I didn’t know any better. How could I? This isn’t the kind of thing they teach you in astronomy classes, after all.

The total solar eclipse of 2024 was a date I’d had marked in my calendar for months. My boyfriend Steve and I were huge astronomy nerds who’d bonded intellectually, emotionally, and, once under the high school bleachers in 2017, physically, over our mutual interest in solar eclipses. We missed going to the 2017 eclipse in person because our parents didn’t trust us to travel together (in retrospect, good call on that, parents). In 2024, however, we were grown-ass adults and could make the trip to Dayton ourselves for the eclipse that April, especially since my college BFF Sally and her husband Stan lived there.

The drive from California was long - or at least it was for Steve, since he insisting on driving the whole trip. I contributed by not criticizing his driving or navigation, a task I was only able to accomplish by spending most of the trip exchanging smutty space memes with Sally.

When we got to Dayton the night of April 7, it was already fairly crowded with out-of-town visitors from the south, and the city was busy getting public parks ready for eclipse viewing the next afternoon. I felt bad for any poor sucker stuck looking at the eclipse elbow-to-elbow with God knows who during something like this; we were going to be watching from the spacious luxury of Sally’s back yard.

At Sally’s house, Steve and Stan, knowing Sally and I, exchanged brief greetings before heading to bed. Sally and I, of course, shared some wine and caught up on each other’s lives in person. Despite clearly having a topic of conversation on her mind, she showed excellent restraint and waited for me to bring up that since Steve and I lost our virginities to each other during the last eclipse, and we’d been together for the seven years since, I was thinking that the eclipse’s corona wouldn’t be the only diamond ring I’d get excited by on this trip. It was a romantic dream, but since I’m not often prone to that kind of emotional flight of fancy, I allowed it to myself and Sally indulged me.

The next morning, I woke up early despite the wine, the late night conversation, and the plenty of time before the eclipse’s totality at three that afternoon. How could I sleep on this, the day of the event I’d waited nearly twenty years, the majority of my life, to see? Of course, not everyone was excited as I was, so I remained content to put on my handmade “Eclipse Queen” dress (Steve had a matching “Eclipse King” shirt, although his was only store-bought and then embroidered), decorated my nails (blue with a “phases of the eclipse” pattern on each nail), and read until everyone else woke up.

Around noon, Sally and I set to working on snacks while Steve set up his telescope. He, as a space tech nerd, and Stan, as a photography nerd, were excited to use some fancy filters for photography during the totality, but Sally and I preferred to, as we called it in text, “raw dog it with protection” - nothing but eclipse glasses and the atmosphere between us and the main attraction.

At around 2 PM, we headed outside to share some drinks and get glimpses of the moon’s shadow creeping across the sun. We checked in every five minutes or so, taking looks through the properly filtered telescope in between Stan’s commandeering of the scope for test pictures. Steve and I got plenty of pictures of the two of us in our matching outfits, both with and without eclipse glasses, and I subtly tried to feel his pockets for something ring-sized.

All I found was that he was still happy to see me after all these years. Damn. Maybe I was hoping in vain.

Three o’clock came, and I started to spend more time staring into the sky, getting anxious for the totality. It was getting dark, and the local wildlife was starting to get agitated.

It was obvious when the totality began - the sun flashed its first diamond ring effect of the afternoon, and then the corona was barely visible through our filtered eyewear. We let out a collective gasp as the coronal ring flickered in our vision.

It wasn’t enough. I looked at my companions, and saw Sally staring up while Stan and Steve fiddled with the telescope and camera. How could this be enough for them? These glasses dulled the senses; they stopped me from seeing what all the poetry and ancient wonder about solar eclipses was really about.

Before I could think twice about what I was doing, I reached up, removed the protective lenses, and looked directly as the dazzling sun.

Once I glanced at the eclipse, I was caught. I couldn’t, wouldn’t pull my eyes away from the dark orb surrounded by a white, pulsing corona, a crown more majestic than any I could wear as Eclipse Queen. This wasn’t a celestial phenomenon, it was a fucking religious experience, like looking into the singular eye of a hypnotic goddess. Fuck eclipse glasses and shadowboxes and Steve’s fancy telescope, I’ll be happy to stand here and let this new divinity strip the sight from my eyes with her searing wink after she took my measure.

