✴

You always seem to gravitate toward the first time you encountered her, the day you arrived at Translunar Academy. You keep it in a directory for special memories. She was sitting by the pond at the world’s edge, her eyes a tranquil blue, scattering seeds to the bird flock.

You’re having a hard time focusing on visual data. Its colors distort, and the image dissolves from your mind’s eye. Instead, you feel the intensity of the softness and the vibrant smooth texture of her hand interlocked with yours. You lose touch with the colony’s spin, with the couch under you, the air and the temperature. You only feel her.

Anxiety spikes--caution: sync rate unstable your terminal reports. Your mind resists the gravitational pull toward hers.

“Aydan,” you feel her words as if spelled out with your own hands, “I love you too.”

The feedback loop between you calms down. You’re drawing closer together in the void. The barriers between you are liquid--you slip through its surface tension, melting together, until there is no other, only you.

Here in headspace, your contact with the core processor renders your sensory feedback as an æthereal scene. Your proprioception feels like static noise, but your sense of touch is strong. You feel the dimensions of your avatar--your skin is soft, and your touch ripples across it like the surface of the pond. Your pressure solidifies it more, but the softness remains. From your thighs, you slide your fingers upward, tracing the outward and inward curves from your hips to your waist, across your breasts, up your neck, and over the soft shapes of your face--a girl-shaped form.

This feels right on an avatar level, but internally your gender sense is unstable, off-balance. What do you feel your& gender is at the moment?