Chapter 4: Chapter Four

Mila opened the door to her room and was immediately confronted by a smooth expanse of skin rippling with well-defined muscle. Her gaze was immediately drawn to sunlit naked buttocks, with a fascinating play of taut lines that had her eyes skimming hips and thighs. After a wonderful, long moment Mila remembered to look up and found Roxa looking over her shoulder with a little smirk of mischievous—was that glee?

Mila blushed but didn’t look away. “Good morning.”

“Good morning!” Roxa smiled at her. “Did you sleep well?”

Mila shrugged and moved to her desk. “Not especially. You?”

“Yeah. I had...some dreams. Hey, want to go to the dining hall together before class?”

Mila felt a rush of real gratitude. She fought to keep it out of her voice. “Yes, thank you.” There. She’d spoken in a perfectly neutral, casual tone that did not betray her relief. A few days ago, some boy in a beret had loudly jeered at her from across the crowded dining hall, prompting everyone around to stare, and she hadn’t relished being caught at the center of so many unfriendly gazes, alone.

Roxa donned some clothes, finally. Mila carefully slung her bookbag over her shoulder and turned to find Roxa holding the door open for her, which sent a flush of pleasant warmth through her chest despite her best efforts to not be charmed. They joined the morning rush of girls going to class. Soon enough the rich, glossy wood-paneled hallways of Stormcroft House gave way to the wide, stone honeycombed passages of older buildings and they began to hear hoots and catcalls as more and more male students joined the fray.

Harmine University had only begun admitting girls a decade ago, and Stormcroft and Fairhollow were the newly-created Houses that were intended for them. Of the other twelve Houses, the youngest and smallest was five times older and three times the size. The University was the quintessential old boys club, older and richer than most nations.

The cold stare of a young man wearing the gold tassels of a Prefect made Mila glad for the presence of her tall roommate beside her as the crowd carried them to a massive pair of oak doors and spilled out into a sunlit courtyard.

As they crossed the flagstones to the other side, where broad, shallow steps led up to the dining hall, Mila noticed something familiar about one of the students perched there. And yet, she didn’t recognize them...at all?

But there was something...the oversize, shapeless garment swathed around their hunched frame, their slender limbs emerging from the bulky pullover—it almost made them look like a storm-ruffled raven, except for the way they were curled in around their center, which reminded Mila of a shyer, less swaggering animal. A newly-hatched petrel chick, perhaps.

As Mila drew closer she saw the person sigh and turn their face up, eyes closed, as if scenting the wind. She scanned their pale, heart-shaped face—well, as much of their face as she could see under that mess of dark curls—

Then Mila realized what was familiar about this person and her eyes widened. The way they were holding themselves struck a deep chord in her own body. They were holding themselves so small and cramped—like someone trying to fold their body into negative space, to actual escape this dimension and slide sideways into another one, to disappear entirely.

Mila breathed in sharply. She was remembering—years and years and thousands of miles ago, and just a small taste—the anxiety of her days before she’d changed her own body. The tea had helped, of course, but if that medicine even existed here it must be deep, deep underground. Growing up here must have been far, far worse—impossibly bleak. The Imperial Democracy tolerated no witches, no herbalists, and certainly no medical sorcerers outside of its own licensed and tightly regulated corps of social hygienists and eugenicists.

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They would walk right past this person in only a moment. Thoughts darted through Mila’s head like tiny minnows in a tide-rock pool. She could stop and say something—say what, exactly? ‘Hello, d’you ever think you might be a girl, actually?’—but what conceivable reason would she give to Roxa for why her guarded, introvert roommate had suddenly struck up a conversation with a random boy-looking student on their way to breakfast?

Mila was acutely aware of how many assumptions she was making, based on not-very-much. Literally just a hunch, actually. There were hundreds of other possible reasons someone would instinctively shrink themselves down. This made no sense, and yet here she was, waiting for this stranger’s eyes to open, searching for something, though she couldn’t say what.

They would be past in five steps.

Four steps. She knew her face was too open, too readable. Mila fought to shut it again. It would be smart to look away, to stare straight ahead.

Three. She was too damn curious. She couldn’t look away.

Their eyes opened—mossy, tawny, softer than she could ever have expected or believed was possible in this place of hard, nationalist might and cruel pride. For a split second Mila felt as if an ache of understanding flowed between them. Then they looked stricken, clearly not expecting to find her own gaze boring back at them, and looked away, blushing.

Mila herself didn’t blink or look away. She was used to the disconcerting effect that her gaze could have on people. She only wished they would look back up so she could find out if they really were—Ah! The stranger glanced back up, shyly, and Mila drank in this eye contact like clear well water.

And then, from one step to the next, Mila was past them, plunging out of the brisk sunlight into the crowded press of the dining hall. She could tell Roxa was looking at her, curious.

Mila mastered her face, closing it safely behind a neutral expression, before she let herself look over at her roommate. Questions would come later but for now, she needed to change the subject.

“Would you like to eat inside or outside?”

 

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