It had been years since the Great Shift. Elio had started going by Elle and began using she/her pronouns. Embracing life as a woman hadn’t been too bad. Though he supposed being a skinny and attractive woman helped.
But one day, an older, overweight middle aged woman approached him. She had clearly been running to try to catch up with him.
“I never thought I’d see it again,” The woman said before adding, “That’s my body.”
Elle was quite shocked. She had never expected to meet the original owner of her body. But she greeted the woman with a pleasant, “Hello.”
“Have you seen the reports? The government has a program. We can swap back to normal. We can get our bodies back.”
Elle had seen the news, but she had ignored it because it wasn’t really a possibility for her. “But that’s not my original body. I was...someone else.”
“Oh,” The woman replied, not realizing she didn’t experience a simple one-to-one swap like most people, “But we can still sign up. You can still give me my body back!”
Elle sighed, knowing this was going to be tough for this woman to hear, “I know the program. We both have to agree to it. And I really...I don’t want to. My original body died in the Shift, and I’ve gotten really used to this one. You can’t ask me to give it up. I’ve had to for so many years now; it just feels like mine.”
“But it’s not! It’s mine!”
“Actually, as long as I’m in it...it IS mine!”
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