Mistress Amber, Ch. 4
Chapter 4: Birds and Bees, Part 2 The moment I step into the pool of silver, I’m overcome by a strange sense of multiplicity. If it weren’t for that, I’d momentarily feel like Jesus Christ himself, given that while the pool is clearly full of liquid – albeit silvery, metallic stuff – I’m somehow able to stand atop its stillness. A shockwave ruptures through me, that peculiar awareness of the many, of being a single thing with ever so many parts, and any wittiness (which none of the nonhumans would understand anyway) immediately washed away. ‘Holy shit.’ It’s me who says it, but which one? It’s like being in a hall of mirrors, surrounded by reflections of myself that move in time with me. Yet randomness must kick in, because the appearance of unity promptly fades, leaving only a dim suggestion of “oneness” in the back of my thoughts. The dryads begin issuing orders to the throng of Peters, the manifold forms of myself all identical and yet clearly not of the same ...