Chapter 11: Epilogue: As Time Passes

A week later, a letter arrived in the small mining town at the edge of civilisation.

Anya came downstairs later in the morning, hair in disarray and new nightgown creased, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She arrived just in time to find her mother returning from town, setting a rather thick envelope down onto the table.

“Late night at Matt’s, dear?” She said with a sly smile, and Anya shot her a frown.

“I know exactly what you’re insinuating, Ma, and I love you, but no. My night life is not nearly as exciting as you’d think. Matt kept me up by telling me strategies he’d concocted to abuse the fact that my happiness or satisfaction makes plants grow,” She said with a yawn, “It was actually terribly interesting, but I didn’t get a wink of sleep. He told me I should read in a greenhouse; because I get so engrossed in the text, he theorised that me just reading something ‘juicy’ is enough to trigger my magic.”

She hefted a hairbrush that she’d brought from upstairs, beginning to brush her hair as her mother had taught her while she spoke.

“He’s smart in all the wrong ways, and yet…” She sighed wistfully, her hair rippling to gold as she smiled.

“It’s nice to see you so happy, dear. I’m glad he’s treating you well.”

“Mm. Me too; I just hope I’m doing enough in return. I’ve been trying to learn how to play music with Da’s ol’ fiddle so I can accompany him in a duet, or something similar, but it’s bloody hard. Don’t tell him, but Da is a terrible teacher.”

Maria laughed, “Oh trust me darling, I know. Now, I just got this in town…”

Anya leaned forwards, hairbrush halted in the middle of her hair, “Is that from Annabelle? That’s… A lot of paper, isn’t it?”

Maria nodded, slitting open the bursting envelope with a small knife and peering inside with a surprised look,

“I don’t honestly know how she fit this much in here. Alright let’s see…”

Maria managed to liberate the reams of paper free from the envelope, handing them over to Anya.

She held the reply with a certain level of awe; the knowledge of someone who had gone through this process before her was infinitely valuable. What would Annabel have included that needed such a large amount of paper? Anya read the first page in its entirety, then skimmed over the second, and the third…

“There are about,” She paused, flicking through the pages, “Six pages of extensive congratulations. Hm. I suppose you were right when you said Annabel would be excited to learn there was another aasimar like her in the family,” Anya said drily as Maria chuckled behind her hand.

“Well, she has always been a little eccentric. I remember it well.”

Anya set the first six reams of paper aside. While she appreciated the sentiment, what she was desperate for was information. Thankfully, her great-aunt was an alchemist; information was something she had in spades.

“Good grief,” She muttered, causing her mother to turn to her with a look of curiosity while sipping a cup of tea.

“Oh? What’s she written?”

“A great deal. It’s essentially a documentation of what changed after she activated her celestial traits, and the estimated timelines of the effects. She’s ranked them from ‘Boring’ to ‘Exciting for a young woman’ – Heh – I’m in the ‘Boring’ section right now. The emotional changes seemed to happen almost instantly for her as well…”

Anya skimmed further,

“She describes it as something equivalent to a woman’s puberty,” Anya wrinkled her nose, “I just finished my first one, and now I have to do it again? Bother. It doesn’t undo everything from before, but a significant amount can change if given time. Goodness, the timelines on these go years,”

Anya flicked through the page – her body fat would shift places? Interesting. Increased skin sensitivity; noted… Apparently, the magic would even attempt to change her voice, though it wasn’t very effective and Annabel noted that if Anya would want something more… apparent, she had some tips on how to alter her voice through practice later in the document. Gods, she’d really included everything.

Anya got to the ‘Exciting’ section, and near-instantly flushed a bright pink, her hair bleeding to a light red. She coughed into her hand as her mother gave her an amused smile.

“Gotten to the ‘Exciting’ part, then? Please tell, I do actually find this quite fascinating.”

Anya pointedly did not look up from the document as she spoke.

“Some small things, yes. The main thing she describes is… Ah… B-breast growth. Gods, Ma, she’s got at least two pages of description of how that’s going to go; she used far too much detail.”

Despite Anya’s complaints, her eyes were glued to the page. She hadn’t even considered such a thing to be a possibility, but now that she knew it might happen it was all she could think about.

Annabel also went into a great deal about how various… Other functions of her body would change. Intimate ones. Anya did not read those aloud, but she did read carefully.

Finally, Anya got to the end of the ‘exciting’ section. Her eyes went even wider, brows furrowing as she read aloud under her breath. Anya cleared her throat, shooting her mother a nervous glance.

“Well. Hm. It seems that… After about ten years or so, Annabel’s celestial traits snuck up on her and sort of… Finished the job, as it were,” She said it a little bit breathlessly, not fully sure what to think.

