Chapter 8: Chapter 7 – The Lark Ascending

I’m overwhelmed.

The Magic Closet turned out to be neither supernatural nor a closet. Rather, it’s an entire bedroom filled with racks and dressers full of clothes and it is quite wonderful.

“My mom started this years ago,” Anya explained. “Shapeshifters tend to trade around clothes a lot and Mom had space to store the extras. I think lately our customers have been half shapeshifters and half queer kids, although there’s a decent amount of overlap in those groups. Take what you want!”

With June’s help, I found a few outfits and then June grabbed a lot more clothes and put them in piles. Trying on clothes was fun and I still can’t believe that’s me in the mirror.

The problem is that now I have clothes to wear, I really need to figure out my next steps and I don’t even know where to start.

I’m back in the guest room, wearing nothing but a skirt and turning over my options as I try to figure out how bras work. I have a soft pink bra that June promises will fit, but I can’t get the damned thing fastened. I’m trying to work the little clips in the back, but there are three of them! I can get one or two, but every time I try to get the last one, the others pop out.

I’m swearing under my breath at the bra when there’s a gentle knock on the door.

“Hey, do you need help in there,” June asks through the door.

“Yeah, I think so,” I admit after a moment. “Beware of boobs, though.”

“I’ve seen boobs before,” she says as she comes into the room. “Oh yeah, getting those hooked is a bit tricky but you’ll get the hang of it.”

“You can also just fasten it up in front of you and then spin it around if that’s easier,” June continues as she easily clips those hooks together behind me. “Now swoop and scoop.” She mimes bending over and doing something with her breasts. “You want the girls in the cups, not squished in the sides.”

I try to copy her and she gives me a satisfied nod. One problem down.

I feel my eyes fill with tears.

“Oh,” says June gently. “It wasn’t just the bra, was it?”

I sit down heavily on the bed.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do! I just want to be back in my own room and hug my kitty, but I have to deal with Dave first! Do I just show up and be like, ‘Hey, it’s me and I’m a demon chick now!’ or do I turn back into a guy and talk to him and like ease him into things? Maybe I just shouldn’t tell him right away. Drop some hints, fake a regular transition. And then I don’t know what to tell my parents! And my brother is probably going to be a complete shit about it! And then I have a bunch of students to deal with! FUUUCK!”

June sits quietly beside me. She places a hand on my back and begins to knead the muscles in my shoulder that are already tightening up. Maybe I wasn’t imagining the warmth coming from her arms last night, because I can feel the same calming warmth wherever she touches.

“Breathe,” she says gently. “I think you’ve been doing everything on your own for a long time. But you’re not alone.”

“I miss my band,” I say. I’m not sure why that’s the first response that comes to mind, but June seems to understand.

“Of course you do,” she says. “You were part of something. Maybe there were some very important things that you weren’t ready to share with your band, but you shared enough. What happened?”

“Half of it moved to Seattle.”

“And the other half?”

“The other half is me and Dave.”

“So he’s not just a roommate and it matters how he responds to you.”

“I mean, yeah, when you put it like that.”

“Do you have a reason to think he’ll respond poorly?”

“Not really…he’s pretty chill. It’s just, I dunno, I feel like I’ll be asking a lot to, like, make people call me a different name and stuff and…it’s just weird and awkward, I guess?”

“Hey!” June says sharply, startling me. “Look at me.” I look into her warm brown eyes.

“You’re our friend,” she says. I open my mouth to protest that we’ve known each other for less than twenty-four hours but she raises a finger. “I don’t care that we met last night. It doesn’t matter. But my friends matter. You matter. And that means that other people can do you the simple courtesy of using different words to talk about you and maybe learning to think about you in a slightly different way. It’s not really that much to ask.”

“And,” she adds with a grin, “anyone who gives you trouble will have to arm-wrestle Remy.”

I can’t help giggling. “Thanks,” I mumble.

