His demise was so close that I could taste it, a metallic tang in my mouth, so intoxicating and yet, at the same time, repellent. I knew why, of course - when he gave in, our game would be over. I would win, he would lose, and that would be that. We would no longer banter, no longer battle. Our wills would not clash or collide. No, we would simply cease to interact. He would not hold my interest (though I may, perhaps, continue to hold his). "Then you shall have me at your will," he said, and for a brief moment, I was foolish enough to imagine that I had won.

And then: "Tamira."

A simple word, and yet it proved my undoing. Had I the power, I would have shrieked my rage: not only had he confused me with the weakling, but he had unwittingly managed to call her back. I could feel my power waning, my control over the body that we shared falling away. It was almost as though I were being sucked backwards, forced to return to the mental cell that was my confinement. Never before had the change been so sudden, nor so hard - I could not grasp even a sliver of control, hadn't the power to say even one parting word. I was unraveling within our conjoined mind.

The change is sudden; a new awareness appears in their eyes, and instead of the slow return that had plagued her the last time, it is clear that Tamira is immediately there, almost as though she were picking up where their conversation had left off. She has no memory of the change, but she does recognize that they had migrated further into the forest. She wonders why.

"Tamira."

"Yes?" I turned to face him without a clue of how we had gotten this far. I was confused, to say the least. What had I said, before? Time had passed, I could tell that much from the movement of the moon and the stars across the night sky; indeed, morning was coming, arriving swiftly from the eastern sky. Ah, yes, I had come to him for help. Had he helped me? What had transpired in the time between then and now? What did I say? What did I miss? Well, only he knew the answer, and so I phrased the question. "What happened?" I was painfully aware of my confusion without the haze of the last change to dull my mind.


"talk"

Let me run
Let me feel like someone