"That's me," says a girl who...sort of looks a little young to be in college?

Good question! Let's find out.

"Baby face or skipped a few grades?"

"The latter. I'm sixteen."

"Kudos." She looks at her new roommate's half of the room. "Big music fan? Is that...every single Elvis album?"

"Mhm. Sometimes I find an artist and they just sort of...remind me. Of stuff. And I go a little overboard."

"Am I criticizing? No I am not. All hail the King."

...This actually prompts her to crack a smile.

"So where's your family from, d'you know? I couldn't figure out from the name. Names."

Her expression shutters again. "It's a me name."

"...You changed it? I thought you couldn't do that 'till you were eighteen."

"I had Mother's consent."

"...And your dad?" she asks, curiosity getting the better of common sense.

"My parents are divorced. Mother has custody," she says, her face perfectly neutral.

"Should I just not ask about your family?"

"I don't mind if you ask about my sister."

"Sorry, I shouldn't have pried. Hey, if it helps, I have no idea who my dad is, my mom had a one-night stand and then surprise! So tell me about your sister."

"...Her name's Imliss. Imliss Zavari-Lessnerai. She's starting at MIT, now."

"Wow. Congrats to you both! So is she your older sister or even more of a prodigy than you?"

"We're twins."

"Lucky, I always wanted a twin."

"I'm very lucky to have her, yes."

"Sounds like a story."

"Yes. Several, actually, but I don't want to tell any of them."

"Should I just stop asking questions?"

"No, you're fine, I don't mind the asking as long as you don't push when I don't want to answer, which you haven't been."

"Good. Well, I'm Daphne White, as I'm sure you've guessed, your fellow future biologist. What made you pick the field?"

"I want to cure aging."

"Huh! Think you can?"

"I think I'm not willing to trust that someone else will, and if no one does I'm going to die in less than a dozen decades, so I had damn well better try."

"I think there's something to be said for making the best of the life you've got--I just think Biology's fascinating, myself, don't have a specific project in mind--but I can respect that viewpoint."

"I'm glad. It would probably get awkward before the year was up if you already thought I was crazy."

"...Does that happen to you a lot?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You'll see soon enough."

"If you say so. Your life sounds kind of depressing."

"Things used to be nice."

"I'm sorry about whatever happened to change that."

"Thanks."

"Maybe college will help. New faces, new sights, no one who knows your embarrassing childhood anecdotes the way only someone who was there can--a fresh start. And this place is utterly gorgeous, too--and it's really close to the ocean, I have feelings about the ocean."

"Oh?"

"I guess it's kind of weird, I just--feel the way about oceans that really religious people feel about church, sometimes."

"...That is weird," she says, relaxing a little bit. "One of the reasons people think I'm crazy is because I apologize to bees when they sting me. Not that that happens often, but."

"That's adorable."

"I thought so too. Picked up the habit from--someone else. But a lot of people--well, it probably wouldn't have meant much if they hadn't already thought I was a little off in the head, but since they did it reinforced it."

"Sounds like a decent chunk of your problem is that you've spent your life around people who suck."

"Most people do."

"A lot of 'em are really great, when you give them a chance, but I can hardly blame you for not, under the circumstances."

"I don't exactly blame them for thinking I'm crazy. I just."

"Do you want a hug?"

"Yes please."

Hug. "I don't think you're crazy. I bet I won't either, I bet you're weird and fun and possibly kind of depressing and I bet a lot of people think that adds up to crazy but I don't, I promise."

"...We'll see." But her doubts don't stop her from leaning into hug.

Well, she certainly doesn't call her crazy, or act like she thinks it, at any time over the next few weeks. In fact, Idaia's actions pretty consistently support Daphne's proposed alternate hypothesis. She joins an archery club (which she is surprisingly good at) and a krav maga group (which she is scarily focused at) and listens to music in a vaguely maudlin fashion (Daphne hadn't even known it was possible to listen to some of those songs without dancing at least a little, let alone in a maudlin fashion). Once she starts crying when Daphne starts singing along, and waves her off with "you reminded me of something" when she stops in alarm.

And one night a few weeks in Daphne wakes up in the middle of the night to a room at subzero temperatures.

Idaia's curled up and whimpering, and her lips and cheeks are blue and she looks like she's been cold for longer than the few moments since the temperature in the room plummeted.