Maria tilted her head to the side, “What do you mean?”

Anya looked back down to the page, still not fully believing what she was reading.

“It started with her becoming very exhausted out of nowhere; Annabel couldn’t even leave bed due to a mixture of mild pain and fatigue, but after about a week of rest, she noticed that at the end she had… Ah… Gained the ability to have children,” Anya said meekly, an incredulous smile growing on her lips as her mother’s eyes went wide. That was possible.

“Oh,”

“Yes. It took her a few months to fully recover, her body had gone under a great deal of stress, but… Wow,” She read onwards, “Apparently, from her research into some of our earlier ancestors who were like us that she could find, this can happen anytime between ten to twenty years after first awakening one’s celestial heritage. She has also included an addendum that, if I wanted, there are potions which could do the process far quicker, but she was unsure how it would react with my blood if it still tried to do something later down the line.”

She leaned back in her chair, eyes focused on nothing in particular.

“How do you feel, dear?” Maria asked, leaning forwards to grasp her daughter’s hands. Without realising it, Anya had begun to cry. She wiped away her tears with a hand as she squeezed her eyes shut; she was acclimating to the intensity of the new emotions, but they still snuck up on her from time to time.

“I-I don’t know; I j-just- Gods, Ma, this is actually going to happen. I’m not s-stuck like this- I can ch-change,”

Maria stood and pulled her into a hug, stroking her hair as Anya wrangled in the sudden change in mood.

“Even if nothing physical were to have changed, you’d still be my daughter. But… Yes, all the extra things are a fairly nice addition, I must admit,” Maria said with a smile as Anya laughed, wiping away the last of the sudden tears.

“Yeah. All I have to do now is wait, I suppose.”

All she had to do was wait.

 

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One year later

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Matt and Anya leaned against the wall of Olivia’s household, a moderately sized building near the edge of the town. Matt fidgeted nervously, looking up at the sky and the foreboding clouds that looked heavy with rain.

“She is coming back today, right?”

“If we didn’t misread her last letter, then yes, Olivia should be coming back today.”

“Alright, alright. Just… I hope she gets here before the rain does,” He shot a sour look at the sky, “If my lute gets soaked I’ll never forgive her.”

Anya smiled and was about to reply when a small raven suddenly descended from the sky, letting out a few happy clicks as she landed on Anya’s shoulder and nuzzled her temple. Anya scratched the bird under the chin affectionately, reaching into a bag at her feet to retrieve a few treats.

“Well, good news Matt, Marigold here says that Olivia is already at the edge of town.”

The raven, Marigold, squawked in affirmation and happily accepted a strip of dried venison in compensation. The animal companion was a rather new addition to Anya’s life, a gift from her father’s Sylvan sorcerer bloodline. She had secretly hoped to diverge from her father and bond with something other than a raven, but when she had found an injured-but-plucky young Mary on a hiking trip with her friends, it had felt like something had clicked, and here she was. The young bird had recovered well, and she had grown remarkably fast. Nowhere near the cat-sized Isabelle just yet, but Mary would get there one day.

Matt gave the bird a wary side-eye as Anya pampered her, inching just slightly away. The relationship between the young raven and Anya’s partner was, to her, an amusingly strained one. Matt had never gotten over the incident wherein he was unable to solve a small puzzle, and Mary had disassembled the piece in only a few moments to get to the seed prize within. “That creature is smarter than I am,” He’d said sourly, “That’s bloody unfair.”

As Anya was reminiscing about times past, Matt perked up next to her and began to wave. She looked up, and riding in the front of a covered mule-drawn cart was an incredibly tired looking Olivia. She waved back, clambering out of her seat and sprinting with surprising speed for someone who looked as if she had missed three nights of sleep.

“Anya! Matt!” She wailed, barrelling into them both and pulling them into a tight hug, “Oh how I missed you two…”

The two of them squeezed back just as tightly, mumbling similar things into Olivia’s shoulders. As they were all wrapped up with one another, Olivia’s father, Duncan, dismounted from the cart and lead the mule into the homes small side-stable, freshly packed with food and water by Anya and Matt in preparation for Olivia’s return. Duncan and Anya’s eyes met, and they exchanged a simple nod. Anya was perhaps the most frequent patron of their store, and the things he made lasted longer than any of the city-imported garments she’d tried.

Olivia untangled herself from them, getting a good look at them. Her eyes widened as she took in Anya; it had been numerous months since they’d last seen each other, and things had changed just a little bit since then.

