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If I did this right, your body is real.
You'll need to eat three times a day.
You'll want to stay up all night and read, but seven hours of sleep is the minimum, otherwise we get moody.
His words echoed in her mind in the morning. Her teacher, the man responsible for the gift of her life, and everything awful besides. The recent days had been better, after the ruinous end of the Echoverse and him. More warm smiles, trepidatious but eager to get to know her--the real her, unbidden by dark tasks--and time away from school. Tam was unsure if she could ever re-enroll at Strixhaven, and was content to learning the answer at bay for some time yet.
In the meantime...food.
She had obeyed her teacher's instructions ever since her creation, although she saw it as a bother. Quick toasted bread with her coffee, a fruit here or there if she was feeling bold, a smidge of dessert pastry if her friends were offering. It was little wonder she kept a trim figure at Strixhaven when so many of her alumni complained about some 'freshman fifteen' phenomena. Eating while reading meant crumbs and grease stains and other distractions kept falling in the pages, and Tam knew which half of the equation she would rather remove from the problem.
Though after everything, the wholeness she felt in her being after her teacher's end, she was much more open to trying new things.
Ranna (Tam had to work against the urge to call her Mom, a thoroughly inappropriate title to her) seemed to enjoy the task of introducing a new life to the wonders of food. Tam would sit at the kitchen table, fighting the urge in her newfound mind to finish another chapter in her latest book of theorems to stay respectful to her host. At the table, in a high chair and thoroughly enjoying crashing toys together with a panoply of his own sound effects was Loot. If anything, Tam admired how unaffected he seemed by the tragedies surrounding everyone in her vicinity. Most of it could be ascribed to his youth, as an infant of his indeterminate species, but that didn't mean she could not learn something from it. If the children were this carefree, perhaps we ought to follow their example.
After a time, Tam's plate was filled so thoroughly she could scarcely see the white of the porcelain beneath the food. Crispy bacon, itself a commodity on Vryn these days, heavily buttered toast, eggs the size of her palm, and a tall pitcher of squeezed orange juice, all with Ranna's promise she could eat as much as she liked.
"It's never any trouble." She insisted.
Tam had little reason to doubt her, and every reason to thank her. Tastes were richer to her now across the board. The salty bacon, the bitterness of her morning coffees, aromas of fried eggs and juice playing preview to the feasts that fulfilled her day in and day out. Now, more than ever, she felt more alive in this series of sensory experiences.
Of course, the problem with this came later.
Nobody told her what would happen if she got so enthusiastic about food for so long.
She felt lethargic. Bloated. As though she were wading in the mud, back in the myriad swamps of Arcavios for another field study. A great heaviness in her steps that made things hard to traverse, even though she was walking on solid cobbles and brick, and not muddy bogwater. Her clothes felt like a vice all of a sudden, constricting around her like the Multiverse's slowest python, forcing her into adjusting her top and tugging her bosom to free some air. It all made more sense when she got a better look in the mirror, after a quick wash.
Her reflection, green skin, white hair that tapered down to red at the end of the braids, piercing eyes that could only petrify mentally. Her hand came up and brushed at her cheek, poking inward. It rippled, ever so slightly.
Soft. Like a pillow.
Her face was rounder. Tam jostled her chin and felt it wobbling as well, pressing a thumb against her plumper lips to see its reaction as well. She took a step back, seeing as much of her figure as the mirror would allow, turning and shifting to observe herself in detail. All of her was rounder. Significantly so.
Her stomach was beginning to hang freely, if not for her tunics and robes that tried to constrict it. She traced stretch marks along her waist down to the hips, and then past those and behind her to her rear. All the sharp and stiff wooden chairs of the house felt more comfortable lately, which she was now realized was not her growing more used to them--just her growing. Her thighs were thick and soft, rolling downwards like heavy brushstrokes. She was built like a pear, she was realizing. Tam didn't think she could be built like anything other than just...herself.
There was a knock at the bathroom door.
"Tam?" Ranna said. "Is something wrong? You've been in there for a time."
"Sorry, Ranna. Just...noticing something."
There was a moment's pause on the other side.
"May I come in and help you with it?"
"You may." Tam relented.
The door opened, and Ranna joined her. She took a glance at Tam, then to the mirror above the sink beside. It must have been her motherly intuition, or just the smarts that eventually passed onto her own teacher, to deduce it so easily.
"Taking stock of yourself lately, then?" She asked.
Tam bit her lip, and nodded. "It's going to sound so stupid, knowing everything that I know and studying everything I've studied, but I didn't really...know that this was part of the package of being alive." She grabbed at her belly, jostling it and dropping it against her thighs.
Ranna laughed at that.
"Never could have imagined it for Jace, I'll tell you. That boy would do anything before he sat down for any meals past what he absolutely needed to finish whatever he was working on..." The healer sighed wistfully. "Is it a problem?"
Tam bit her lip, lost in thought at the question.
"I don't know. I haven't really been heavy for that long."
"How does it feel right now?"
She took another glance at her reflection, the soft shape of her puffy cheeks and bulging belly. The concept of herself, only greater. More robust.
Plus, more food.
"I think...I like it." She said, with a slight smile.
"Glad to hear it." Ranna smiled back, and patted her back. "I suppose you'll be glad to hear that I've started lunch then. All your favorites, a few new things."
Tam's stomach growled in anticipation, and she chuckled in kind.
"I can't wait."