Shit. Okay, get the door open--whatever malfunction of the heating system caused this is only in their room apparently, good, she doesn't have to drag her out of the building--she hoists her roommate bodily, blankets and all, with some slight difficulty but not as much as one might expect from someone carrying an all-but-full-grown woman. Daphne's stronger than she looks. Out into the hallway--she's freezing, what the hell, the room wasn't that cold for very long--and then Idaia's stirring in her arms and the cold recedes a little and by the time she's gotten her to the floor lounge where there's a couch she can dump her she's basically awake and basically a temperature that doesn't have Daphne afraid for her life.

"What..."

"Something happened with our thermostat, I woke almost immediately--I think I did anyway, but you were way worse affected than me--I was scared--it was below freezing in there, one or both of us could have died if I didn't wake up, I don't know how you slept through it."

"I have reasons. I don't think you're likely to start being able to sleep through that, just wake me up if it happens again and we'll be fine."

"It had better not happen again. But I don't think it will, I haven't heard anyone else complaining about something like that happening."

She shrugs. "Just in case."

"Fair enough, I guess. I'm going to go back and fetch some more bedding, and probably shut the door--the problem seems to be isolated to our room, no point in chilling the rest of the building if we can help it."

But when she goes back the room is barely chilly. Whatever malfunction of thermostat occurred appears to have departed as swiftly as it arrived. She comes back and reports this. "I'd rather stay out here the rest of the night, though, just in case."

"I don't expect that to help anything in particular, but if it makes you feel better."

"If you're going back I will, since I'm the one who's likely to wake up and get us both out of there, but yes, I'd rather."

"Okay." She doesn't have a hard time falling back asleep on the couch.

Daphne reports the incident to Residence Life, who find absolutely nothing weird about their room's heating or ventilation or anything like that. She decides she's confident enough to go back to sleeping there, and doesn't exactly forget about the incident--it was pretty memorable--but moves on without issue. Her roommate continues to be endearingly weird and periodically depressing, she learns more about the kinds of things she enjoys doing with college-related freedom (these include sex. She always insists on going back to the other person's room, when that happens, because sock on the knob or not it would feel wrong to risk being caught en flagrante by her underage roommate) and socializes and makes friends of varying levels of closeness.

And then about a month later it happens again.

"S-sorry," Idaia chatters once she's been dragged from the room again.

"I'm not sure how you're imagining this could conceivably be your fault. This is really weird, this has happened twice now and I don't think I've heard of it happening at all anywhere else on campus, maybe I should ask some people--I'm really not sure how you get that dramatic a temperature change in the first place--I'm going to make Residence Life look at our room again."

"If you really want to I won't stop you," she sighs.

"This has happened twice now, and only in our room, it can't be a coincidence."

"I don't think it's a coincidence but I also don't really think it's worth bothering Residence Life over, especially since they didn't find anything last time."

"You seem weirdly vulnerable to this. I don't want you to get hurt."

"Lots of people have wanted me not to get hurt, and it hasn't done me a bit of damn good so far," she snaps.

"I'm sorry you've been hurt. I mean it. And I'll listen if you want me to and mind my own business if you don't. But you can't just stop taking care of yourself because you've been hurt in the past."

"I said I won't stop you."

"...Fine," Daphne says. This is apparently the best she's going to get, at least at three in the morning.

Daphne makes Residence Life look at their room again the next day. Residence Life continues not to find anything, and is in fact increasingly confident that what Daphne's describing is impossible. Daphne bitches about Residence Life's competence or lack thereof in multiple social contexts.

When it happens again, six weeks later, she feels more irritated and resigned than panicked.

Idaia has frost crystals collecting on her. Nothing else in the room does.

What the...

...

Instead of picking her up and carrying her out of the room, Daphne shakes her awake where she is.

The frost crystals dissolve. Not just dissolve, sublimate, leaving no moisture behind. The temperature in the room begins rising, not returning immediately to its original state but not held at a deadly chill either.

Daphne looks at Idaia.

Daphne opens the door to let the cold air out.

Daphne says, "I apologize for not taking your apology seriously last time this happened. What the fuck."

"That," she sighs, "would be the real reason people think I'm crazy."

"Can you not control this at all to prove it's real?"

"I could prove it's real. Then what? I could win the Randi Prize, I guess, but I don't want the kind of attention being one of only two magic users in the world would bring me. And just because I can do magic does not, in fact, prove the rest of it."

