Chapter 7: The Spear of the Four Seasons

Beatrice stood before a pot on her stove, the contents of which were on fire. She had filled it with wood shavings from the university garden, paper towels, and a plastic bag containing a dead hornet and at least 30 chemical wipes, two of which had a small red stain on them that was so small one could barely even see if they squinted. Clouds of thick, black, foul-smelling smoke wafted up from the pot, but they were quickly sucked up by the oven fan just above the stove.

 Despite being indoors, she was now wearing her sunglasses once again. She simply had to put them on after that flight… or rather, it was Ambi who had clumsily put them on for her. It took her a few minutes, but she figured out how to work human fingers well enough to open a purse and put on a pair of sunglasses. She hadn't wanted to, as she quite liked being able to see the world through her own eyes again… but she had no choice. Beatrice had become completely unresponsive when she'd reached an intersection and asked for more directions, so she'd had to land on a roof to put them on. She looked quite silly, flopping around like a little caterpillar as she tried to figure out how to work her hands while she was crawling on all fours. Ambi knew why. Even though Beatrice had never said it, she knew why. She could feel everything Beatrice felt as she soared through the sky. She was initially baffled by the sense of awe and amazement she felt as she examined the scene beneath her until suddenly it just clicked – Beatrice wasn't used to seeing the world like this.

 Once they got home and Beatrice took over, Ambi thought Beatrice would have a ton of questions for her. But she didn't. Beatrice simply walked inside her apartment and began rummaging through her cookware until she found a good pot.

It's not that Beatrice didn't have questions. She did. But what she saw during that flight was simply too amazing to even process and she had gone into shock. Given how much had already changed for her today and how much she'd already had to process, she'd decided to deal with it later. For example right now she was wearing a pair of ill-fitting blue exercise shorts… and only a pair of ill-fitting blue exercise shorts. Well, and her sunglasses, too. She normally had a problem walking around without a top or upper undergarments on, even inside her own apartment, but the large wings protruding from her back made it impossible to put on a shirt that felt comfortable to wear. The wings needed to move and breathe, and putting a shirt around them felt very constricting. They protruded out of the middle of her back and reached from just below her shoulders to just above her ankles. Now that she'd had time to examine them, she saw that she had 4 wings – two long ones that reached down to her ankles and two short ones that didn't go past her waist. They were made out of a clear membrane with several veins running through them, and Beatrice wasn't sure if those veins provided the wings with blood or if they were there for some other purpose. Folded together, they looked almost white. They started thin where they sprouted out from her back, but they quickly grew wider toward their ends. The wings stayed folded together on her back most of the time, but the smaller ones were so wide that Beatrice could see the edges of them from her thin, yellow abdomen. The longer wings were on top of the shorter ones, and they were so wide that if she stood perfectly straight, their edges were much wider than her two legs put together. She could see how they'd be able to carry her through the air just from how wide and long they were, but that also meant that they were somewhat of an inconvenience for her.

See, she wanted to wear a shirt – but she simply couldn't. For one, she'd never forget how freeing it felt when she took off her shirt in that bathroom earlier. She didn't realize just how constricted her wings were until she'd taken it off. She could move so much more flexibly without having to worry about which movements would make her back, or rather her wings, hurt, which she had been subconsciously doing earlier.

She just couldn't wear a shirt anymore unless it was really baggy because it would constrict her shorter pair of wings too much. She couldn't wrap or bend them around her body to make them easier to manage without possibly breaking or tearing them - something that Ambi was absolutely adamant she not do. She couldn't sit down without first folding the ends of her wings over the back of the chair, and even then the chair's back needed to be short enough that it didn't reach her upper back and she'd still need to orient the wings such that they stuck out at about a 36-degree angle so they didn't touch the floor. And, while she could still lay on top of her back without hurting them, it was somewhat uncomfortable and it was better to lay on her front. On top of all of that, she kept accidentally hitting things around her house with them as she walked around.

Aside from her new wings, her chest and upper back were now so thoroughly covered in golden-brown hair that she couldn't put anything around it. It almost looked like she was wearing a halter top made out of grizzly bear fur. If she tried to put a bra on, she'd have to deal with at least an inch and a half of thick hair that cascaded down her chest. Besides, none of her clothes fit her anymore anyway. She used to be about 5'7", maybe 5'8" on a good day, but after combining with Ambi she'd be surprised if she even broke 5'2". It was no wonder her shoes felt loose and her pants kept sagging down earlier… it was a miracle they had even stayed around her waist to begin with! Still, though, it sucked not having any clothes that properly fit her anymore. The only reason she was able to wear the exercise shorts was because they had an elastic waistband.

She was at least thankful that the hair covering her chest… well, covered her chest. She couldn't see anything even if she looked at it in the mirror, and her fingers had to work through several centimeters of hair before she could even feel her skin. She had learned earlier from Ambi that her skin was now more-or-less an exoskeleton, which explained why her chest was so firm even if she didn't wear anything to bind it. A part of her was almost happy that the two main reasons women bound their chests no longer applied to her, but she still didn't like looking this way. There was nothing she could do about it, though.

