"Caoimhin"

I was chatting up the soul of a pretty Romanian girl when the dove came. The girl was a new arrival, watching with stunned eyes the sights of Heaven around her. "They are just so cute when they first pass into the gates," I thought to myself. Though she had lived as a mortal to a ripe old 96 years, I couldn't help but call her a girl: this was very obviously her first afterlife, since she was nothing but smiles to the demons and curtsies to the archangels whizzing by on Heavenly business. Her afterlife appearance agreed with me: her true soul self looked all of sixteen. I had a grandmother like her once; we still read the Sunday paper together sometimes.

The dove pecked my arm. Hard. Despite both my arm and the beak being incorporeal, the damn thing still stung. "Alright, fine! Give me the message you stupid bird." (I would pay a small price for calling it stupid, maybe an Earthly year materializing miraculous rainbows, but that was fine: I had eternity afterall.) The message boomed in my mind, an infinitesimal moment of infinite pain, followed a second later by an ineffable understanding. They were always like that. And like the last ten times, I sent up a prayer that the unseen God would learn from humanity and set up an email system.

The dove flew off. My head still throbbing, I made my way towards the Tree of Life, and then took the last turn into the Treasury of Souls. The Guf, where Gabriel awaited.

"Thank you for coming, Caoimhin."

"Gabriel, we see each other every Tuesday on karaoke night." We really did: Gabriel's rendition of Invisible Touch is legendary. "Did you have to send the dove? It's going to take weeks for the headache to fade, and all just for the epiphany that my destiny is tied to the Guf, which I already knew because I have in fact been born a few times." My first life was sometime around 850 A.D. as mortals measured time, a swaggering teenage warrior who died in a battle over sheep rights in Ireland. My next few lives went much the same way.

"This one won't be like any of your other incarnations. Take a look."

Gabriel and I walked over to the scrying pool and peered in. Dark waves mixed with white froth in a seemingly random pattern. ("Please God, just walk in to a Best Buy sometime," I prayed wholeheartedly.) A full minute passed while the swirls and whorls resolved, and then I saw her. A little girl, perhaps six years old, with hair cut unusually short, tossing uneasily in her bed with troubled dreams.

My incorporeal heart skipped a beat. There was something about her. Her aura was bright pink and yellow: she was the bubbly innocent sort. I imagine the bright-souled Romanian girl I was just talking to had started out just like her. But I looked closer and saw the darker colors on the edges: something was beginning to eat at her soul.

"Who is she? Am I about to go in, will she be my sister? Is that the reason for the urgency?" It would explain the dove. We have to be careful with time in Heaven: if Gabriel had waited for karaoke this girl would have aged forty years, far too long to be my sister. "Or will she be my mother?" Gabriel and I could talk a bit, have a nice dinner, and then she would be about the right age to have a baby.

"She won't be your sister, or mother. You are going to be her for a while."

"I'm going to WHAT?!" I was suddenly in immortal panic, racking my mind over my long list of minor sins. Was this my punishment for calling that dumb dove stupid? God might very well have sent that damn bird to me knowing full well I'd sin, and then have my karma ready for instant justice, a closed time loop. He's done that before. Predestination has no limits.

I was very afraid. Despite popular myths, souls can't just jump into bodies willy-nilly. The few times we did -- what mortals called changelings -- were carefully engineered interventions to keep the supernatural cosmos in balance. The original souls were compensated for it in their next lives, typically with divine serenity: many end up becoming holy figures. But we only do that for babies, long before they can establish a clear identity. This girl was walking, talking, reading: she and everyone around her would know instantly that something was wrong. Sending me into a person this old was insanely dangerous. Even if they didn't detect me, didn't try to "exorcise" me in a sadistic ritual, just carrying two souls around could kill her, or me. And I mean really kill me: a few changeling souls went in too late, and never came back.

Gabriel saw my panic. He turned to fully face me, his expression solemn. His wings spread out, he began glowing softly, and became the holy and regal Archangel Gabriel whose beauty blinds mortal eyes. He peered through mine and spoke directly to my soul.

"Be not afraid. This is not punishment. We picked you specifically. Her body is... not typical of most girls. And in her culture, she cannot yet be who she must. She has been praying desperately for help. And so: we are sending her... you."