"The rest of it?"

"The reason I can use magic is that I came to this universe from one where anyone can, via an accident involving a giant snake, into a civilization that existed I don't even know how long but demonstrably before recorded history, died, and then reincarnated sixteen years and some ago."

"Huh."

"Still don't think you're crazy."

"Oh. Good."

"My sister and I reincarnated. I'm pretty sure I'm never going to see any of the rest of them again."

"How do you know?"

"They weren't human. They were immortal and fast and strong and beautiful and they had the most amazing singing voices--they were the Eldar. Humanity--humanity started after I died, the world was so different back then, the only reason I'm sure this is the same world is that a literal evil god had prophecies about humanity--all cherry-picked to be awful, we recognized it as our species despite the fact that the one that depicted the Holocaust was fairly typical. Anyway. I don't know how human souls work or how we're alive but they have something else, and my--the ones I loved best--they swore an oath--they can do that, make metaphysically binding oaths--if they died they're not coming back. And they died, the world wouldn't look like it does if they had lived."

"...I'm sorry."

"I was married. I am married, my wedding vows didn't say 'till death do us part,' they said forever. I want my husband back. I want my family back, my in-laws welcomed me with open arms and I loved them too and my only hope of seeing any of them again is to somehow fix aging and get stronger at magic than anyone in my birth universe ever did and I don't think I can do that but I have to try."

"If you can find a good angle, I'll help, I don't want to die either. And I want you to be okay."

"What's the point of coming back if I'm just going to die again, slowly while my body wilts around me."

"...I mean, most peoples' lives aren't meaningless."

"Yeah, but people don't just--come back, as a matter of course. Why me instead of someone brand-new or someone who wouldn't be disappointed by the span of a whole 'nother lifespan?"

"Maybe because you're going to fix it."

"That would be nice, but somehow I doubt the powers that be agree with my definition of fixing things, or they would have done it."

"We'll just have to fix it anyway."

"I sure as hell plan to try."

"Good. Hey, I know this does all sound crazy, but I believe you. And that means this is the most significant thing I could do with my life, basically. This is the kind of thing novels are written about, and I intend to be a major character, not that one bitch at the beginning who provides another emotional hurdle for Our Heroine to clear and never shows up again."

"Heh."

"I guess if you're actually old and married I can be less careful about not exposing you to things I think it's a bad idea to expose underage people too but I don't really want to explain the change of heart."

"...How innocent do you think an actual sixteen-year-old would be?"

"I'm not suggesting I should refrain from cracking dirty jokes around you but I do think it would have been meaningful that I tend to spend the night in the other person's room when I'm doing that if you were really sixteen."

She snorts. "I'm pretty sure the operative difference between sixteen and eighteen on that level is the law, and legally I'm sixteen."

"I'd say maybe I should look up exactly what the age of consent is in California and how it interacts with age difference and stuff but I'm not exactly hanging out with any other sixteen-year-olds and you're straight even if you weren't married."

"Yes, because that's the only reason I don't want to sleep with you," she snorts.

"I didn't say that! But because of those facts, the question of whether you'd want to if they weren't true is irrelevant."

"Fair enough, I guess."

"Don't worry, I'm not about to come down with Nice Guy syndrome or anything like that."

"Good. That would be prohibitively awkward, and then I'd have to get a different roommate next year and hope she reacted as well to the periodic freezing episodes as you do."

"And that would be tragic."

"Well, it would be inconvenient."

A few days later Idaia vanishes for the weekend.

"So, I'm guessing that was, like, a weekend hunting trip or something," Daphne says at lunch on Monday.

"How'd you guess?"

"Every communal freezer in the dorm being suddenly filled with frozen meat. I didn't know you hunted."

Idaia glances around, determines that no one is visibly paying attention to them, lowers her voice, and says "My husband taught me. I'm nowhere near as good as he was, but--good enough."

"You realize like at least half of that's gonna get stolen, right?"

"I don't care as long as it's getting eaten and not wasted. Wild pigs are a horrifically destructive invasive species, and I enjoy hunting; I can go out and bag another one when this one's gone."

"So I should put out some word of mouth that anyone who wants some can have some?"

"Why not."

"Sweet."

"No, probably savory," Idaia deadpans.