My rapture was interrupted by a sharp pain in my abdomen, like I’d just been elbowed in the gut. My eyes, torn away from my solar worship, fell upon its source - and I gasped.

I had actually been elbowed in the gut, and my best friend’s backyard was gone, replaced by the exact kind of crowded, smelly, polluting, and above all loud festival we’d hoped to avoid by staying in her backyard. Disoriented, I shifted my footing as my assailant glanced at me and mouthed a halfhearted apology, and I heard a crunch sound, as though I’d smashed the remains of something already broken.

I looked down. I couldn’t see what I’d stepped on in the debris on the ground, but my focus was drawn away from it as I stared at my foot - at least, I thought it was my foot.

But before the eclipse, I’d been wearing low heels, not men’s sneakers - nor, as I noticed my leg, had I been wearing pants. I told my body to wiggle my foot, hoping that I had just been confused, but no, that man’s foot responded to my mental command.

Panicking, I looked around, searching for anything that would explain this or, failing that, anything familiar at all, when a hand grabbed my shoulder. I whipped around to face my assailant and looked directly into Steve’s concerned face. “Hey, Ash, are you okay?”

Instinctively, I started to go in for one of my boyfriend’s comforting hugs, but when I saw his shirt, I froze.

According to his shirt, he was no longer an “Eclipse King”. He was an “Eclipse Bro”.

He repeated himself. “Asher. Dude. Are you okay? You’re starting to worry me.”

I noticed a different tone in his voice than I was used to hearing. Not concern - although he’d long learned that I was no wilting flower - but the kind of voice you’d use with a good friend instead of a partner.

I struggled to answer through my panic, managing a brief, “Just… need some water,” noting that, like my legs, my voice had gone off in a very masculine direction, before I staggered off in search of answers or respite.

I found a table with water bottles sponsored by a local hospital right next to the public bathrooms - the first moment of good luck I’d had since the eclipse. I ducked inside the single-stalled, any-gender bathroom and looked in the mirror, staring at the man who looked back at me. He looked like a blond-haired version of my father, with light stubble and bags under his eyes from poor sleep. He wore a shirt matching Steve’s declaring him to be an “Eclipse Bro.” I swore and looked down at my body. I wasn’t surprised to see that I was lacking what breasts and curves I’d had earlier in the day, but I was really frustrated to see that the dress I’d spent the better part of the last month making had been replaced by a cheap t-shirt with “Eclipse Bro” embroidered on it (and not embroidered terribly well).

I checked the pants pockets of the body I’d found myself in. I found a wallet with some credit cards and an ID that matched mine perfectly except for first name, gender, and photograph. I also found Asher’s phone, which unlocked with my new face. I scrolled through photos and texts, trying to piece together what I needed to know about “boy Ash”. In particular, I wondered whether he and Steve had the same kind of relationship that Steve and I had? Was he hoping for a second kind of diamond ring today too?

Nothing in the texts or photos suggested anything other than two good male friends, including - yuck - the way they talked about a couple of the women they knew. Nothing that they’d be embarrassed to have posted on social media, but things I hoped Steve hadn’t texted to his friends about me when we started dating.

There was a loud knock on the door. “Hey, man, lots of us need a turn in there! Did ya fall in?” God bless Midwestern humor.

I collected myself as best I could, washed my hands, and went back to the water table for another drink. Things had cleared out somewhat - plenty of people left as soon as the totality ended, leaving behind this divine experience for the mundanity of their everyday lives. I wasn’t ready to go yet. I grabbed a discarded pair of glasses and looked at the waning eclipse again.

I heard a soft sigh beside me. I looked down, removed the glasses, and saw a short - normal height, I corrected myself, I was now taller - woman about my age, or maybe a little older, wearing cute leggings, a sleeveless t-shirt with the date and image of the 2017 eclipse, and fashionable sunglasses that I could only assume were modified with protective filters given that she was looking at the only partially shadowed sun with them.