“Now,” says June briskly, “we’re going to ignore what you think you should do or are supposed to do. I heard an ‘I want’ in there: you want your own space and you want your kitty. In my expert opinion as someone who almost completed a psychology minor, those would probably both do you more good than just about anything right now.”

June pauses thoughtfully, then says, “I think the only other question that we need to answer right now, and only because you brought it up, is whether you want to go back to looking like a man for now and the answer is no.”

“Don’t I get to decide that?”

“No, because you’re going to start thinking about what makes it easier for your roommate or will maybe possibly make him less likely to freak out or reject you or whatever and that way lies madness. You were having too much fun shopping in the Magic Closet for me to let you give that up. Besides, you just got that bra on.”

June’s face grows more serious. “Also, I’d rather get a read on the roommate right now, because if it’s not going to be a safe situation, we’re grabbing your cat and your important stuff and leaving.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Once you get a handle on your powers, you’ll be okay, but we’re not going to leave you in a vulnerable position. Here!” June tosses something from one of the piles of clothes. I catch it and it turns out to be a lavender crop top with a dramatically scooped neckline.

“Anya will like that,” she says with a wink and leaves.

*****

We’re in June’s Toyota again, although Anya has ceded the front seat to me. I’m nervously clicking my phone on and off. I texted Dave a few minutes before we left to see if he was still home and he hasn’t answered. He doesn’t usually work on Saturdays but it’s not unheard of, or maybe he decided to go out.

My phone dings.

Sorry was in the shower
Figured if u were bringing peeps I should not stink

I appreciate that
On our way, be there in a few minutes

I feel like I need to add something else, but I don’t know what. I realize I’m bouncing in my seat when Anya places a hand on my shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she says. “We’ve got your back.” I might relax a tiny bit.

I direct June the last few blocks to my apartment and then we’re there. I text Dave again.

We’re here. Are you decent?

Yep clean shirt n everything!

I can’t think of any other reason to delay.

“Shitshitshitshitshit,” I say under my breath.

“Do you need a few minutes?” asks June. “We also don’t have to do this right now.”

“No,” I say. “It’s not gonna get easier if I bail now.” I exit the car and grab my bass from the back seat.

Dave and I live in a side-by-side duplex. I walk up the stairs to the open porch, Anya and June behind me, and pause at the door to our side of the house. I take a deep breath and I’m about to open the door when it opens suddenly from the other side.

“Entrez vous!” Dave says, gesturing dramatically.

Then he actually looks at us. “Oh shit, sorry, I was expecting someone else.”

“Um, hey,” I say uncertainly.

Dave does a double-take and I can see the moment when things click. “Whoa! T—“

“It’s Lark now,” I blurt out.

“But it’s you, right?”

“Yeah, last night got kinda weird, but it turned out okay. Can we come in?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry!” Dave moves out of the way and we troop into the house.

June’s eyes light up as we go into the living room, which is really half living room and half practice space. There’s an electronic drum kit and a real drum kit next to each other in one corner and in the neighboring corner are my instrument rack and amps.

“I’d love to introduce you to my children, but we should probably have a little conversation first,” I tell her as I set my bass on the rack.

I introduce everyone, but I feel like Dave is barely paying attention to the others. I hope he remembers their names. He keeps staring at me.

“I’m freaking out a little bit here,” he finally says. “Of course I support you, but…how?”

“Let’s sit down,” I say. I’m relieved, but I wonder how far his professed support will go. We have mismatched furniture, including a couch that my parents gave me when they replaced it. I sit down on the couch—this time I remember that I’m wearing a skirt— and June and Anya join me, while Dave takes a chair.

I’m trying to figure out how much to tell him. I look at Anya, who gives me an encouraging smile and a small nod. I’m not really sure what that means. I think about my conversation with June and realize that I don’t want to keep secrets from Dave.

“So I was done teaching yesterday and I was walking back to the light rail,” I begin. I tell him all about meeting Sam and Rob and my unexpected transformation.