Once the fire in the pot died down, she covered the pot with a lid and waited for the fire to burn through all of its remaining oxygen. Once the fire was extinguished, she stepped up on her tip-toes and barely was able to reach the button to turn the oven fan off before stepping down from the stool she was on in front of the stove. …Man, it sucked being short. Suddenly, she chuckled as she brought the pot over to her sink to wash it out.

"What's so funny?" Ambi asked.

"Oh, I was just thinking how it's weird that this isn't even the shortest I've been today," Beatrice said, recalling her journey back home from the garden.

 "Yes, I imagine that must have been a very strange experience for you," Ambi replied.

 "Still, you're sure I can't use your size-changing ability to grow myself back to my original height?" Beatrice asked as she filled the pot with water.

 "I'm positive," Ambi replied. "There is no record of any of my sisters being able to grow past their full heights, and right now my ability seems to recognize your current height as your full height," Ambi sighed, forlornly.

 "…Great," Beatrice sighed, separating the pot's contents from the water with a strainer.

 "Still, though, flying was pretty fun – even if I wasn't technically the one doing it," she said after dumping the soaked, burned remains of what had been in the pot into her trash can.

 "Oh? You want to talk about it now?" Ambi asked, surprised.

 Beatrice paused for a moment. "No. Not right now. Right now, I just want to figure out what I need to do next, what… what… hmm, how do I put this? I can't… it's on the tip of my tongue…" Beatrice said, stumbling over her words a bit as she flopped belly-first onto her couch, her wings faced up for the world to see.

 "What will become of your life, your goals, your future, now that you're like this?" Ambi asked.

 "Yes! That!" Beatrice groaned, putting a hand over her face. "What am I to do??? I can't go outside looking like this! Forget becoming a prosecutor – I don't even think I'd even be able to make it through the bar exam without dying of embarrassment!"

 Ambi was having similar thoughts. She couldn't go back and face her mother and sisters like this. She, the weakest of the royal children, she who couldn't even muster enough of nature's energy to make a flower bloom, who was entrusted with one of her kind's most sacred treasures... and she now looked like a human, whom her kind had sworn never to contact or get involved with! Forget the shame she felt before, she'd be surprised if she wasn't outright shunned! But even so, a hope burned within her. As she'd flown to Beatrice's apartment, she had an idea. Something had occurred to her about their current predicament, and she knew that it might be both hers and her human friend's only hope at returning to normalcy.

 "I know how you feel. I'd be in a very similar situation if I tried to return to see my sisters," she said, forlornly. "And then there's the matter of you."

 "Me?" Beatrice asked.

 "Yes," Ambi continued. "You have your own life. Your own goals. Your own future. As I do mine. And yet, we both only have one body. I can't ask you to give it all up so I can live mine, just as you can't ask me to give mine up so you can live yours."

 Suddenly, the reality of their situation truly struck Beatrice for the first time. What were they going to do? They were two very different creatures in one body, and they both wanted different things for themselves… yeah, this definitely wasn't going to work out. But before she could even emotionally register how depressing this was, Ambi gave her a ray of hope.

 "But I don't think things have to be that way. It's not a guarantee, but I think there might be a way to undo what has been done to both of us," Ambi said.

 At this, Beatrice shot up from the couch. "Really!? What?" she shouted.

 "The Spear of the Four Seasons," Ambi said as Beatrice's head turned toward the spear Ambi had carried home with them. "We didn't combine until your skin made contact with it. At that moment, we were both touching it. The spear is likely a very large part of what caused this to happen to us, if not the sole reason altogether."

 Beatrice blinked, then shook her head. "That much I'd already pieced together," she said, holding the spear as she ran her rigid, yellow fingertips over the spear's ornate shaft. "But why would it do this to us? And are you saying you know how to use it to turn us back???"

 "No," Ambi sighed. "I don't. I don't even think it could undo this in its current state – in fact, it's a miracle it was even able to do this to us in the first place. But if we return the Four Seasons to it and bring it to my mother, she should be able to figure out how to fix our current problem."

 "Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a miracle," Beatrice thought, pacing about her living room. "Still, though, what do you mean by, 'return the Four Seasons to it'?"

 Ambi paused, trying to figure out the best way to explain this to Beatrice. Then, Beatrice turned and walked toward the window to open up the curtains so she could see better inside with her sunglasses on. As the warm, January summer sunlight warmed her exoskeleton, she found her answer. "Have you noticed that the seasons aren't what they should be?" she asked.

 "Yes! Who hasn't! I was listening to a podcast about it earlier! The world's in absolute chaos right now! But I don't see what that has to do with- wait, you called it the 'Spear of the Four Seasons,' right?" Suddenly, for the first time, it dawned on her that Ambi and her sisters might have something to do with the strange seasonal phenomena plaguing the world.

 "I see you're starting to figure it out. Yes, my sisters were unfortunately the ones who caused this debacle. It happened during an annual ritual on the winter Solstice. Everything was perfect… and then it wasn't. We were attacked, and I don't know by who or what - probably a power-hungry Great Demon or High Angel from the Domain of Mind who somehow breached our defenses. At any rate, four great spirits broke free from our grasp. These spirits, while they aren't the reason why the world experiences 4 annual seasons, are the reason why the world's seasons are occurring intensely, at random and out of natural order right now. This spear, the one which you are holding right now, is what once contained them," Ambi said. "When it contains all 4 of them, it is a very powerful object that can only be wielded by the most experienced of my sisters at channeling natural forces. But right now, it's no more useful than a sharp, metal stick."