I wanted to get to know her better in a way I hadn’t felt since high school - since I first met Steve at Astronomy Club. I didn’t know what Asher truly would have wanted here, but the sudden unfamiliar tightness at the front of my pants gave me a good guess. I owed it to my “twin” to give it my best shot. “Hey. Did you enjoy the show?”

What the fuck was that? Just because this was my first time trying to flirt with a girl or flirt as a boy didn’t mean I had to sound as awkward as a twelve year old boy! I tried to recover with something better, but I had nothing - I just stared at her beautiful face looking upward to the heavens. If this is how hard this was all the time, no wonder all the boys in Astronomy Club who tried to flirt with me - and let’s be clear, it was every boy in Astronomy Club - crashed and burned except for Steve.

My companion, thankfully, either did not notice my existential flirtation crisis or found it endearing. She gave a genuine, blissful smile and turned toward me. “Oh, it was glorious. It’s just as fantastic every time as it was the first time.” Looking me in the face, she gasped. “I love the light in your eyes, by the way.” She lowered her dark glasses, and I was transfixed for the second time that day. In her green eyes, surrounding the pupils, were perfect images of the eclipse’s corona, dancing and sparking the same way the sun had just a brief time earlier.

“Oh my… your eyes…” was all I could think to say.

She smiled again and replied, “Yep, mine too,” and as I wondered what she meant by that, I felt something vibrate against my left thigh. I slapped my leg, wondering what it could be, then I remembered - men’s pants, phone in front pocket.

She looked at my hand. “Do you need to get that?”

As I pulled the phone out of my pocket, I replied, “I desperately hope not.”

Before I could look at the screen, she laughed and said, “If I had to guess, I’d guess that your friend over there,” she pointed in the direction Steve and I had been during the totality, “is asking you if you’ve just found a new ride home. Which you have, fellow traveler,” she added, gazing into my eyes, “if you’d like it.”

I managed to break contact and look at my phone. This mystery woman wasn’t wrong - it was a text from Steve reading, “Did I just lose my driving partner to Sally’s?” He followed this with a sad face emoji, a dancing woman emoji, then an eggplant, a peach, a waving hand, a full moon, a second waving hand, two blue circles with an eggplant between them, two pairs of lips, a pair of dice, deck of cards, and a sun?

Instead of trying to translate… whatever the fuck Man Code Emoji Cryptography that was, I looked in the direction my mystery companion had pointed. Steve was standing there, holding his phone. He raised it in what seemed to be a questioning gesture.

I thought about it for a moment. Two hours ago, I’d have said that getting a ride with someone I’d just met whose name I didn’t even know was a guaranteed one-way trip to becoming an unwilling participant in next year’s true crime podcasts. But two hours ago, I was a woman and less able to fight back because I didn’t outweigh my potential murderer by a hundred pounds and oh my God Ashley she could have a weapon what is wrong with me is this what testosterone poisoning feels like?

I took a deep breath. Another. Yes, she could be the Solar Eclipse Killer in the making. But some of what she said suggested she might have answers to my questions.

Besides, she had those eyes…

I replied to Steve. “Yeah I think I’ve got a ride. See you tonight.” I made an effort to participate in Emoji Cryptography by adding two melons and a baseball bat. Hopefully I hadn’t just told him I planned to use her as a piñata.

His reply came quickly. “Duuuuuuude. Have faith. At least say you’ll see me in the morning.” He added a cross, a key, a belt, two eggs, and bacon.

Half convinced Steve was either sending emojis at random or having a stroke, I put my phone in my pocket. I looked at my mystery date. “Okay, I’m in. By the way, what’s your name?”

She laughed. “Carol.” As we got in her car, she told me, “I know you probably have a lot of questions, but I need you to hold onto them until we get to my apartment. I’ve never driven manual before, and I need to focus on what I’m doing.”

I was confused, but as I started to ask, she cut me off. “Later. Please.”

