Don’t Bite the Sun by Tanith Lee (little red riding hood ebook free .TXT) 📕

sometime because other people were waiting. They doubled the number of people waiting every time they mentioned it, and I suppose eventually I got altruistic and agreed to come out.

I chose this terribly ordinary sort of female body. It was thin and fragile, with insignificant breasts and lank straggly hair. I designed it with slow, meticulous, perverted care. I made it too long in the leg and waist, with dark, unvibrant eyes, behind which I could hide and be safe. I was being a weirdo, not as bad as Hatta the compulsive horror visitation, but strange and alien nevertheless, in a world where almost everyone is beautiful. Then I hung around Limbo for ages, and they let me, only hinting every so often that I ought to go home.

Hergal and Hatta came to visit me.

Hergal, a gorgeous male again, stared at my plain sad appearance and looked slightly uneasy. He liked exoticism, after all. Hatta just accepted me with every blink of his four pink eyes.

They were very careful and kind. So careful and kind it was positively tactless and spiteful. Hergal kept making bright remarks and telling me the wonderful things to be seen outside now. Hatta refrained strainingly from repeating his beastly marriage proposition. But I suppose they had some effect on me. I decided to go home after all.

They wouldn’t let me go in my bubble. They were ever so diplomatic about it, but firm. They flew me home in a robotically controlled, unmessable-around-with bird-plane in soothing yellow tones.

I went into the porch under the golden flower opening and shutting and wandered through the pristinely clean rooms, where a few machines were still at it, dusting and polishing. I went into the garden and suddenly saw the pet by the pool having a thorough and very involved sort of wash.

“Oh pet!” I cried. I remembered sending it away from me, home alone, so callously, just because it reminded me of my time with Lorun. I realized how long I’d left it alone and not thought of it, and was stricken with aching remorse. I rushed forward, arms open, and it gave a screaming, honking, hysterical sort of snarl and fled away across the gardens, hooting.

I felt awful about it, shocked and weak. It was a final blow. I sat there by the pool, hugging my refused arms, racked by pain and guilt, and suddenly woke up to what was the matter. I could have laughed it was so simple. It wasn’t bitterness the pet had just displayed, but genuine, bewildered fright. I’d changed. I was no longer the known Jang girl with long scarlet hair, willowy waist and exotic bosom, all beauty and physical grace. I was this lank, thin, paste-faced twig of life. It didn’t know me. Farathoom! I probably even had a different smell!

So I leaped into my bubble, rushed over to Limbo, and burst in. They looked quite peculiar when they saw me. I explained and they backed off, saying, “Oh no, er, no, no, er, certainly not …” and so on, after which I remembered how I’d unintentionally won their sympathy before, and went into these feigned hysterics, screaming about the awful things I was going to do, like jumping into the tub as I was. They gave me a spray of something that made me go limp, and then discussed me flurriedly and agreed they’d better humor me. So I made them get out my records and ordered an exact copy of what I’d been before, scarlet hair and all.

I walked out to the pool, jingling chains of gold anemones and purple shells, singing a Jang ditty. I was unprepared for what happened. This white furry comet hurled itself out of the glass-grass and leaped into my arms, covering my face with soaking wet kisses.

“Oh, what fools we are.” I almost wept as we chased each other around the pool and got tangled up together in the resustated silk flowers.

The pet gave me a sudden long, telling, orange stare. It seemed to be saying, “Do you know, there was some stupid female here earlier, trying to pass herself off as you?”

2

Things didn’t seem so bad after that. I married Hergal for three units, and we had a groshing time. The pet got to like him, but Hergal was always a bit tosky about the pet, looking around nervously to make sure it wasn’t creeping up on him for the kill or anything. Everybody thought I was terribly original going back to an earlier body, and lots of people started doing the same. It was fun. You could actually recognize someone occasionally. Then Hergal and Kley got married and went off to BOO for a while, Kley female and being a real bully and screaming at everyone, because for some reason she’s always so aggressive when she’s female. As for Danor, she—still a girl—was the center of vast attention because she’d stopped having love with anyone at all; of course everyone was running after her—even Jang from other circles—and it’d become quite a fashion in Four BEE to be “yearning for a vrek in her arms.” But Danor and I still shared a sort of cold shadow and never spoke of it.

Hatta came around, and I found he too had reverted to an old body, the three yellow-eyed one, with spots. Still, there was only one head to cope with, at least.

“I didn’t ask you at Limbo,” Hatta began, “but I still wish you’d marry me for a little, just a morning if you like.”

“I’ve told you,” I told him.

He sighed, looked mournful, though you could barely see it through all that ugliness.

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“No, I suppose not.”

“Can’t you see,” Hatta said, pathetic, “the body I’m in doesn’t matter that much? I’m still me.”

“Well, be you in a groshing body and I’ll marry you immediately,” I said wildly. “That’s a promise.”

“No, no,” wailed Hatta.” Oh, look, think, ooma. I want you—I want you. You’ve been a hundred different bodies;