Strange and Unexpected Shifts

[burdenofproof]

The sensation of the shift had so abrupt he might’ve compared it to falling, though instead of tipping forward or backward, the whole of him had suddenly downsized into something that was wholly other than what he had been. He’d stared from his new proximity for a good long while at the pants that had slid from his new, slimmer hips to pile up at the floor, at small feet that no longer filled the shoes he’d been wearing. At the hem of a shirt that now reached past his knees and the collar which had dropped down over one newly feminine shoulder.

Luther had been in the hotel long enough to know that this had started happening to others, though he’d never fully considered what might happen were he to transform from male to female with no preparation. It was wholly disorienting, not just the shift in body parts but the sheer shrinking of his size, which had to have been diminished by half in all directions. There was logic still beating about his head somewhere, though for all it told him that he simply had to seek out someone he knew in a request for help for clothes for this new body, he was left to gather up his pants, toss them back in his room, and make his way down to the café in bare feet and the shirt which he supposed covered him well enough to pass as some sort of dress or muumuu.

He wanted a sandwich, so he got one and sat down in a corner table with legs that crossed at the knee far more naturally than he’d ever been able to manage before. Focusing on his food gave him something to do other than marvel at his new breasts, and he very methodically began to wolf it down in a state of borderline but tightly contained panic

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[nebaritralk]

Chiana still hadn't found much of anything to hold her interest long enough, and so when she spotted the young human female going at her sandwich as if it might disappear any microt, she figured that she might be interesting enough. She claimed the chair opposite the dark-skinned woman, legs wide apart and forearms resting on her knees, so that she was leaning forward as she looked at the human, cleavage all the more apparent in her corset. "What's got up your caftan?"

[burdenofproof]

Luther was self-conscious in his new body, so he’d spent his first few minutes with his sandwich believing everyone in the café was staring at him, though he’d eventually come to realize that was not true. The Nexus was a place of strange happenings, wasn’t it? And while the shift was certainly disorienting for him, he recognized that no one around him would know that he had no idea what the hell he was to do with himself if he did not tell them what had happened, and that went a little way toward soothing his rattled nerves. If there was a thing he hated broadcasting before a room full of strangers, it was his own uncertainty and/or lack of control.

The sound of the chair dragging away from the table caused him to glance up, his chewing slowing as he met the gaze of a woman he was positive he’d never seen around the hotel before as he was certain he would’ve remembered it. He swallowed the bite of food in his mouth quite thickly, then moved to lift a napkin and wipe at his lips. “Well,” he started, the feminine lilt of his voice another shock to his system, albeit one he could take in stride. “It seems I’ve walked through a door and wound up a woman for the day, or however long this stuff lasts.”

[nebaritralk]

A small smile tilted up the corner of Chiana's mouth, and then she laughed. "Are you kidding? Where's the door, I want in." Hey, who wouldn't want to know what it would be like to be another gender. Different set of everything, bring it on.

[burdenofproof]

Luther huffed a laugh, he could not help himself. "Well, I dunno. What I hear it sorta spins around, so I guess you could get lucky and happen upon it at some point by accident. Mine was as I was leaving my room here. Started the day as a bloke, walked out into the hall and looked like this." He made a vague gesture to himself, then picked up his sandwich for another bite.

[nebaritralk]

Disappointment fleeted briefly across Chiana's features, before she smiled again, focusing back on the human across from her. "Well, I don't know if it's an improvement, but you've lucked out, anyway. You're pretty." Still looked human, despite the different skin pigmentation, but she liked it. She was used to much more variety than what could be found around the hotel. "What's it feel like? Changing sex." Of course she was curious.

[burdenofproof]

Luther chewed the rather large bite of sandwich he'd just taken, and contemplated the compliment this woman had just given him with a sense of surprise. It had only occurred to him that he had not looked at what he looked like yet, not beyond the vague outline of his reflection on the counter top, and what he could see of his body from his current vantage point. Facially, he had no idea. "Well, thank you," he said after he swallowed. "I hadn't thought to look at it yet, but I appreciate it."

At her next question, he shrugged. "It felt sort of like falling, I guess," he said. "That's the closet thing I can compare it to, though I had to do quite a bit of shrinking to get to this size. It didn't hurt or anything like that. I didn't feel like anything wnas getting ripped off, thank God."

[nebaritralk]

That last bit got a low, throaty chuckle out of Chiana, upper body swaying to and fro in amusement. But it wasn't what she'd meant to ask; it wouldn't be her first time not getting her meaning across. "And what is it like, being another sex?" That truly was what she was most curious about.