We rode in silence, barring the occasional curse from Carol and groan of protest from her car as she learned manual transmission the hard way, and I had some time to consider the possibilities of this unfamiliar body and its attached life and gender. I remembered when Steve and I watched a comedy show from Sarah Millican where she solicited ideas from the audience regarding the best things about being a man and the best things about being a woman. I was a bit upset about the answers the men gave for the best parts about being a man, and at Steve for taking their side over mine. “Here’s my list, Steve. One: You can go to the bathroom without finding someone to watch your drink. Two: You can jog with headphones on, at night! Three: Other people at work take your ideas seriously the first fucking time you say them. Four: People don’t roll your eyes at you for speaking up in class. Five: You can get primary author credit for the research you fucking did yourself and get paid like it!”

It was a pretty tense evening in our relationship. He tried to make the point that there were opportunities women had that men didn’t as well, but he couldn’t understand what I was trying to say - that there were very basic things that were good about being a man that these men, and Steve, had never even fucking considered because they thought they were part of the human experience rather than part of the male experience.

“Uh, you okay, champ? You’ve got some really white knuckles there, and I didn’t think my driving was that bad.”

I blinked. I’d been so absorbed in the current implications of a fight we’d had years ago, apparently clenching my fists in the process, that I hadn’t even noticed that the car had stopped. We’d reached Carol’s apartment.

I don’t know what I was expecting inside, but it was not what I found. It was decorated sparsely, with plain furniture and mostly bare walls. “Mostly” because one entire wall of the dining area was covered with a world map dotted with pins. Each pin was attached to a piece of string that led to a piece of card stock with a date and time. I looked over the map, trying to discern a pattern, until I saw a pin in the middle of Ohio with today’s date in it. With that data point, I was able to determine that the other pins corresponded to other solar eclipse places and times - none sooner than today, but plenty later.

Carol had dedicated an entire wall - and apparently her entire decorating budget - to mapping eclipses in space and time. If I’d still had the crown - metaphorically - of Eclipse Queen, I’d have handed it over to Carol right then and there.

I heard Carol enter the room behind me, followed by a breathy, “Whoa… she really did our homework…”

For some reason, that statement snapped me out of my sense of wonder and focused what had seemed “off” about Carol. I turned to her. “Why do you keep seeming so surprised by your own things?  You have a car you don’t know how to drive, despite having clearly driven to the park today. You didn’t seem to know about this eclipse conspiracy board, despite it being in your apartment. There’s something going on here that I don’t think you’re telling me.”

She gave me a confused look, then said, “Hold on just a minute longer. I need to check something.” She ran into her bedroom, and a moment later, I heard her call out to me, “Looks like I lost a couple inches of height this time, but damn did I make up for it on my chest - it’s magnificent. How about you? Lose anything you’ll miss?”

I…. What?

I followed Carol into her room, where I saw her looking in her bathroom mirror, standing on her toes, completely topless. The front of my pants got tight again, and I let out an involuntary groan when I saw her reflection in the mirror. She was right, her chest was indeed magnificent, and it was certainly causing different reactions in me than breasts ever had before.

She called over her shoulder to me again. “What, you’ve never seen tits before?”

“I’ve… never felt this way about them before,” I managed.

She arched an eyebrow and started to turn toward me. “Really? Is this your first travel straight?”

I sighed and turned away. I really needed to talk to her at length about this, because she clearly knew what was going on, but I was not going to be able to do it while staring at her chest. “Well, you asked if I lost anything I’d miss, and today so far…” I started counting on my fingers. “I’ve lost a long-term boyfriend, a lot of hair, two breasts, a vagina…”

“No way - you travelled across genders? I’ve jumped a dozen times and never met anyone who did that! What’s it like?” I heard some movement behind me. “By the way, you can turn around now.”

I tentatively looked her way out of the corner of my eye, turning fully to face her after seeing she’d put on a light sweater. I could still see the indentation of her nipples through the fabric, but that was a me problem, not a her problem. “It’s fucking weird, Carol. It’s like living your whole life driving on one side of the road, then moving somewhere where you’re supposed to just know that you need to drive on the other side. This body follows different rules that it knows, that it expects that I know, and I have to guess at what they are and what I’m supposed to do about it.”

