“We’re not getting the canteloupe, Wynne.”
“But it’s been so long since I even saw one of theeese…”
“We’re buying things for a stew! That’s fruit!”
“You can put fruit in a stew!”
“Canteloupe though???”
“We could… have it on the side? As a counterbalance thing?”
Their arm twitched towards the fruit, but immediately stopped as Pitch asserted control.
“Not happening. We’re getting the spiced sausage.” she said.
Again their arm shifted a hair, before Wynne pulled it down.
“No. Definitely not that either,” she said.
“What? Why?” Pitch was giving her best indignant scowl, but Wynne managed to flatten it into a faint quirk of the lips.
“We know how this place does their sausage. I think when Alphinaud takes a bite of this stuff he’s going to keel over dead on the spot.”
“Yeah, well, it’ll be a learning experience. Not my fault he’s got a cat’s tongue.”
“He’s – what?” Wynne regained full control over her face just in time for it to shift into a look of bewilderment.
“You know, can’t take spicy food. Is that – actually, is that not an Eorzean expression? Where’d I get that…?”
“Is… everything alright, Miss Fey?” said the grocer, making a valiant effort to hide her concern.
The two froze for a moment, before Wynne scrambled to take over their body and force herself back into a more neutral pose. It almost looked natural.
“Oh, n-nothing, sorry! It’s just, er, we’ve been–” Pitch grabbed hold of the sentence in progress and jerked it to the side– “the Scions have been under a lot of stress lately and it’s kind of wearing on u– me. Bit distracted.” Pitch buried her head in her hands as Wynne continued attempting to look relaxed.
Thankfully the grocer seemed to believe her, or at least had a better poker face than they did. “Oh, I understand. Big hero like you’s got a lot more on her plate than us smallfolk do. Take your time!”
They nodded and went back to letting their body stare into space. “Uuuugh. Thanks, Pitch,” said Wynne, doing the mental equivalent of flopping into a chair.
“We should just tell these people. About us.” said Pitch.
Wynne bolted upright again. “What? No! They’ll – we’ve been over this!”
“Scions took it well enough, and half of them barely knew you before. Why not your hometown where everyone loves you?”
“Because I…” Wynne searched around for the right words. “They love me because I’m their pillar. Their best self. I need to be someone they can lean on, someone they can see themselves becoming. I need to be –”
“Normal?” scoffed Pitch. “Because this ‘normal’ you go on about is a pretty miserable thing to be. We’ve been over that too. At length. I stabbed you about it.”
“It’s not – I’m not being that anymore. You’re right. You were absolutely right. But I still need to give them something that’s not… too far away from that.”
“And that means lying to everyone we meet forever, does it?”
“Look, I–”
“Hells with it,” said Pitch, out loud. She flung their arm out to the side and drew the spell they’d been practicing every night down to their fingertips. Before Wynne had a chance to stop her, droplets of darkness were running down their arm and dripping to the floor, pooling, churning, growing taller, until a shadow stood at their side, its eyes burning like violet coals.
The shadow grabbed the spiced sausage in one hand and plucked Wynne’s purse from her belt with the other. “I’m with her,” she said to the terrified grocer as she counted out their coins.
The grocer looked back and forth between the two of them. “You’re… what? Who…?”
Pitch didn’t respond. Belatedly, Wynne realized that she had left their body in her care again, and the metaphorical ball in her court. She sheepishly lowered her arm and held it with the other. “She’s…” She took a breath. “Well. She’s a… part of me. Er, she’s me, but… also someone else? It’s, uh, kind of complicated.”
“Wynne couldn’t cope with the whole banquet fiasco on her own, so I took over for her. Then I stuck around afterwards.” continued Pitch, sliding her coins across the counter. “That’s the short version, anyway.”
“I… see,” said the grocer in her most measured tone. “And you’re… okay with this arrangement?” She glanced up at Wynne. “She’s not… hurting you or anything?”
“No!” Wynne replied, before catching herself. She took a moment to think. “No, not at all. She’s…”
She looked over at her shadow, a gentle smile spreading across her face.
“Pitch is a handful sometimes. A lot of the time. But I wouldn’t give her up for anything.”
The grocer shared her smile. “Well. That’s a relief, then. I’m glad you’re happy, Miss Fey.” She scooped up the coins and leaned forwards onto the counter. “A living shadow, huh… Big world out there, isn’t it?”
“It sure is,” Wynne replied, waving as she turned to leave. Pitch handed her the sausage as she flowed back into their body.
“See? No problem!” said Pitch, releasing her grip on the spell and settling back into a comfortable corner of their mind.
“You could have given me some warning,” said Wynne.
“Yeah, but then you would have stopped me, and then you’d keep on being anxious about this for no good reason.”
“I–” Wynne fumbled around for a counterpoint before coming back empty-handed. “...Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Oh, gods, I’m gonna have to tell my family about you at some point.”
Pitch grinned from ear to ear, an expression mirrored on their physical body. “We’re going to tell our family about me.”
It took another hundred paces or so for Wynne to realize what she was carrying away from the shop.