or at least good; now came the hard part.

  Heat began to focus, her hands just barely touching the symbol; her mind honed on the aspect of light, the concept of a light bulb, of a candle, of a bonfire holding the night back. Of a lamp gently bathing the darkness with its warm glow, of a flashlight beating back the shadows.

  Unfortunately, Heat was so focused that she didn’t notice her hands squishing down the etching, and the clay tablet began to let out small guttering sparks of light before it died down, the magic not catching. “Damn!” Heat cursed, only for the librarian to shush her angrily.

  Taking a deep breath, Heat started the process again, carving out the symbol slowly as her teeth grit together in frustration. She gently placed her hands on the tablet again, her mind focusing on those thoughts of light. The tablet began to glow a brilliant, warm light, and Heat grinned, pouring more and more of her magic into it, eager to see the results! As it reached its crescendo, Heat pulled away her hands, satisfied in her work, only to see the light dying out again.

  She poked the tablet on its side, but nothing happened.

  “I don’t get it,” Heat muttered to Cold inside their headspace. “It said to pour my soul into the symbol, but it didn’t stick!”

  Cold hummed a little, her hand on her chin. “What if you weren’t?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what if I wasn’t’? I was pouring my concept of light into it!”

  “Because the concept of light isn’t your soul, it’s your mind,” Cold muttered. “It’s just knowledge, not an inherent part of you- lighting up the shadows is a noble thought, but you’re not attaching it to anything, you’re just sending the concept into the tablet. What part of you is the light in the darkness?”

  Heat slumped down in her chair, thinking. ‘Light in the darkness’ was a pretty common metaphor, referring to hope. But if she left behind all preconceptions, let go of everything other people might have expected of her- what was her concept of the light in the darkness? And more than that, what did it evoke in her?

  Heat frowned as she placed her hands upon the tablet once more, her heart clenching. She closed her eyes, remembering what it was to be Sophia. She remembered the pain, the self-loathing, the anger, the frustration, and most of all she remembered the conflict, the darkness of their prior self, buried so far but always bubbling to the surface.

  And then she remembered Allison trying her hardest to help them, stopping them from hurting themselves and each other. Heat remembered how she had grown and changed, gaining confidence as she explored her new powers and her new home. She realized how much happier she was now, with a sister who was there for her, a team to support her, and a girlfriend who loved her (and Cold) for herself.

  As Heat opened her eyes, the tablet before her shimmered a little, and the etching glowed a soft orange even when her hands left it. Heat quickly grabbed the tablet, making sure not to smudge the etching, and dashed off to a nearby broom closet- closing the door, she held up the tablet and watched as it softly glowed, framing Heat’s wide smile in a gentle light.

  Heat continued to experiment over the next several hours, trying to increase the light the etching produces, testing out different shapes and memories and emotional combinations to see the results- switching between shame, even self-loathing, and hope and joy like a switch turning on and off to make the etching flicker; or the memory of fireflies lighting up a softly-darkening evening to make a light that gently faded in and out; or even a memory of frantically searching for a prized possession they had lost and the triumph of finding it to make a focused beam.

  Heat was more than happy to play around with this, but she also knew that someone else needed to, too- and with a surge that made their eyes twitch, she pulled herself back into headspace and thrust Cold into the body’s controls. Cold blinked a few times, looked down at their body, and mentally ducked back into headspace to thwap Heat on the head before returning. Heat didn’t even care, she just chuckled as she settled in to watch.

  Cold took their tablet and erased Heat’s etching, picking up the stylus and hesitating, unsure of herself, but she shook her head and continued on, inscribing a glacier with snowflake-like lines onto the clay tablet, pressing her hand upon it and focusing. Instead of focusing on the emotions evoked by memories, Cold thought of the future- of how much she had in store for her, the experiences and more waiting for her, just how much she will continue to grow and change over the years in her new home and life. Her hope and desire to be more coalesced into the tablet, which let off a chill as a small coating of ice formed over it. But instead of forming a large chunk of ice, it simply continued to let off cool air, the tablet itself slowly warming up. Cold shook her head in disappointment and tried again, but the same result happened.

  As the wyrmic woman erased and redrew the symbol, her heart clenched at knowing what she had to do. Her hand placed upon the tablet, Cold began to focus, her tail beginning to thrash behind her; her mind turned to her fears, of never getting better, of needing to be more, of the need to take control of the world around her and make it bend to her whims and anxieties, of making a barrier between herself and everything wrong with the world. Frigid air began to swirl around the tablet, a layer of frost forming on its surface- and just above the symbol coalesced a large chunk of ice roughly the size of her fist.

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  Cold sighed in relief, smudging the symbol to stop the effect. She had expected to feel so much worse, to hate herself, but instead she felt a little lighter, like a pit inside of her had been emptied a little. She slumped into the chair, her eyes closed and her head in her hands, tears staining her face both from expressing those feelings and from the sheer relief it had brought her to unbottle those things.

  Heat popped out of headspace, her ethereal phoenix form wrapping her wings around Cold’s head to give her a hug. Cold placed a hand against her sister, her other wrapping around the chunk of ice before her, grasping at her soul magic to reshape it, slowly molding it like putty in her hand. She gradually pulled it into a curling shape, her fingers leaving behind fingerprints resembling scales; the tail end slowly tapered, while the head began to form horns and a maw, the eyes little indents that seemed to be crying.