His words echoed like thunder throughout me. Time stopped. I stood transfixed as Gabriel's eyes glowed white-hot to match his raiment. An unearthly wind rose around us, swirling faster and faster until we stood in the eye of a supernatural hurricane. Power crescendoed out with the sound of a million voices singing, and I felt my soul join in the music.

Surrounded by and infused with holy light, Gabriel reached out his hand to touch me, at the last moment cracking a small smile.

"Until we meet again, old friend."

...

I awoke to the sound of a box fan blowing warm humid air across me. I tried moving a bit, but was still dumbstruck from the light. My insides were a jumble.

Angel wings. Light. A song. A girl. A girl?

That's when I felt the body, and sadly understood.

...

I had to move fast, faster than I had ever raced before. I had only moments before my immortal memories would be lost again.

I ransacked her mind, running completely on instinct. Locking away her dreams, putting up walls of anger and shame around her innocence, amplifying the neural circuits for math and logic, closing her third eye. As I worked, her aura shuddered, stretched, and finally shattered: the pinks and yellows gave way to blood red streaks over black oblivion.

I felt her soul cry out in anguish, the pleading of a little girl to stay in the world. My heart broke alongside hers, but it was necessary. With the last echo of my immortal power, I wrapped her up in layer after layer of misdirection and confusion.

...

All in all, it was less than one second as mortals measure it. But it felt like a week. A week to break her mind and cripple her soul.

I cursed God then. I didn't care how much Hell He would put me through. He was a right bastard for doing this to me. To her. To us.

My power gone for this lifetime, I began drifting off. My thoughts wandered...

...Souls come in lots of flavors: big, small, loud, quiet, serene, cantankerous. Bodies too: tall, short, brown, pink, hairy, smooth. The interplay between soul, body, and mind is literally infinitely complex: only God can fully sort it out, and He hasn't given us any hints.

Souls aren't really man or woman, yet there is something about male and female that permeates them: yin and yang. Most "man" souls will lean to competition and battle, yet will be fine even in female bodies: just a bit aggressive, or a less feminine style, but nothing too hard to handle. I was a woman myself a couple times. The same goes with "woman" souls in male bodies: they are usually fine, often leaning to being nurturers and teachers.

But this girl's body was different. Even though her mind was right for her soul, her body seemed to know she was a woman and didn't like it one bit. It distorted her vision, played with her memories, and continually told her in whatever way it could that she was the broken one.

Worst of all, it had a point. Literally. It had a penis.

...

"Kevin? Honey, time to get up!"

I heard Mom in the kitchen yelling through the hallway. I was groggy and cranky. I didn't sleep much, some kind of weird religion movie dream. I rolled over and thought about God. Again.

It seemed like the more I prayed at night, the worse I felt. I used to intensely feel like He was out there, but today for the first time I felt ... nothing, really.

I was still chubby. I was still a little upset. A little? No, I think it was a lot more than a little. I wasn't a baby anymore, it was time to grow up. To get serious.

The teacher said there were twelve grades of school to get through. The first one was bad enough. Eleven more of this? Just kill me now.

...

I put away the picture album. As always, I resisted my intense desire to burn it. At least I had managed to stay out of my high school yearbooks: four years in a row avoiding picture day, impressive if I do say so myself.

I had been such an ugly fat child. Then an awkward and ugly fat teenager. I managed to get a little bit of muscle on me in my twenties, but never held the weight off for longer than a few months. I couldn't put my finger on what stopped me from just finishing up and really getting fit. It never was just one thing though: failing classes, a career cratering, having to move yet again. Now I am resigned to middle age. I'll look like Dad soon enough. It didn't look bad on him, but on me it's...intolerable.

Day in, day out, it's all kind of the same.

Some days, some moments are different. I feel like someone else takes over, someone connected to life in a way I don't understand.

There are other things, private things different about me. But I don't have time to worry about that. Let's just get to tomorrow.

...

I have been journaling off and on for years. Today, with trembling hands, I start typing out a new entry:

"So.... am I trans?"

...

I remember the feeling of falling. Darkness. I don't know how long it has been. Minutes? Days?