Carol crossed her arms across her chest, seemingly unimpressed. “Well, yeah, we all go through that a little bit with a new body. Is there anything, like, guy-specific?”

I threw my hand up in the air. “Of course there is! No offense to you, but I’ve seen lots of tits better than yours in my life, and I’ve never wanted to know how they felt under my hands before. I’ve been fucking the same guy for seven years, I started my day hoping he’d propose to me, and now I don’t feel anything special about him at all. I feel like I forgot to put a bra on, even though my reasons for needing one are gone, this fucking thing between my legs has a mind of its own, and worst of all, I keep making stupid-ass decisions like going to the apartment of a strange woman who keeps talking about new bodies and ‘trips’ and ‘fellow traveler’ and ‘this time’ like suddenly finding yourself in a new body is normal and I should know what the fuck is going on!”

Carol’s mouth dropped open. “Oh. My. God. This is your first time. I am so sorry, I need to start this all the way over.”

My adrenaline was still running strong. “My first time at what, Carol?”

She grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil. “Okay, I’m going to explain everything the best way I can. Some of us have talked and shared stories, but there isn’t what you’d call a science behind it.” She paused, and asked, “Have you read or seen any science fiction with alternate worlds or multiverses?”

“Yeah, sure, that’s like the entire Spider-Man franchise now.”

“Yes! That’s a great starting point!” Carol stated drawing stick figures on the page. “So in the Spider-Man stories, you got Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, Hobie, Nicolas Cage, and that anime girl with the robot all crossing over from their universe into a different universe. Multiple Spider-People, one place.” She drew a circle around the stick figures.

“But suppose that the portal they used couldn’t transfer their bodies, only their minds.” She flipped the paper over and drew more stick figures, adding an oval full of squiggly lines inside their heads - brains, I assume - and a circle with a wavy line around it above them. “In that case, the people using the portal between universes would move their minds through it, settling them in the most compatible body.” She drew an arrow going from one person through the circle and to another person. “And since the most compatible body would be one looking for a mind, what you get is the portal transferring different people’s minds between their bodies as they use the portal.” She then drew more arrows, with Stick Figure 2’s arrow going through the circle to Figure 3, Figure 3’s to Figure 4, until the last arrow went through the circle and pointing back at Figure 1.

I thought I saw what she was getting at. “So to use the Spider-Man example, because they couldn’t physically travel across universes, they’d inhabit each other’s bodies? Peter Parker’s mind in Miles Morales’s body, Miles in Gwen’s body, and so on?”

Carol nodded. “There's one other twist. We’ve been talking about different people who all took the role of Spider-Man, or Spider-Woman. Now imagine -“ she took another piece of paper, folded it into an accordion, and drew a stick figure, pressing hard, tracing into the impressions on the lower layers, and recording the accordion - “that they were all Peter Parker.”

I inhaled sharply. “People crossing realities and taking over the bodies of their alternate reality selves. Incredible.” I thought about my day. “And somehow, the solar eclipse is the portal?”

“Bingo. You catch on fast. I knew I liked you for a reason.”

“But that doesn’t explain how you found me, unless…” I pulled out my phone and turned on the selfie camera. Sure enough, Asher’s eyes, the eyes I was starting to think of as “mine”, had the same eclipse corona reflected in them that I had seen in Carol’s.

“Like I said, I liked the lights in your eyes,” Carol confirmed. “Whenever I get into a new body, I try to find another traveler before I leave the scene of the eclipse. That way, we can ease into the transition together.”

“What do you mean by ‘ease into the transition’?”

She blushed slightly. “Well. Given that the transferences only happen between eclipses, when you travel into a new body, you’re stuck with it for a few years. There’s usually some quirks of biology to work out, so lots of us like to spend the first night or two… giving our new bodies a trial run to figure out what they react well and poorly to.”

“What is that supposed to… oh.” I recalled Steve’s texts, Carol’s flirtations at the park, her lack of body shyness in the apartment… “You find a ‘fellow traveler’ and fuck out the new body weirdness.” As the words left my mouth, I felt my new body respond favorably to the idea. Down, boy.