“Wait,” says Dave. “I really didn’t expect that your lady situation last night was going to turn out that you were the lady, but life is full of surprises. I’m having trouble with the demon part, though. You still look like you, or at least like your own sister or something. I mean, you still look human”

“Well, Anya and June showed up and Anya helped me with some shapeshifting.” I stand up and look at Anya. “Spot me?” She nods.

I close my eyes and try to find that awareness of myself that I had last night. Was it only last night? It seems so long ago already.

I feel it for a moment, but it slips away. I’m trying to do it by myself this time without Anya’s grounding and guiding influence.

I focus on the breath flowing into my lungs and then there it is. It’s like a map of my body made of glittering lights and I can see all the ways I could poke or push to change myself. What was it that Anya said about a slider?

I think about a tail and horns and I can see their shadow overlaid on top of my body and then suddenly, like I tilted my head and gained a new perspective, I can see that that shadow is just a little distance away along another dimension. Barely thinking, I step, or turn, or twist along that dimension and I can feel the weight of a tail hanging off the end of my spine.

“Holy shit!” yells Dave. Startled, I open my eyes just as shapes further along that new dimension were becoming clear. I think there were wings.

I wobble slightly, but the dizziness quickly passes. 

I look at my hands. My skin is the same lavender hue as before. I wonder what my eyes look like. A glance down confirms the tail sticking out from my skirt and in doing so I feel a subtle difference in the momentum and mass of my head. I reach up to check and sure enough, there are horns sprouting from my temples.

“That is so freaking cool!” Dave exclaims. “What else can you do?”

“Um, I’m not really sure yet? That’s only the second time I’ve done that. I still have a lot to learn, but Anya says she’ll teach me.”

“So, Anya?” Dave looks back and forth between June and Anya and I’m pretty sure that he’s forgotten which is which. “You can do that too?”

“Yep,” says Anya and she sticks out her forked tongue at him.

Dave looks at June, but before he can say anything, a halo blinks briefly into existence over her head.

“Huh,” Dave says.

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An awkward silence descends.

Then there’s a small meow from the next room and Zatanna walks in. I freeze for a moment. Will she recognize me? But she trots right up to me and starts circling my feet until she is distracted by my twitching tail.

I scoop her up and she rubs her face on my chin in greeting and then snuggles into my shoulder and starts purring.

“Hi, baby girl. I missed you,” I murmur.

“I dunno what it is, but cats just know their people,” says Anya.

June appears enchanted. “You two are so sweet,” she says.

I sit back down the couch, remembering to move my tail out of the way, and soak in the kitty love for a few minutes. Then Zatanna decides she needs to meet the others and receive her due appreciation, which Anya and June in turn are more than happy to give. She hops over to Dave’s chair, headbutts his hand then leaves for the kitchen.

“Having received love, she can now go eat,” I explain. “She’ll be back.”

Awkwardness returns.

“So, Lark, can I see your instruments?” June asks. It takes me a moment to realize she’s talking to me. I’m grateful for how smoothly she picked up on the name that I said almost without thinking but now I’m second-guessing myself.

I tell myself I’ll worry about that later. Right now it’s time to talk gear.

Because I have a problem common to musicians, I have a number of instruments. I have a passive PJ for lessons and general use, a 5-string that sounds great even if I don’t really like the neck, and a bass ukulele which is absurd and fun.

“And this is my baby,” I say as I lift the last bass, although not the final instrument, off the rack. “I’ve had this bass since I was fourteen. Well, I’ve had the body of this bass since I was fourteen. I named it Theseus, because it’s kind of the Bass of Theseus.”

Theseus started life as a black Squier Jaguar PJ. “There was an incident in college, so I had to replace the neck, which I swapped out for a fretless. Pickups got upgraded, and then I had active electronics put in. That’s when he got the purple pickguard too. Oh, and I swapped out the original bridge for a high-mass bridge. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” agrees June, then adds, “I think you bass players care more about that than we do.”

“But the tone, June! The sustain!” I protest with mock seriousness. “Really, it was more that the stock bridge got bent from ten years of string tension. But I do think it sounds a little better now.”

“What about the guitar?” she asks, pointing at the other instrument on the rack.