“Gods, sister, you look great! Look at you! And that dress,”

Anya smiled sheepishly, looking down at herself. She was wearing a dress in public for perhaps the third time in her life, and she was getting better about ignoring the stares from the other townspeople as they walked by. Her most common outfits were those that leaned androgynous, as those were what she was most comfortable with. She didn’t feel like she needed to wear outright ‘feminine’ clothing, but today was one of her ‘good body days’, as Matt liked to say, and she wanted to use it to her full advantage.

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The dress in question was a white sleeveless garment, one which she’d asked to be cut in such a way as to show off as much of her broader shoulders as possible, and she adored it. Her hair matched the colour of her dress, hanging loose and down to her shoulders. She had, in the end, decided to keep her fringe intact rather than grow it further; it hid the new acne that was coming with her second puberty quite well.

Olivia circled her quickly, cooing about how the cut complimented her figure and how the lacing in the back was nearly a work of art in its own right. Anya nodded, saying,

“Yes, full compliments to your Da. It was the last thing he made before you left to the cities, I think.”

If Olivia’s eyes were wide before, they became the size of saucers once she properly heard the sound of Anya’s voice. She rushed forwards, picking up Anya’s hands in her own, eyes glittering with excitement.

“Your voice! Honestly, sister, I hardly recognize you; you look fantastic.”

Anya waved her hand in dismissal, but a small smile and the sudden golden colour of her hair betrayed her satisfaction with the compliment.

“You flatter me, Liv, I don’t deserve it. Thank you.”

She savoured the new sound of her voice, enjoying how it rolled off her tongue. It had snuck up on her, much like most of the other facets of her slow transformation. As of right now, it was barely any different from her old one, still low in pitch. However, there was something intrinsic about it that had shifted it from being perceived as masculine to feminine; it was less gravelly and more of a low roll, was the best she could describe it.

When she’d asked her great-aunt, she’d excitedly called it ‘resonance’ or something similar. It was the extent of what her celestial traits could change with her vocal cords, and Anya adored it. As she had gotten more comfortable in her own skin, she had found herself leaning towards the more masculine side of femininity; her voice was just one part of that, for now.

As for the rest, in overall shape her body had hardly changed. She still had a triangular jaw and a hard chin, and her body would always be a little angular and square, but a plethora of minor changes had meant that she no longer felt as uncomfortable when she saw herself anymore. It was… Good, and better than she could ever have hoped for.

Anya clasped her hands together, looking back towards the cart,

“Should we help your father with unloading, or…?”

Olivia waved her hand with a dismissive snort, “Oh no, he said we were forbidden. Crazy man wants to do it all himself, and will probably get angry if you ask. Now, inside! I want to hear everything that has happened while I was gone~”

A few minutes later, Anya Matt and Olivia were situated in the living room of Olivia’s home, strewn out in various positions on the furniture. Marigold had been sent home; she still couldn’t be trusted around strangers’ furniture, and Matt was tuning his rickety lute that he’d lugged all the way from home, giving it experimental strums as the two women talked.

“What was it like selling things in the cities? I could never have the patience to interact with the rich, at least from the horror stories I’ve heard from some of the traders.”

Olivia groaned, plunging her head into a soft pillow.

“Horror stories are right; those twats are difficult to deal with, let me tell you. ‘Oh, so you’d like a revision that’d honestly require me to start from scratch, two weeks into making your elaborate embroidered ballgown? Excellent, excellent, very good to hear.’” Olivia’s voice dripped with sarcasm and disdain, but it all fell away as she pinched her fingers together in front of her.

“Oh, Anya, but the money… They pay so much because they don’t even understand what the relative price for these things should be. It’s the only part that makes it worth it…”

Olivia trailed off, extricating her head from the plush pillow to give a questioning look at Anya.

“Speaking of rich twats, I happened to notice that the large estate that is normally on the edge of the town was decidedly absent, burned down or something. What happened to Felix’s family?”

Matt cackled in the background, finally getting his lute to what was, to him, an acceptable sound.

“Oh, that one’s a story and a half, though Anya can probably tell it better than me; she was involved you see.”

Olivia raised an eyebrow at the both of them, and Anya leaned back and gave Matt a light kiss on the cheek.

“Hush, dumbass, you’re making it sound like I burned the place down myself,” She turned back to Olivia, “Ok, Liv, do you remember the poacher problem we were having?”

Olivia nodded uncertainly, “Vaguely. It was worse than it was in years, right?”

Matt began to strum an appropriate mood-setting song as Anya grimaced and nodded in confirmation, “Mhm, they were decent pests for a while. Too many traps set each night for me and my Da to handle on our own. It even got to the point where he had to ask people in town to help with cleaning up each morning. That only begged the question; where were they hiding that they could fit so many people and not be found? My Da had scoured every inch of the forest and found no camps, after all.”