I try to move, but can't feel my body. Am I breathing? It doesn't feel like it, but I'm not out of breath either. Am I in the hospital?

I can't feel my eyes, yet somehow I perceive a small light in the distance coming toward me. I think it may be a candle at first, but it starts to get bigger and breaks apart into two lights. They glow brighter, and more details resolve: eyes. They are two glowing eyes.

I hear words in my mind: "Caoimhin, welcome back."

Over the next few moments the darkness brightens a little and the eyes dim, and I see a man in a white robe looking directly at me. I see him begin speaking again.

"This one was harder than most. But you did well! Now let's get your memories back in you. I'm sorry to have to do it this way, usually this happens when one dies. But you didn't exactly die this time."

He reached out to me, and I felt a touch. I screamed in agony as memories came rushing in: my first life, the pain of a sword through my gut and a lingering death, time spent in Heaven before the next life. Again and again the cycle of life and death were re-experienced: a thousand years of cuts, broken bones, pregnancy and childbirth, amputated limbs, disease, starvation, and worse. I remembered what it feels like to die and have one's immortal memories return. It was never like this.

...

I was eventually aware of my non-corporeal body. Gabriel was next to me, but we were not in Heaven.

"Where are we?"

"We are... adjacent... to her mind. You were not born, and you did not die, but you spent over thirty years inside her. BEING her."

I thought of the girl. Thirty years? She might be a mother by now. "Can I see her?"

Gabriel smiled. "We thought you would want to. She cannot see us, but she is here."

With that the darkness fully lifted, and I found us in my -- I mean, her -- bedroom. She was hunched over a desk applying nail polish and humming along to music coming from a stereo. It was one of my favorite songs in this life, but it sounded very different to me now. Her hair was longer, past her chin, and straight, streaked with grey. Her face showed a slight stubble, but her eyes were androgynous. She had lost some weight, but had a considerable way to go yet. Small breasts were growing atop more feminine-shaped mounds.

Her aura was a kaleidoscope of colors: still some angry red on sad black, but now also some melancholy blue blended with energetic green, and at the core an abundance of pink pulsing again with the music. I peered inside her mind, and was astonished to see that the layers of misdirection and confusion I had wrapped around her soul were gone! Some memories remained where I had hidden them, but her dreams were free again to roam.

I turned to Gabriel. "She's transitioning?"

He nodded. "She is. She is only a few months in, but in a few years most people will never know she had been born in a male body."

I felt an old anger rise in me. "Why did He do it? Why put her, and me, through all this? What could possibly justify making her body betray her soul?"

Gabriel's smile vanished. Coldly he said, "You know it is not our place to ask that question. Many like her have had it far worse." I remembered the story of Job. The real Job we talk about in Heaven, not the watered-down version of the Bible. I shuddered at the thought of her being tested like that.

A little more gently Gabriel added, "Few of them had help to get them to a place like this. Where the body and mind can be mended, and make a brighter future."

He was right, few had. Most people like her knew what they were early in life, and had to live decades consciously aware that their body and mind were at an impasse. But a changeling soul, sent to keep her safe through ignorance of her own fundamental truth, and then leaving when she could finally take action? I had never heard of such a thing.

But it was clear that Gabriel had. He had that same smug look at the end of karaoke Tuesdays, when his Invisible Touch inevitably wins the crowd over.

"So He does this often I take it?"

Gabriel saddened. "I would rather He never needed to, but yes. Some of them get a guardian, but it comes at a terrible price." He was right: depression, suicide attempts, failed relationships, the pain of not knowing what was hurting her.

Yet, she endured. I saw more of her memories and my eyes widened in awe. "She knew I was there! She hatched a plan to break free, to repair her life and take it back on her own terms!" I followed the threads leading to the trap she laid for me: a dozen small habits I didn't understand, conversations that turned on tone more than words, directing my curiosity further afield until I finally asked the question that would unbind me from her.

Though it took almost forty years, this six-year-old girl outsmarted a thousand-year-old warrior. I was stunned. Yet also immensely proud for her.

...

"She must be very important, to go to all this trouble for her."

Gabriel's smile came back. Then widened to a grin.

"Every last one of them is very important."

"Caoimhim"