Isabella sat up slowly.
Her movements were careful, the way someone moved when their body felt unfamiliar, like clothes that had been worn by someone else for a long time and were only now being handed back. She looked down at her own hands. Turned them over. Flexed her fingers, one at a time, watching them with an expression that didn't have anything in it yet.
Not relief.
Not fear.
Just.....nothing. The specific blankness of someone encountering something they didn't have a name for because they'd never experienced it before.
"I'm..." she said. Quietly. To no one in particular. "This is my body."
"It is," Mephistopheles said. Gently, for her.
Isabella looked up.
Her eyes found me first.
And then, a beat later, found Mephistopheles, standing beside me in a form Isabella had never seen, black hair and white streaks and a face that resembled mine, and something in Isabella's expression shifted into open confusion.
"You're....." she started.
