Shards of Kairos

XIV - Fethi The Conqueror

"Julian will be angry enough that I told Evie..." Rei said to Mitch. "It's personal."

"I hear you." Mitch said, briefly raising his hands. "I'm going to head back and hold down our base of operations."

"Thanks Mitch." Evie said, putting a hand on his arm. "For being understanding. Call me if anything happens. Anything suspicious. Okay?"

"I will. Let me know the same."

"I will." Evie assured him.

When Mitch was gone, Rei nodded Evie out of the room, to the personal dinning room behind the kitchen that they'd all had their first serious conversation in about the Blight, the Crystals, and the mirrors to a whole other dimension. The style distinctly Japanese, it had a long table with pillows on the floor and screened windows and doors. Evie gratefully accepted the cup of tea handed to her, kneeling on a few pillows after taking her shoes off by the door. And she tried to settle her concern, the uncomfortable fluttering in her stomach, but she didn't manage to quell much.

Rei joined Evie, sitting close by this time instead of directly across from her and she looked... hesitant. "You don't seem like the person to judge outright..."

"I'm not." Evie told her immediately, "But what does this have to do with Julian?"

"He explained that... his dimension is a mirror world to earth, yes?"

Evie nodded. "But not much. He said everything is reverse to earth. Backwards. Like the writing."

"Right..." Rei hesitated and Evie frowned.

"Rei?" Evie pressed.

"Everything is reversed." Rei met her eyes carefully. "Even gender."

Evie struggled to find words. So she tried for repeating ones already said. "Gender?"

"There are three genders on Kairos. Male, female, and zeimale. Ying and yang-"

"And the gray in-between." Evie finished, struggling to adapt to all this new information. If she was wondering just how Kairos was so different, where and how Julian was 'alien' - this was apparently it or at least a massive example. But Evie hadn't been expecting anything like this. How could she have? "So Julian is...?"

"Male."

Evie let out a breath reflexively, without knowing where that response even came from.

"But not in our sense." Rei continued with the same hesitance. "Everything is reversed. White is white and black is black but the meaning is reversed. White is hardness. Black is softness." Rei hesitated, reaching out over the table, but only just stopped herself from putting a hand on Evie's arm. Instead, her hand found the table. "Everything is that way."

Evie's mouth parted in something like shock and disbelief at the rush of thoughts that came to her, all of a sudden. Rei was watching her like she was waiting intently for Evie to connect the dots and Evie wasn't even sure how she managed. "Women are men... And men are the women."

Evie set down her tea cup before she dropped it. "What are you trying to say? That Julian is a ... that Julian is actually a woman?"

Rei actually nodded and Evie wasn't sure why that small gesture was more shocking than everything else. "Females are the dominant gender on Kairos."

Evie momentarily felt like she was adrift on a massive ocean tide.

In her stunned silence, Rei spoke in somewhat of a rush. "We have a lot of misconceptions about gender. Kairos never did. Males aren't perceived as weak in the same ways we might perceive our females as weak. Actually, the males on Kairos were held in very high regard in comparison. No one has ever had to fight for equality-"