She nodded. “Yep, but your situation is pretty unique, like I said. First time in a new body, first time with those body’s parts… if you need to figure out what’s going on with you before doing anything sexual, I totally get it.”

I considered my situation. I, Ashley, wasn’t that comfortable with getting hot and heavy with someone I’d just met who I wouldn’t have been remotely interested in twelve hours ago.

That said, given what the next couple years had in store for me, maybe I should stop trying to think about what Ashley wanted and think more about what Asher wanted, and he really wanted to get to know Carol better.

“I think…” I swallowed. My efforts to be flirtatious hadn’t felt great so far; I was getting a lot of mileage out of our shared “travels”. I tried again, “I think I’d like to try to see what these bodies can do.”

Carol’s face lit up. She walked over to me and straddled her legs across my lap, pushing herself down against my hardening penis. She kissed me, moving her tongue to lick the inside of my mouth, and whispered into my ear, “The safe word is anything you want it to be. Just tell me when you want me to stop. No bad feelings.”

I nodded and started pulling up her shirt, eager to get another look at her breasts, see how they felt different under my hands than mine had, taste them in the throes of mutual lust.

Neither of us needed any safe words.

I woke up in the middle of the night, my arms full of sleeping Carol. I gently moved her to rest fully on the bed and got up. I walked to the massive eclipse map, not bothering with any clothes - after what we had done, I no longer had any shyness about my male body - and looked at the dates scattered across the map.

I found what I was looking for attached to a pin in Iceland - August 12, 2026. The next total solar eclipse, and the next possible portal out of Asher’s body, was in two and a half years.

I wasn’t objected in principle to being Asher. His life didn’t seem so different than mine, barring the lack of a long-term relationship with Steve, and maybe - I looked back to the bed - I could build that for him during my time here.

If I did that, though, would I want to give Asher his life back? Travel again? Back to myself? On to a different Ashley or Asher?

I heard Carol sigh from the bedroom, and I forced myself to take a deep breath and relax. These, along with the particulars of Asher’s life, were all questions that could wait. I had a woman who’d invited me to her bed, and right now, I wanted to rejoin her there.

I carefully climbed back into bed behind Carol and wrapped my arms around her abdomen. She grabbed me in her sleep, pulled me into a tight embrace with one of my hands on her breast, and made a contented noise I recognized from myself during lazy mornings with Steve. I leaned against my new partner and quickly fell back asleep, leaving the possibilities of tomorrow for tomorrow.

—-——————————————————

Epilogue

To the Next Occupant of this Body

August 12, 2026

Hi! Hallo! Welcome to Iceland, and welcome to your new body! I hope you’re pleased with it, I’ve tried to take good care of it for the last couple years. You should too, since it’s yours at least for the next year.

Your name is now Carol Celeste, and you’ve just finished grant work in astronomy at the University of Iceland. You’ve got good references if you want to seek new work, but your bank account’s full if you want to take some time to enjoy yourself here. You have work connections in Spain, Morocco, and Egypt in case, like me, you want to relocate where the next eclipse will be.

The hunk of pleasant man-flesh who was at your side when you arrived is Asher, your partner in science and sex for the last two and a half years. He’ll help you acclimate to your new life. He’s kind, compassionate, and intelligent, and he’s also fantastic at carnal acts, probably because he was a horny geek girl before he came to his current self. He arrived in his body at the same time I arrived here, but he’s not traveling on today; he says he likes his current body and life.

Personally, I think he was hoping that I’d stay if he did, but there’s just so much of the universes to see, I don’t think I could ever stop traveling for just one person. If you feel differently though, there are a lot worse people you could put down roots for.

You should be able to find notes on everything you need - address, bank information, names of relatives and how I feel about them, and the like in this phone’s notes. If there’s something I’ve left out, Asher probably knows.

If this body and this life aren’t to your liking, or if, like me, you just like the thrill of moving on, the next total eclipse is going to be in about a year, August 2, 2027, in Gibraltar. Remember - you only travel if you view the totality without any eclipse glasses or other filters, and fingers crossed for a clear day.

Good luck!