 Beatrice looked at the spear again. She could see four clear jewels upon it – three in the shaft and one larger one in the head of the spear below the tip. There were channels carved into the spear that flowed between these jewels, and she now had a guess as to what purpose they served.

 "So wait," she said. "If this spear contained those spirits, then these jewels represent where they would go, right?" she said, pointing at the large jewels that glittered like diamonds in the sunlight.

 "Correct. The one at the tip always contains the spirit with the power of whatever season it is in the spear's current location. Right now, it should contain Winter," Ambi said.

 "Wait, but I still don't understand. How do you even use this thing?" she said, twirling it through the air.

 "Stand before a mirror and I'll show you," Ambi said. So Beatrice walked into her bathroom again only to see that the tips of her antennae were glowing bright green.

 "AAH! What the fuck!?" she yelled, jumping back and slamming her wings against the door.

 "OW! BE CAREFUL!" Ambi yelled.

 "OW! SORRY!" Beatrice yelled back, clutching her small right wing and gingerly caressing it between her fingers.

 "Anyways, why are they glowing?" she refused to refer to her antennae by a noun. It was simply too weird for her to accept that she now had antennae. Suddenly, her vision dimmed a bit as the green glow stopped.

 "Ah! It seems that I can indeed still use them while you're in control. How wonderful!" Ambi exclaimed, joyfully. "These antennae are the two main tools of my kind. On top of using them to smell things, we also use them to channel the energy and forces of nature, which we call Vív."

 "…Wait, these things are used to SMELL stuff!?" Beatrice exclaimed, clutching them with her hands and rubbing them with her fingertips. "Jeez, no wonder everything smelled like sweat when I had them buried in my pillow when I was laying on the couch!"

 "You didn't know that? Yes. Insects use their antennae to smell things. Anyways, mine are special because they also channel Vív. My kind are called "Channelers" for this reason. We collect and channel Vív to deal with disasters and threats to the world. We use it to protect and nourish Mother Nature, as is our calling," Ambi continued, pride welling up in her chest.

 Beatrice could feel this pride, too. While she still couldn't fully understand what exactly it was that Ambi's race did or why she had become like this, she could tell that Ambi had a plan and wanted to be separate from her just as much as she wanted to be separate from Ambi, too.

 "So to sum it up, this spear and your people can fix us with that Vív stuff, but we need to find the Four Seasons, first? Alright then, let's do it!" Beatrice said with gusto.

 "Wait, really!?" Ambi said, taken aback. "Just like that?"

 "Uh, yeah!" responded Beatrice. "We're two minds in the same body! This is probably pretty much the only thing we'll be able to agree on doing together. And it's actually productive, too!"

 "…That's a fair point," Ambi responded.

 "So where's the first one?" Beatrice asked.

 "The first what?"

 "Season spirit thing," Beatrice responded. "Where is it? You know, right?"

 "It's somewhere on this continent. But I don't know where exactly," Ambi responded.

 "WHAT!? You mean to tell me that I have to search an entire-"

 "Calm down, I have a way to find it. In my travels on this continent, I found something called an Essence of Summer. It's highly concentrated Vív related to phenomena that only occur during summer and play a very big role in the continuance of certain large-scale ecosystems. When I hold the spear and try to channel Vív, I can get a general sense of whether or not I am closer to or further from Summer's spirit. Right now, all I know is that Summer is somewhere westward of where we are right now. But as we get closer to it, that feeling will grow stronger until I know exactly where it is," Ambi said, trying to assuage the panic she felt rising in Beatrice's chest.

 "…so all I need to do is just head West, right?" Beatrice asked.

 "Correct. I'll do the rest. But you should move quickly. The hornet you saw earlier- there are more of them and they've been tracking me and my sisters for weeks. They will probably try to find you and stop you. I know you don't want to fight and I'm also not capable of fighting in this body, so our best hope is to just outrun them so that we never encounter them,"

 "But they shouldn't be a problem at this size, right?" Beatrice asked.

 "I'm afraid not. They can grow, just like you can," Ambi responded.

 The color drained from Beatrice's yellow face... or at least as much as it could. The thought of fighting a 5-foot-tall hornet sent shivers down her spine. She wouldn't know what to do if she was faced with such a fierce enemy. Just imagining it made her close her eyes and shudder.

 "If you don't want to fight them, then we need to move right now," Ambi warned.

 "Of course I don't want to fight them! How am I supposed to fight something like that!?" Beatrice snapped. This was all very stressful for her and she was very nearly emotionally exhausted just at the thought of a pack of giant bugs hunting her. "But I don't even know where I need to go or how I'm going to outrun them! Not to mention that I look like a freak! How am I going to eat, sleep, find shelter, or-"

 Suddenly, Beatrice was interrupted when she heard a knock at her door.