[burdenofproof]

"Ah," Luther said with a slight nod. "Confusing, I guess? I still feel mostly like myself, no big changes in perception or anything like that, but I expect that'll change in time. It's still too new and right now you're the only person I've talked to." He smiled at her. "I guess, while we're on the subject, I should introduce myself. John Luther."

[nebaritralk]

"Chiana," she replied with a grin. Confusing - she knew the first thing she'd be trying out, if she were him, and confusing would only be a momentary concern. No better way to come into your own, she figured. "Is John Luther a male name? Or do you not differentiate?" She hadn't thought to wonder about human names before.

[burdenofproof]

"It is a male name," Luther said with a nod. He was not unaware of her physical differences from his, even in his current form, and he nodded at her. "Where do you come from, Chiana? I get the feeling it is a bit different than the place I call home."

[nebaritralk]

"You wouldn't know it," Chiana assured him, because humans never did, "and I wouldn't recommend visiting. A planet called Nebari Prime." Home to and center of the Establishment, but humans never knew about the Establishment either.

[burdenofproof]

"Nebari Prime," Luther repeated, as much out of idle wonder as an attempt to latch that name into his brain. If she said he would not want to visit such a place, he tended to believe her and would attempt to avoid it, should the doors around this place start getting wily. "No, you're right. I've never heard of it. Though to be fair, I've never heard of half the places this place has taken me to since I arrived."

[follow_the_wolf]

From what Graham could make of it, there seemed to be little pattern and even less sense to which door did what within the hotel. Some were easy enough to parse out, the ones that led to different worlds and could be told with a shift in the air or a wildly disparate landscape behind a door that had once led to a familiar room. Those were no issue.

The random appearance and disappearance of the door with the ability to switch a body's sex from one extreme to another? Now that, he had to think, was an issue.

If there was proof that a person could grow used to just about anything given enough exposure, it would have surely been in the fact that Graham had hardly done more than blink, then gone in to change his clothes after he had found himself on one side of a door in a decidedly more feminine shape than he'd been on the other. That time had occurred the day before, and under the assurance that he would be eventually changed back to his normal shape and form, Graham had dressed in what amounted to the slightly more feminine version of the same clothes he had worn as the Sheriff of Storybrooke and had continued on to his shift with hotel security.

Given that experience, it took little more than a look at a tiny, pretty woman sitting in the cafe in an oversized men's shirt (and what looked like nothing else) to guess he had come across someone in similar circumstances. It wasn't as if, after all, it was an uncommon occurrence among the hotel's residents.

"You alright?" he asked as he neared, tipping his head as he gave the woman (female? what exactly was the proper noun or pronoun for the situation?) a small smile.

[burdenofproof]

Luther glanced up at this new, female voice, his brows arching slightly as he took in the woman who looked very tall from his current vantage point. She was an attractive woman, one he was almost positive he'd never seen before, though he thought there was perhaps something familiar about her as well. He likely had seen her, he'd spent the better part of his time in the Nexus people watching after all, and so he dismissed his curiosity as just that.

"I think so," he said, giving the woman a smile as he adjusted the hem of his shirt to cover his knees for roughly the millionth time. It mattered little that there was more than enough shirt to keep him decent as he was unused to having such a thing to fiddle with and could not seem to stop doing it. "I guess it's not all that uncommon around these parts any more, but I started the day as a man and then a door got me."

He was unused to so many strangers checking on his well-being, but he supposed he'd never wandered through the hotel halls barefoot and only wearing a shirt before, either. Perhaps he looked as lost as he felt. It was a daunting thought, but there was nothing he could do about it then.

[tobearwitness]

Throughout these long months, Ichabod had been one of the fortunate few who has been able to pass freely between the Nexus and Sleepy Hollow. His most recent jaunt back home had resulted in learning his beloved wife was held by the Horseman and there was yet another on the loose. The only thing that stood a chance to save them was Franklin's key and finding it would be a race against time.

He had needed time to think and, as such, retreated back into the Nexus to do that very thing. The last thing he expected to see was one of his comrades left behind and Ichabod is unable to check his emotions, glad to see that Lieutenant Mills has found his sanctuary.

"Lieutenant!" he calls out. "I see you have found my secret."

[burdenofproof]

Luther heard the man call out, though it was only when it was made apparent by the fact that no one around him reacted that he understood the greeting was for him. 'Lieutenant' was not a title that Luther held, and that paired with the fact that he'd surely never seen this man before lead him to the quick conclusion that this was yet another case of mistaken identity.