“A relative had that for some reason and gave it to me because I ‘like guitars’, so here it is. I pick it up occasionally, but I suck at guitar. Too many strings.” I pass her the red Strat copy.

June straps the guitar on and strums a few unamplified chords.

“Nice neck,” she says. “Can I plug in?”

“You play?” asks Dave, who is suddenly very interested. “Neighbors already left for the day so we can jam if you want.”

“Totally!” June says.

“We have a good working relationship with our neighbors,” I tell June. “We’re careful of our noise when they’re home and they let us know when they’ll be gone for a while so we can crank it.” I pass her a pick and the end of a cable. “Only bass amps in the house, but this one works fine for guitar. Try this EQ to start, but do your thing.”

I slip Theseus’ strap over my head and plug into my own amp while June strums and makes adjustments to her sound. 

I wondered how much different my bass would feel with my new body, but there’s not much change aside from how I almost tangled the strap in my horns. I usually play with my instrument pretty low when standing, so that helps, but I’ll probably have to make some adjustments when sitting down.

I check my tuning, then pass the clip-on tuner to June. Dave sits down on his throne, taps his bass and hi-hat pedals experimentally and looks at us expectantly.

“Pick a key?” I say to June.

“G?”

“Ah yes, a classic.”

“One-two-three!” Dave counts off. On four, he launches into a staccato flurry that crashes into the downbeat where I join him with a driving vamp. Four bars later, June is in with what quickly becomes apparent is a twelve-bar blues riff.

She’s a little tentative at first, but Dave and I are tightly meshed from years of playing together and I can viscerally feel the moment June locks into our groove.

I give June one more time through the chord progression to settle in before I start mixing it up. I walk my bass down to E and she quickly catches on to the change to the relative minor. We abandon the twelve-bar blues and June becomes more adventurous, but I’m able to track right with her. Between the two of us, we settle into a new progression and June starts climbing higher. We’re still in E minor, so I follow her up, interspersed with booming notes and bell-like harmonics from my lowest string to keep us grounded.

We start trading eight bars, taking turns to riff on our chord pattern, then four bars, then two. Dave responds to and matches our increasing energy. I catch June’s eye and we drive together to the end of the progression and then back off. Dave fills the open space with percussive fury while we keep the groove going.

As Dave builds a wall of sonic mayhem, June holds a chord and reaches for the gain on her amp. Two can play at that game. I slam into the next downbeat and let my bass ring out.

“See? Sustain!” I yell at June, as I crank my gain as well, until my note just begins to break up.

Dave explodes into a final frenzy and right before June and I rejoin him, I flick the bass knob on my instrument a quarter turn clockwise to boost the low end, knowing that will be all it takes to push my amp into full-on distortion, and I slide down the neck of my bass to land on the downbeat with a satisfyingly crunchy tone.

By unspoken agreement we’re back in G major. June’s amp isn’t really meant for what she wants, but she manages to coax a sound with some serious dirt out of it.

As the three of us build once again, I can feel the energy pulsing through the room. June is low on her instrument, and I climb so we meet in the middle, circling each other furiously until our momentum gradually drags us apart once again.

I can feel Dave and June looking at me. I nod and we power through together to the final cadence. Dave drops out while June and I hold; her wailing chord and my throbbing low note, more felt than heard, blending in distorted harmony while we both slowly bring the volume up to prolong the sustain. At the end of two bars, Dave hammers into the last downbeat. At the same time, I give a final pluck on my lowest string. June and I mute at the same time and we’re done.

I look at the other two. We’re all panting and I feel flushed.

“Was it good for you too?” asks June.

“Fuck yeah,” says Dave emphatically and then says what I’m thinking. “Wanna join our band?”

“I’d love to play with you more,” says June. “See where it goes?”

“For sure!” Dave says as I nod agreement.

“I don’t suppose you sing too?” I ask.

“Not really,” June says. “I could probably do some background vocals, but I’m not a lead singer.”