  “That’s beautiful,” said Heat. “And it’s something I can’t do, either. I think you’re capable of so much more than you feared, you just have to try.”

  Cold gently picked up the dragon statue, grabbed the clay tablet in her other hand, erased the etching fully, and then returned it to the supply closet, ending their practice for the day. As she walked out the door, she bumped into Sally right outside. The other woman had evidently been pacing, and Cold immediately embraced her. Sally hugged her back, neither one talking for a moment. Eventually Cold spoke up, her voice quiet.

  “Heat and I managed to make some basic spell etchings,” Cold muttered, half enthusiastic and half drained. “You can’t just put your soul magic in, or try to think about the thing you’re doing, you have to- to actually feel something about it.” As Cold explained what she had gone through in what couldn’t have been more than a few hours, Sally ended up hugging her tighter until Cold’s back cracked a little, and Cold, her eyes too tired for tears, rested her head against her girlfriend’s chest, a quiet, tired sigh coming from her lips.

  Cold was perfectly content to stand there like that, but apparently Sally had other ideas, scooping her up and carrying her bridal style to their rooms. Neither one said a word, Sally’s boots clacking against the stone and wooden flooring. Sally eventually reached their team’s part of the bunkhouse, opening the door to Cold and Heat’s bunk and placing them down on the bed. As Sally slowly left, however, Cold reached out and grabbed her hand- Sally could have easily pulled away, but she didn’t, instead sitting down and gently stroking it.

  “Can we cuddle?” Cold asked in almost a whisper. Sally raised an eyebrow, and Cold realized that, yes, her bed was not big enough to fit two people, let alone her and a woman nearly twice her size. That’s probably why Sally hadn’t been willing to go to bed with her before, too.

  Picking herself up from her bed, Cold gently pushed Sally out of the room and dragged her bed out afterwards, slowly pushing it towards Sally’s room. Sally, realizing what was going on, plopped Cold onto the bed again then picked it up, her muscles straining against her tunic. Cold couldn’t help but hoarsely laugh as Sally just barely squeezed herself and the bed through the door, rearranging furniture until their beds were right next to each other and her desk nearly blocked the door. It was a tight fit. But it was theirs.

  Cold moved over a little towards the wall, and Sally climbed in next to her. The two lay there a few inches apart before Cold moved in closer, wrapping herself around Sally. Cold simply shut her eyes, relishing in the contact and the comfort and the knowledge that her girlfriend was so much warmer than she seemed based on voice alone. The feeling of a soothing cold drink on a hot day wrapped around them both, and Cold let herself rest.

  Heat popped out of their body’s head, her phoenix-y form looking more like an ethereal woman with wings and feathers and talons. She gently tapped against Sally’s face, the large woman opening her eyes to look up at Heat.

  “Thanks for this,” the birdgirl said, sitting on Cold’s head. “We’ve both got a lot to unpack, and having you here has made it so much easier.”

  Sally nodded, whispering as quietly as she could, “I’m happy I could help. It’s almost amazing, seeing you both be so strong one moment and so… so broken the next.”

  Heat drifted forwards until her head rested against Sally’s forehead. “People grow from experience, and that’s not measured in days and years, it’s measured in the memories left behind. We’ve been making lots and lots of memories since we were a child, and only some of them caused by our shared brain’s inherent flaws. Coming here and having Allison kickstart our minds into gear helped a lot, and it’s not like our entire life in our old world was misery and conflict, but there’s still a lot of scars left behind that haven’t fully healed yet. I think… I think having something to explore, something to make us want to think about the things we find painful, is actually helping us process it better.”

  Cold, still in possession of their body, shifted a little in Sally’s embrace, whimpering a little.

  “I think that’s what berserking is. It’s when a part of you that you don’t want to remember, makes you remember. I… I think we both still berserk sometimes, but the mental ritual changed it from wanting to kill to just… refusing to give up. Like our brain focuses on winning, and instead of not being able to think, we can’t think about anything else but winning. You’ve seen it, how Cold and I fight a lot dirtier if we’re struggling, sparring or not.”

  Sally sighed, blinking slowly and thinking before she responded, her voice gentle. “Fighting dirty isn’t wrong, Heat. I heard about what you did when you first arrived, the person you two used to be, and I’ve seen what you both do now. You’re not trying to hurt people, you’re just trying your hardest to improve and to fight for this city. If that’s being berserk, then you be berserk. You never let go of that drive to improve and to grow and to help, okay?”

  Heat lowered herself down onto Cold’s head again, hugging Sally’s chin tightly. “I’ve seen you do the same. You’re ashamed of your own berserking, terrified of doing something you’d regret, but we can’t afford to play fair against the Infected, because they definitely don’t either. So I want you to berserk against us next time, okay? I’m not afraid of you.”

  Sally leaned her head down to plant a kiss on Heat’s projection, and in the process kissing Cold on the head too, her lips passing through the projection like it was barely there. The three of them rested there like that for a time, snuggling; they would no doubt have to get up eventually, the day wasn’t over yet, but here and now they were comfortable, happy, and loved, and all three wanted this moment to last.

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