CH875

“Do I really need to do this?” Mora asked as he sat at the table, staring down the plate of food in front of him as his face twisted. “It just looks so weird.”

“Mora, if you’re going to be using a body, that means keeping it alive,” Ben told him. “It’s a big responsibility, if you’re going to do this then you need to take care of it.”

“Ben, you’re making it sound like taking care of a pet,” Thera sighed.

“I mean, it’s not entirely different. Besides, just give it a bite, I can already tell you think it smells good.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” The boy told him while Ben laughed.

“Maybe you don’t yet but you’re currently undergoing a biological response to the food in front of you that all of us fleshies refer to as drooling. Just put a little in your mouth, chew it, and swallow. If you really, really hate the experience then there’s always the option of getting out of there and using your mana to direct it to eat but if you’re trying to go for the full mortal experience then this really is a defining part you can’t skip. Trust me, even if it feels weird at first, you’ll learn to love it.”

“Mmh, okay,” He finally gave in, lifting his fork and with a doubtful look put it in his mouth, his entire expression changing for it as Ben grinned back.

“Good?”

“I don’t know. I think so?”

He kept eating despite saying that. Even if mentally he wasn’t sure, experiencing senses his true form wasn’t capable of, he was currently linked to the body he wore and it at least was certain of the quality it had received, craving more the instant it got its first taste and letting the other two watch as the boy devoured his first meal, smiling happily as they did.

“Another issue with having a body is going to be keeping it clean though,” Thera said as she gently wiped the boy’s face with a napkin when he was done. “I guess there’s going to be a lot of little things to practice but you’ll slowly get used to them, although now… What are we going to do about today?”

Her eyes turned back to Ben when she asked, uncertainty about how to handle such a turn of events as the plans she thought she had were instantly warped. Should she go to work with the boy like she had been doing that entire time? There were no obvious problems with it but it was easy to imagine something popping up too that might need to be dealt with and even if she was perfectly equipped to handle any issue that a mortal body might have, trying to deal with it in a busy hospital with people dying all around them would only add another layer of stress.

“Why not stay with me today then?” Ben asked. “The biggest issues I can imagine are going to be getting Mora used to his new senses and he’ll have to deal with plenty in the shop that’ll be worse than anything at home but hopefully not as potentially nauseating as whatever you might find in a hospital. Plus, I’ll be around to help out too.”

“Mmh, they do know I’ll occasionally miss days if an emergency pops up and I’m willing to say this qualifies,” Thera muttered. “And I am basically a volunteer anyway, it’s not like I’m marked as a member of staff anywhere and there have been less and less injuries recently as other healers improve, but… Mmh, maybe I’ll take a half day. If I show up in the afternoon, they can deal with it.”

“That’s the spirit! Okay Mora, looks like you guys are with me today so come on, let’s go have some fun.”

Standing in front of the boy, touching his chest and with a pout on her face, Delair’s initial excitement at the surprising change couldn’t help but deflate when she’d realized an inescapable fact of it.

“So I can’t stick my arm through you anymore?”

“Why do you enjoy that so much anyway?” Mora asked back, his own confusion plain, with no experience controlling his face to keep his every emotion as anything less than obvious. “It’s not that exciting.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” She said, shaking her head but not elaborating further, only looking disappointed until Mora broke down and removed one of his spiritual arms from his new flesh and let it pass through her, bringing a laugh back to the girl’s face while Ben and Thera watched from the side.

“…Well, if they’re happy then it’s fine,” Thera said, understanding no more than Mora why the young girl enjoyed his intangibleness so. “But do you think this is going to be okay?”

“Soft maybe. It’s not like he’s actually fully become the soul of a body, if something bad enough happens to it, it shouldn’t kill him but I can imagine the potential pain being decently traumatic, even if he were to go back to just living like a great spirit.”

“Ugh, I have so many new concerns,” She complained before pausing a moment, looking at Ben from the side. “And what do you think about this?”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“It’s interesting. Honestly, I’d go so far as to say super interesting. I wonder if all of the regular soul spirits could do this too? For that matter, I wonder if the life and death spirits can? It seems like Nox is less acting like the soul of the corpse he uses than he is puppeting it. How do you think any of them would react to getting to experience a mortal life in any way or think with a mortal brain? If that really is happening of course, hard to judge when Mora doesn’t let me read his mind but maybe I’ll ask him permission to peek later.”

“…Yeah, I should have known you’d be way too interested in this,” She sighed. “But that wasn’t entirely what I was talking about. He used us to make a body, do you not have any particular feelings about that?”

“What, like he was trying to more firmly become our child?” He asked, being rewarded with the sight of Thera freezing at the bluntness before answering.