“I may have a lead, but I don’t want to speak too soon,” Dave says. “But we can always keep it instrumental for a while if we want. Adding a vocalist would be best if we wanted to gig again, but just the three of us practicing together for a while would be great.”

“That was seriously hot,” Anya says from the couch. “You really need to do that more. Are you sure you haven’t been playing together for a while?”

“It just felt really easy and comfortable to drop right in,” June says.

I nod in agreement, but somehow it almost felt too easy. I’m not complaining, but I’ve never immediately clicked musically with someone like that. It’s one thing to have a good vibe with someone you’ve never played with before, but it felt like I always knew where June was going and could almost anticipate her next move. And I even felt like Dave and I were playing with a new connection. I knew where Dave and I were, and I feel like I’ve got a good handle on June’s skill level now. We’re all good, but we’re not that good.

“Earth to Lark,” says Anya. I shake my head and snap out of that train of thought.

“Sorry, what?”

“Do you need some downtime here? We’d love to stay a while if you want company, but feel free to kick us out whenever you need,” asks June.

I look at Dave.

“It’s up to you,” Dave tells me. “I have no problem if they stay longer. We have snacks and Mario Kart!”

“That sounds really nice. And normal,” I say.

We all squish onto the couch. I end up between June and Anya with my tail in Anya’s lap. She doesn’t seem to mind.

“Lose the horns, please,” asks June. “You could put an eye out with those things!”

It’s even easier this time, but I decide that’s all I feel like changing at the moment.

“Oh, now I see why you always pick Rosalina,” Dave teases when we choose our racers.

“Shut up! Her stats are good for my play style!” I retort cheerfully.

“And her butt looks nice in that bike suit,” says Anya supportively.

June dominates several races, but the rest of us are fairly evenly matched. I manage one down-to-the-wire win thanks to a blue shell. I realize I’m white-knuckling the controller and that my tail is now wrapped tightly around Anya’s forearm.

“Thanks,” she says as I loosen it. “I wanted to keep that hand.”

After a while, Mario Kart is swapped for Smash, although June excuses herself after a couple rounds and moves to the chair. She is inordinately pleased with herself when she attracts Zatanna.

Anya and Dave are getting intense, although it’s still friendly, so eventually I yield my controller, but I’m happy to stay where I am, leaning on Anya.

The rivalry winds down and we settle into comfortable conversation. Eventually June slaps her knee and says in an exaggerated voice, “Welp, I guess we’d better be going!”

We exchange phone numbers and June and Anya are about to leave when June says, “Oh! Don’t forget you’ve got all those clothes in the trunk!”

“I’ll give you a hand,” says Anya. “Don’t forget to change before we go outside.”

This time it takes only a moment’s concentration to shift back to human. June pops the trunk for us and we grab as many bags of clothing as we’re able.

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t pick out this many clothes,” I say.

“I did throw in a few more things that I think will look cute on you,” June admits.

It takes two trips for Anya and me to get all the clothes to my bedroom, which is upstairs. I have my hand on the door, about to head back downstairs, when Anya says, “Hey, Lark? I really enjoyed hearing you play.”

“Oh yeah?” I respond. Real smooth.

“Oh come on! You gotta give me a little more to work with than that!” Anya says, coming closer. “Anyway, I want to kiss you and I want to hear you play again.” She’s very close.

I nod and start to say, “Okay,” but it comes out as, “OkammmphMMmmmm!” Her lips are on mine and I find myself once again pressed against a bedroom door.

Anya takes my face in both her hands and that does something to my hindbrain, or maybe my knees. I feel like if she lets go, I’ll fall on my ass. I wrap my arms around her and pull her as close as possible.

It’s a good kiss. It doesn’t have the heat or urgency of our kiss last night, but the fact that Anya came back for more makes it satisfying in a different way.

Sooner than I’d care for, Anya pulls back a little. She gives me a gentle kiss on the forehead and then looks me in the eye. “I’ll see you soon, Lark.”

I don’t trust my knees to get me back downstairs right away, so I stagger to the bed, and Anya is gone.

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