It was a huge relief Natalie already had off that day. She didn’t think she had the strength to even call off, not after last night.

Natalie spent most of her morning laying around in her bedroom, blankly staring up toward the ceiling. By lunchtime, she needed to clear her mind, so she decided to take a walk outside down the sidewalk. It was a nice, sunny day out, something she desperately needed. It felt good, being in the fresh air.

As she walked in front of all the houses and yards, she saw a mother and a father taking their extremely young daughter out for a walk on the other side. Her parents used to do that for her too, all the way back before she was even double digits. She loved it so much, back then.

Why did every memory have to be so painful?

Her life had been perfect. With her job she could really get somewhere, and climb up to higher and higher positions. Her family loved her, she was going to marry an amazing man, live in a big house, and maybe have some children one day.

Now none of that felt real.

She still couldn’t help the extreme envy she felt whenever she looked at other women. Actually no, not ‘other women’, just women. Seeing them only made it clear that they were real women, and she was not.

***

After all the stretches of suburbs and roads was a large bridge, with a wide and slow moving river beneath it. Natalie walked up to it and laid her arm on the railing, admiring the river. It was very blue today, and very pretty.

She missed feeling pretty.

She was missing the weirdest things recently. Breasts, for instance. She never imagined she’d miss having them, and yet, here she was, walking around every day with her flat chest leaving her an empty feeling in the physical and metaphorical sense. It was almost like her mind was telling her she was missing being a woman, and that just couldn’t have been right.

It wasn’t so bad, being a man. There was such a huge list of positives. Like… that she was taller, for one. She could easily reach things she never could as Natalie. She was also stronger, it was a lot easier to lift heavy objects than before.

…No periods, that was definitely a positive too. Also, she hasn’t gotten much sexual harassment recently, not nearly as much as when she was Natalie. Really, there were just so, so many upsides about being a man that she couldn’t even count them all.

Surely there were enough to make her head shut up.

How long was she planning on staying a man, anyway?

She shook her head, what a horrible question. It implied that her being a man was something that had an endpoint. It didn’t, it was just her reality. And she’d be willing to bet her life that Nathan wouldn’t appreciate her thinking about how much she hated being a man.

She laid her head down on the railing at that thought.

What was she going to do about Nathan? About… her?

Well, if she wanted to get anywhere, the first thing that needed to change immediately was her not being assertive enough. She needed to make up her mind, know what she wanted, and then act on it.

Nathan was not a different person, and it was beyond time to stop thinking of him as if he was. “Nathan” was just her with the memories of her male life. She was him, and he was her. That was how she wanted things to be, how they had to be if they wanted to get anywhere.

Because she knew for a fact that Nathan did not like thinking of her as a different person, and she felt the same toward him.

When she began backing away from the bridge, she felt her memories shift again, and he was Nathan. He wanted to convince himself that he was still Natalie, but he was never good at lying to himself.

They couldn’t be the same, not like this.

They needed to find some way to bring their memories together.

***

Nathan switched back to Natalie before he got back to the apartment, a blessing for him and a curse for her.

It was like neither of them wanted to be in control anymore.

Sitting on the couch, with the potion in her hand, she brainstormed what she could do to bring their memories together. Trying to force them back together like what she did as Nathan was obviously not going to work, so she needed to find an alternative solution.

She shut her eyes and leaned back. What was she supposed to do? A part of her actually wanted to try again and force the memories together, even if she knew it wasn’t going to work. It was the easy answer, after all, and guaranteed to fail. She guessed that meant her mind or soul or whatever was keeping her and Nathan’s memories apart wanted them to solve this problem the hard way.

But what was the hard way?

She thought back to when she wrote that sticky note as Nathan, when her male half and female half actually tried to communicate with each other. It went well… at least until she accidentally ripped up the note. She was still feeling guilty about that.

Wait, that was it! Communication! She and Nathan just had to talk to each other, in some way. Air out their grievances and come to some kind of mutual agreement. Then they might finally come together again, as one.

But how was she going to do that? Was she supposed to just… talk to herself? No, it had to be more involved than that. She could try writing notes again, but after what she did before, that idea had sort of soured on her.

What about recording herself talking? That worked pretty well when she did it a few days ago. Maybe that was the answer. Then when she was Nathan, she could respond and give his thoughts, and the process could continue until they finally reached some kind of agreement.

That sounded like a great idea. In fact, she should get started right now.

She ran to her bedroom and booted up the computer, ready to record her grievances for the second time. And hopefully, for many more times to come.