Anya tapped the side of her nose, a smug grin playing on her lips,

“It was me that asked the question; what if they aren’t in the forest, but somewhere close by? Where could someone hide an entire army of city-bred poachers where my Da and I couldn’t find them? Well, it’d have to be a large amount of private land, hidden from plain view, perhaps by some rather tall hedges…”

Olivia looked at her with a frown, “You can’t be serious,”

Anya laughed, “Oh I’m incredibly serious; the only private land bigger than a small garden in this town was the home of our good friends, the Ash estate. You remember it, right? Big hedges, bigger manor, it was literally perfect. The only reason we didn’t think of it before was that it was just so… Typical? Why would the rich-asshole family of the mining town want to do poaching? Simply because it wasn’t allowed?”

Olivia was invested now, and she leaned back against one of the armchairs to smile at her.

“Ok, I’ll bite; why would Felix’s family need to hide so many poachers on their estate?”

Anya spread her arms wide, “Nobody had ever really asked how Felix’s family had gotten their fortune, they just assumed it was inherited from some rich relative, perhaps from profits of the mine, yeah? Well, me and my Ma did some research, asking some of the older members around town what the family used to do when the previous lord was around. Turns out Felix’s father had been peddling highly valuable pelts and exotic game to the cities since the previous lord had owned this land and allowed the hunting of the native animals. We were the ones who found out that, once the new lord came along and banned the act of hunting on these lands, Felix’s father simply never stopped.”

Matt sniggered in the back, “It honestly shouldn’t’ve been a surprise, but to think that all of Felix’s inheritance was technically illegal? Priceless.”

Anya nodded, leaning her head back against Matt’s stomach as he played before continuing.

“Da sent his bird to go and take a look, and can you imagine the sight she saw over those hedges? At minimum fourty separate camps, all recruited that season to pick the forest clean. The lord sent out the militia to have the family and hired men detained, but they caught wind and slipped away. Someone burned down the house on the way out, probably to stop everybody else from picking it clean – ‘If I can’t have it nobody can’ sort of deal. Not a fully happy ending, but we haven’t found any evidence of poachers since, so I for one am satisfied.”

Olivia chuckled to herself, arms crossed.

“Felix bloody Ash. What a man. Hope he’s sleeping under a hedge right now. Y’know, I don’t think he ever saw you looking like this; what do you think he’d have said?”

Anya grinned, “Probably would have looked like he’d been struck by lightning. Can you imagine?”

Olivia let out a belly laugh, “Oh gods, I honestly can’t.”

The three of them stayed there for a little while longer, chatting idly, but it was quickly becoming clear that Olivia’s fatigue was catching up with her. After the third consecutive ten-second yawn, Matt and Anya shooed her off to bed.

“Rest!” Anya chided, “We can see each other again tomorrow, you look like you could sleep until summer.”

“Gods, sister, I might,” Olivia said wearily before mumbling her goodbyes and dragging herself away to her bedroom. Matt and Anya left through the front door, and Matt especially was pleased to find that the rain had chosen not to come, the sky having cleared in the time they were inside.

“Miracles do happen,” He stated cheerily.

Anya pressed her forehead against his, murmuring “Oh yes, they most certainly do,”

They both laughed together at that before heading off to Anya’s home. They had a few things to get done together; Matt had promised to teach Anya a few sleight of hand tricks, and she wanted to show him her latest attempts at wood-carvings. She was getting quite good at those with a little bit of practice. The fact that her parents wouldn’t be at home was simply a bonus.

 

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Anya and Matt sat on the roof of the Lane family home, looking out over the treetops towards the horizon as the sun set. They didn’t speak for a while, the act of sharing their body warmth enough for the moment. Anya was still the larger of the two of them, but not as significantly as before. Her height had been one of her most severe sources of discomfort, and it seems her celestial heritage had put a great deal of effort into ‘fixing’ it. Now, Anya stood a mere brow and forehead taller than Matt rather than a full head and shoulders, which she suspected was the extent of her changes in that regard. The biggest benefit of this, to her, was that Matt could rest his head on her shoulders with relative ease.

She sighed, pulling her partner closer as she rested her head in his hair.

“Y’know… Two years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine what my life would be like in the future. I tried, oh so hard, but when the only option was me as a man, the mental image fizzled out by the time I reached twenty years of age.”

Matt grinned up at her, dark brown eyes reflecting the fading light.

“What about now? Can you see yourself in the future?”

Anya’s hair bled to gold as she smiled back down at him.

“I think so, yes, and for the first time… I’m looking forwards to it.”

 

- Fin -