Still, he put his sandwich down and wiped at his mouth, then twisted the napkin in his fingertips, finding himself far more fidgety than usual in this new shape.

"I'm sorry," he said to the man, tempering the words with a little smile. "I think you have me mistaken."

[tobearwitness]

He must be. While this woman, for all intents and purposes, looks exactly like Abigail Mills, one word from her mouth dispels the notion. Mills is not English and is, actually, quite proudly and prominently American. This woman is neither.

"I see, you simply resemble a close friend of mine down to the facial expressions. It's uncanny."

[burdenofproof]

"Yeah?" Luther says, his brows arching. He had no idea as to the philosophy behind this sex switch thing, if it was all merely coincidence or if there was something like body swapping going on and he supposed he wasn't the sort of Science-minded fellow that could really make a lot of headway if he sat to trying to figure it out. "Huh. Well, I'm not sure how all this stuff works," he said, "but from what I can see, lady-wise, I'm almost the exact opposite of what I would've expected to look like. You know, if the sex switch was going to maintain any resemblance to me as a man at all. Kind of strange, don't you think?" He paused, swallowing as he realized his mistake, and said... "I guess this would be a good time to tell you that I was a man a little earlier today. Walked through one of the doors and walked out like this."

[tobearwitness]

"Somehow, I am not shocked by this." It is one of the least strange things in a long string of strange things that have happened to Ichabod over the course of his life and it is not entirely surprising to know that someone could be a man in the morning and a woman by evening. Still, for this man to be wearing Lieutenant Mills' face, that is somewhat extraordinary. It's as if it's meant to remind him of the duty he'd left behind.

"I have to wonder if I am next, if switching gender is going to become commonplace hereabouts."

[burdenofproof]

"I dunno, mate," Luther said with a grave shake of his head. If there was some sort of pattern to the sex switch door, he'd surely not seen or known enough of it to place it. Could there be anyone in the hotel who had? He just wasn't sure. "From what I've seen, it seems to be random, and in my case I definitely had no indication that it was coming."

He studied the man a little more, then gestured to the chair opposite him. He did not know this man, but he supposed having a lookalike face for one of this man's colleagues was enough to build an interesting conversation upon. "Have a seat, if you'd like," he said. "Tell me of yourself, or your colleague that I apparently look like, if that suits."

[tobearwitness]

"My colleague is an American detective," Ichabod explains, settling into the chair gracefully across from the woman who was Abbie Mills and, yet, not. It is something he will have to grow used to should the sex switch door decide to strike this particular man again but it did not set his heart at ease to know there could well be a copy of Lieutenant Mills at any given point but not the true one.

"She is currently employed by the City of Sleepy Hollow and assigned to investigate alongside myself. I'm certain you can understand my surprise when I ascertained that you were not, in fact, she."

[burdenofproof]

"Yes, I can," Luther said. "I have to say, it seems a strange thing, to be 'borrowing' a face as it were from a woman I've never met. I don't know anything about this place or how it works outside of what I've been able to observe, but it's a strange coincidence, don't you think? Especially since I've never heard of this woman, and can think of nothing we'd have in common outside of work in law enforcement."

[tobearwitness]

"Well, then, you wear her face well," Ichabod says. He laughs, though this isn't exactly something one should joke about, becoming someone else entirely.

"Did you keep a similar race and only switch gender? Or have you gotten a body entirely outside your own gender and racial norms?"

[burdenofproof]

"Appreciate it," Luther says, and smiles a bit, too. "Let us hope wherever she is, Miss Mills hasn't gone and had her face traded in for my old mug. Hate to wish that on a young lady."

He took a sip of his coffee as the man asked his questions, then nodded. "Race is the same," Luther agreed. "Though everything else seems to be off a bit. She's about half my size in every direction, and feels a mite younger than me, too." He looked down at his new, small, unlined hands thoughtfully. "I guess I should get myself a proper pair of pants, eh? Hardly proper, wandering around the hotel like this."

[tobearwitness]

"Yes, I can imagine it will draw some stares." Ichabod is hardly the one to ask about what is and is not proper attire for a young woman of this era. He prides himself on being anachronistic and his wardrobe is little changed from that he wore in the 18th century. He is not yet willing to embrace the 21st when it comes to style and manner of dress.

"Then again, no more than I draw on a regular basis. You blend much better than I."